Hey, everyone, thank you for a great year. And thank you for your support of Soma Spirits, both the freeware and the commercial version! No matter which version you played, I hope you enjoyed what the game has to offer.

Today, I'd like to announce that the Steam version of Soma Spirits has be given a permanent price cut and is now just $2.99 USD! This should more accurately reflect the amount of extra content between the free and commercial versions. If you liked the original, consider giving Rebalance a go for your second go at it!

Thanks, everyone!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/587310/Soma_Spirits_Rebalance/

You heard that right! The Steam version of Soma Spirits is coming soon! It will be available on April 14th, 2017 for $4.99!

The Steam version includes a number of revisions to the original game, such as an expanded story, rebalanced gameplay, new characters, and a whole new postgame dungeon! There are also some new surprises for returning players!

Check out the Steam page here!

Thank you, everyone, for supporting us through this journey! And tell Heart and Soul I said “Hi” when you get to Soma, too!

That's right! After just 7 days, Soma Spirits: Rebalance has officially passed Steam Greenlight and is soon(ish) to be available for the masses! This couldn't have been possible without the support of my friends and the RPG Maker community, and for that you have my gratitude beyond compare.

So I guess the question on everyone's minds is: What's next? When does it come out?

There's a lot of good news here! Considering that Soma Spirits already exists as a complete game, that means that a good 80% of the game is already done. In addition to that, a fair number of the planned changes in Rebalance have been implemented in various forms of completion. A hefty chunk of the graphics that I have wanted to update have been changed over. The first pass of rebalancing the game (of several) has been finished, as well as the first pass of the new intro, which combines the "slideshow" format with some new event sequences.



I want to say that about 25-30% of the planned additions are in the game, with the biggest hurdle being the entire postgame dungeon, and the revisions needed to some of the cutscenes. Re-adjusting every line of dialogue in the game to match the new font's width will also prove to be quite time-consuming.

Regardless, things are coming along very smoothly, considering my sporadic availability to work on the game. While I do not have an exact release date planned, my goal is to have everyting finished by late spring.

Thank you again, everyone! Please look forward to Rebalance!

It's been quite a year, hasn't it? It's hard to believe that Soma Spirits came out over four months ago, and in many ways it feels like it's been so much longer than that.

Since releasing Soma Spirits, I've been experimenting with projects here and there, but I'm finding that with a lot of changes that came into my life this year, a lot of those projects and ideas seem like pipe dreams. And ever since I released the game, and regardless of what kinds of projects I start, I have a strong nagging feeling in the back of my head that I want to do more with the game; that there's more to it that I want to pursue.

So I thought about the feedback I've gotten from the game, and the kind words and thoughts that many players within the community gave in response to their experiences with it. I feel incredibly thankful when someone comes to me, a friend or stranger alike, and tells me that they liked the game, even months after the "golden" release period has passed.

That's part of why I want to make Soma Spirits better.



So came the idea of Soma Spirits Rebalance: an extended version of the game that makes a number of key improvements. Here are some of the key features planned, though this list is not comprehensive:

Balance changes

As the name implies, the biggest change in Rebalance is a full reworking of the game's combat. While the core gameplay is largely the same, my goal is to make the gameplay and challenge level much tighter: to make it less "Mash Fight to kill the dudes" and to bring more synergy to the duo.

The key mechanic of Soma Spirits has always been the "roles" that Heart and Soul switch back forth with depending on where they are. But this feature was largely mitigated by the game's low difficulty level and questionable need for most of the abilities at all. Rebalance will aim to make the Attacker/Defender roles more concrete by making abilities more useful, learned at different levels, and with entirely new spells introduced.

But flexibility is always an option.

New Difficulties!



New difficulty options are available for players of all types. Easy is for those who want to just breeze through the story. Normal will be default, but overall more polished and more difficult than the game's original difficulty. And Hero will be far more challenging overall, featuring enemies with higher stats and fewer treasure chests.



Aesthetic changes are also planned, including a new font that doesn't alias like it went through the wash, a cleaner battle UI and various visual updates. The graphics won't be completely redone, but I do hope to update a good chunk of the tiles and sprites, especially from earlier areas.



Heart and Soul will have cleaner sprites, as an example.

Expanded Story

Rebalance will also have new story elements that weren't present in the original, with new cutscenes and revisions to the story. One particular character's role in the story will be greatly expanded upon, and will be much more developed than they were before. With it will come more additions to the overarching plot to tie in this new character's developments, as well as a more event-focused intro to replace the rather drab slideshow that starts off the adventure.

There will be new gameplay content too, of course. Including a whole postgame dungeon and extensions to areas that were previously a bit too short.

The Path to Greenlight

Which brings me to my big resolution for all of this: I want to put Soma Spirits Rebalance on Steam Greenlight. With everything I want to revise, I'm hoping this version of the game will be different enough to be commercial-worthy. Obivously, Greenlight will be a challenge all in its own, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I'm looking to launch the campaign sometime in January or February and I guess we'll see where it goes from there.

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So that's my plan for the upcoming year. And of course, I want to give a big Thank You to everyone who has supported the game thus far. And a HUGE Thank You to SpecialAgentApe for being a great friend, a splendid composer, and for all of his contributions to the project so far.

I hope 2017 will be an exciting and successful year for Heart and Soul and all of their dopey friends. Let's see what happens!

So it's been one month since Soma Spirits was completed and released to the hungry masses. How are things faring?

Pretty well, it looks like! With almost 30,000 pageviews and over 550 full game downloads in the first month, I'm very happy at where things are and where things are going. And a lot of the game's success is personal: friends came from all over and out of the woodwork to tell me how much they enjoyed the game and its story. Heck, several Let's Plays and the occasional piece of fan art have popped up, and that just blows me away since I would have been happy if even five people played the game through to the end.

I'm already thinking about other projects, too. I have some ideas of where I want to go next, but nothing concrete. Finding the time and drive to work on something when I spent a year on SS is a daunting idea indeed.

Thank you everyone for continuing to follow this project. If nothing else, I hope SS is one the more memorable RM games you play this year!