I had a Hatoful dream/semi-nightmare last night! It was about a secret route that we'd never discovered before, a choice that made an appearance in the infirmary under certain circumstances that led us down a different path. In this one, the game took you into Shuu's secret experimentation room which was in the shape of a dome, where a number of emaciated or clearly otherwise unwell bird-photo characters were shown on screen, giving pained groans as their only dialogue.

After that, we met a uniquely human character, who was a photo of a man with long brown-blonde hair who had been photoshopped to remove the section of his face containing his nose, so that his head was shorter than it should be - I made an attempt at recreating him with an unpaid-for stock photo: http://imgur.com/RYWSXAa . He said that there was some seat(?) upstairs that we needed to see, but that it was dangerous... I woke up before I found out any of what that meant.

Tanabata is the Japanese festival of the stars, as it is impossible to tell from this video. Instead, witness the Hatoful cast celebrating it as only they can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-__jswhtEhw&hd=1

Our lucky number.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALJ2aLx0H9I
I have no idea what else to say about this video. This is your Hato on drugs.

The Holidaystar suite closes with a song that's unusual for me - I've finally written a ballad! This is the slowest song I've written... ever, I think. And it took a long time to come together, but in the end I was very satisfied with how it closed the album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv31yTNiiqs

So now it's time to make plans for a Bandcamp release!

To cut a long story short (during which I realized I was now literally doing the same thing at home that I do at work, setting up a web application against Postgresql), I now have a Pretend You're Xyzzy server running locally which I'm free to customize to the best of my ability. Cards and decks are just stored in a plain understandable layout in the database, and I've entered a few testing ones that you can see here - and ravenworks and I discovered that if you start a game with too few white cards it'll go into a panic and continually try to shuffle them eternally until you terminate the server.

Therefore, feel free to go mad making up questions and potential answers if you'd like to do a Hatoful special! I think most of us found that we liked the two or three-slot ones the most, but a good mix would be great.

This is song three of four in a mini-concept album that I wrote by mistake. Here, we’re at the climax of the Day the Night Slept story, where the events echo the legend of the Scorpion’s Fire from Night on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazama. In the game, Moa amazed us all once again with her writing and ability to make heartfelt emotional moments out of her unique cast of pigeons, and it's because of her that these songs came into being.

There’s a bit of a surprise for those used to my wordless submissions in the middle of this one... I had to get some reassurance before I chose to actually leave it in because power metal narration is always hilarious, but... can I possibly be as bad as Rhapsody at it? No.

The final final short episode (because I forgot that this one existed until just now) is a collection of quite funny deleted scenes and a really lovely final message. And with that, the last Holidaystar video really is up - we've explored every avenue of the game that we're going to explore. xaq, budgiebin, ravenworks, kjorteo... thank you!

I hope that everyone else's experience with this game will allow them to appreciate the tone in which this is intended, along with its paradoxical nature: I've really loved putting these videos together over the last few months. Please don't ask me to do any more soon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8h44USLDW8

0:10 After After
0:50 One last time
1:15 THE CONDUCTOR'S TRUE FORM
2:15 Accident
2:40 Hitting on me
3:05 The conductor's true form!
3:40 More work
4:05 GOOD MANNERS
5:30 Package
5:50 Tohri's letter
6:55 Stiff
7:55 GET WELL SOON
10:05 Fossil
10:30 TO THE SOUTHERN CROSS
11:35 Pillow fight
12:10 The end?
12:20 One more thing
13:00 The final gift

Let's finish off another section of the game - these are both the remaining Radio sessions, because they're unusually short (even the one that says it's the extra-large edition). Our host throughout them all, xaq, almost gets through the entire ordeal without having to surrender, but the fangirls obsessed with various articles of clothing eventually prove a bit too much for him.

We get a long-awaited appearance from a character who we were wondering would ever turn up, as well!

Radio 5 - Human Form Questions

1:20 Question 1 about panties
3:20 Question 2 about trousers
3:50 Question 3 about clothing
6:30 Question 4 about glasses

Radio 6 - Extra-Large Edition

0:55 Question 1 for Hiyoko: Udon
1:30 Kaku udon
2:00 Question 2 for Sakuya: Sushi
4:00 Question 3 for Nanaki: Sleeping
5:00 Question 4 for Nanaki: Dark spot
6:25 Question 5 for Yuuya: Got it
8:30 Question 6 for Okosan: House
10:30 Sean Coonery
11:20 Bonus question for...!
12:45 Question for Rabu
13:55 Final letter

In what might turn out to be the culmination of this insane chapter of my life, we - as the largely accidentally-formed Team Hatoful - got together for a webcam session and answered questions from the people who have so enjoyed our specific voiceover of an assortment of pigeons and the versions of the characters that we've projected on to them. This two-hour special includes an explanation of how the group came to be, details of the recording process, opinions on characters, a really nicely crafted table, impressions of each other, a giant Yoshi, plot speculation, future plans, and me running away twice. ...and My Little Pony.

Part One

Part Two
For me, the most surprising moment happened quite early on, when it was suddenly revealed that I had been listening to ravenworks' voice years before I met him, as part of Misteroo's legendarily berserk Arfenhouse series. You can plainly see my brain melting from about here onwards.

I first found those because Misteroo was in the ZZT community at the same time I was (what else could cause the kind of mental decay necessary to produce something like that?), and with the combination of that and discovering kjorteo's link to xaq who were both on a furry-related forum I used to visit but somehow never directly talked to either of them... budgiebin is the only one not to have had a shocking revelation that went back to the very first place I established myself on the Internet! What's that going to be, once we eventually discover it?

All right, let's start banging these out. This one is actually a clip that we didn't do last night - it's actually from the middle of February, just before what I think was the start of chapter 3. Why's it been sitting around so long before being posted? Because... well, I forgot about it.

It's a treat, though, seeing Okosan's drawn form (and his little hat) - effectively showcasing budgiebin's characterization, ravenworks' energy and xaq's extraordinary cooing abilities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sFDIANvjtA