Love, Money, Rock'n'Roll News

Dear friends, the Christmas and NY holidays are behind us, but as they say, for a real game developer, every day is a holiday (we wish it were true)!

In the past month, we spent a lot of time improving the existing sprite animations and adding new ones. We hope that now our characters will look even more alive to you! We are also finishing up the work on the game's code — even though the main functionality is long done, we still need to round up the less demanding tasks like the gallery, the credits, and achievements. At the same time, we have started squashing bugs, of which there are quite a few at this stage. We're not only talking about technical bugs but also stuff like character expressions incorrectly placed in the script and sounds playing at the wrong times. We are planning to start testing proper pre-release beta-versions on PC as early as February, then begin adapting the game for mobile devices.

It is important to remember that the development itself isn't the only thing we need to handle. The process of the game's approval by online storefronts (Steam, Google Play, App Store), can take 1 to 2 months. So in actuality, we need to have the more-or-less final version of the game "on-hand" long before June 2nd. That's it in terms of numbers.

As for the game itself and the experience it will provide, I never tire of repeating: the full picture creates a much more vibrant impression than the sum of its parts. Well then, we hope that this synergistic effect will work not only on the developers themselves but on our players as well.

From our side, we'd like to give you a humble gift: everyone who has already made the preorder (as well as those who will have preordered from today until the release) will get the game's PDF artbook for free! And those who have already bought the PDF artbook will receive the digital OST!

Finally, we would like to offer to your attention the evolution of the sprites for secondary characters between the demo version and now.

You can see your name in the credits, receive all future DLCs, as well as the aforementioned and other bonuses by supporting us here.

Dear friends! The year 2021 is coming to an end. Today I don't want to talk about how difficult it's been for all of us — you'll hear plenty of that elsewhere.

Let's focus on the positives: in the departing year, the text for "Love, Money, Rock'n'Roll" has finally been completed, then assembled into the in-game script. An enormous amount of work has been done on the programming side, the art, the animations, several more music tracks have been recorded, ambiences finished. To be honest, this year has been one of the best as of late in terms of the work done — this is a year I'm not ashamed of. And most importantly, we have the date — the 2nd of June 2022 — when the long-awaited release of our long-awaited game will finally happen.

I'd like to use this opportunity to wish myself and every other Soviet Games employee patience and persistence in this last stretch of development. And to all our readers, players, sponsors, and just anyone else interested — good health, happiness, more positive and less negative emotions, as well as emotional warmth to your families!

It may be that today, more than ever before, fiction (be it literature, cinema, or video games) can become the bridge to connect our extremely polarized world, help different people, even those with very little in common, understand each other, and bring hope to those about to despair. We sincerely hope that that is what our game will be for you — even if for the few (or many) hours that you spend on playing it.

And of course, we will see you here, in the same place, next year, to talk about a new project, new challenges, new goals, while remembering the long road we've walked together!

You can still support us by making a preorder, seeing your name in the credits, receiving valuable bonuses and all future DLCs.

Hello, dear friends! We know that many of you have been waiting for the end of Autumn to learn the release date of "Love, Money, Rock'n'Roll". We're pleased to reveal just that: the game will come out on the 2nd of June 2022! Finishing the core codebase took somewhat longer than we initially anticipated, but this time we can assure you, firmly and clearly, that LMR will be released at or before the aforementioned date no matter what!

Until that time, we will need to complete and polish all the animations for all the characters (both in terms of actual Live2D models and porting them to Unity3D). We ended up having 35 of them just for the secondary characters! Also, it's always hard to achieve perfection in anything concerning code, but we're really trying to do just that! (just kidding.) In all seriousness, besides just being playable from start to finish, there's also a whole lot of little things that are necessary for the project to take its final form — the form of a commercial product. We won't bore you by listing every task from our bug tracker, we just want to let you know that we're working on them. The last but still very important aspect will be mobile device optimisation, which we've mentioned before.

