While GOLDEN HOUR remains our main focus, I’ve also been using every available moment to work on the content for SOUTHWESTERN SEXCAPADES. Whenever I’m waiting for corrected GOLDEN HOUR materials, or when our computers are busy rendering animations in the background, I switch over to the expansion and continue preparing its visuals.

And today, I finally want to give you a little taste of what we’ve been working on. What you’re seeing is still only a small selection of what will eventually be included in the expansion. Most of these materials haven’t even gone through our major final verification and polishing process yet. But even at this stage, some of the results are already making a hell of an impression.

A different approach from the very beginning

There’s an important difference between the original AMERICAN SUNSET content and SOUTHWESTERN SEXCAPADES. The expansion was originally rendered from the ground up with a somewhat different visual philosophy. We wanted the camera to be closer to the action. That means larger characters on screen, closer framing, more visible facial expressions and emotions, and much more emphasis on the little details that make a scene feel alive. And now that we’re applying everything we’ve learned while developing our new visual pipeline for GOLDEN HOUR, this approach is paying off tremendously. The combination works fantastically well.

Our new processing techniques can bring out details, improve lighting and enhance the overall presentation, but because the original compositions already put the characters and their emotions front and center, the final results can be seriously impressive.

And there’s more good news

I also have some very good news regarding the expansion itself.

I asked Iksanabot to speed up the final verification of the texts, so that we can move this part of development forward much faster than originally planned. And if everything continues progressing at the current pace, there is now a very real chance that SOUTHWESTERN SEXCAPADES will be released much earlier than our original end-of-the-year target.

I don’t want to announce a new release date just yet. There is still work to be done, and after everything we’ve learned from GOLDEN HOUR, I definitely don’t want to rush the final quality-control stage, but things are moving in a very promising direction.

And videos... just look at those samples below!

GOLDEN HOUR RELEASE

And just a reminder - GOLDEN HOUR release is coming! Stay tuned!