There's still a whole month left before Christmas and the New Year, but today, looking back at the work done, I would like to thank everyone who worked on the project! No matter the size of their contribution. Not all of them were with us from start to finish, not everyone spent years of their life on the game, but all did something to bring LMR closer to release.
Perhaps a status report/blog post is not the best place for lyrical digressions, but at this moment I remember the music track Sparkles from Everlasting Summer. One day, it appeared in our IRC channel (the ancient thing!), brought by its composer who preferred to stay anonymous. Which is great but in and of itself not that remarkable. However, many years after ES's release, we received an email from one of the readers who specifically mentioned how much he liked this track. The only track not written by our two main composers. So, as they say in expensive soft-covered motivational books, even the smallest thing can be important to someone!

To end this post, we'd like to once again thank you for your support! You can still make the preorder, receive valuable bonuses as well as future DLCs, and see your name in the credits here. Keep in mind that the preorders will be closed soon! Also, the physical goods mentioned in those preorders — the disks, the artbooks, etc. are exclusive for those who make a preorder and will not be sold at later dates.

As an illustration for this post, we'd like to present you with a video of Ellie's new animations and her rehearsal space!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hello, dear friends! Unfortunately, the new Coronavirus wave has tightly gripped our country, so first and foremost we'd like to ask you to take care of yourself and your close ones!

In the recent posts we promised to bring you good news this Autumn, and Autumn is not yet over! In all seriousness though, we're all still working tirelessly to bring Love Money Rock'n'Roll to completion at the earliest possible date. However, there's little chance we'll be able to do so in 2021. Naturally, we have some internal approximate milestones, but we want to finish the game as soon as possible without sacrificing its quality, so we think it'll only be right to announce the exact date when we're absolutely sure of it ourselves. But we promise that before the end of Autumn, we will tell you the release date we'll stick to for sure!

Game development is often not a consecutive process where task A follows task B, and only then comes task C. The terrifying expression "mobile device optimization" doesn't mean that we'll first polish the PC version and only after, once it's 100% ready, we'll put it aside and start porting the game to Android and iOS. The way Unity (and Renpy in a lot of senses) works is that most of the game's contents (the text, the illustrations, the music) doesn't depend on the engine and the platform — thus, while we're finishing up these aspects, the programmers are busy with the necessary adjustments for mobile platforms. Still, I'd like to clarify that the core of the game is being made on PC and for PC — and that has to be kept in mind. On the other hand, it'd be wrong to discriminate against the people who are waiting to play LMR on Android and iOS specifically.

On the substantive part of the game, we still need to animate some sprites (unfortunately, the process is taking more time than we anticipated) and prepare the background ambiences (opening doors, sizzling eggs, etc.). We plan to finish these tasks this year. I'll clarify that even without this content, we're actively testing the game.

In this difficult time (and it IS difficult, no two ways about it), I'd also like to give a special thank you to everyone who supports our studio — both materially and morally. It's important to understand that without you, the game would've never become a reality (which it absolutely will)! I'm not talking about likes or comments specifically right now. I see the general picture, the platforms besides Steam and VK, and the enormous amounts of support that are simply invisible to most — in emails, in personal messages, even in comments to Everlasting Summer. We all want to express our gratitude to those people! There are moments when a kind word can do more than any material aid. You can't finish the book for the writer, the track for the musician, the code for the programmer. Well, okay, you technically can, but believe me, it's not a good idea.

I understand that this post sounds like an excuse — and it is. But be sure, no one is waiting for the game's release as much as the people working on it. However, exactly because we're working on it, we understand that a release in the next month or two is impossible.

Additionally, today we'd like to show you another vocal track from the game, which you can enjoy together with Kagome!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

You can still support us by making a preorder and see your name in the credits, as well as get all future DLCs.

Dear friends!

The last day of September bids us farewell with its crimson rays of sunlight, which means the time has come for yet another progress update.
Every game comes a long way from its conception to release. And even in the latest stages of development, different beta versions may be quite different from each other. Even the very term “playable” doesn’t make the product ready to be shown to a wider audience.

What we want to say is that our game is already playable, but we still need some time to polish and get it to shape. Objectively, there are some areas that can be left as-is, and others that can’t. Believe us when we say we’re not nitpicking or trying to fix what’s not broken!

What still needs work: background ambiences, small heroine sprite adjustments, direction, translation, some residual code issues. We promised to bring you good news this Autumn, and we’ll absolutely do just that! After all, the season has only just begun.

For now, you can still support us and see your name in the credits, receive valuable bonuses, and all future DLCs.