OH! Just before the weekend Chucklefish CEO, Finn Brice (Chucklefish being the publishers of Stardew Valley but ALSO devs of their own games including Starbound) popped up a teaser image for their magic school RPG/sim project. It’s been described by Brice in the past as “something like Stardew Valley meets Harry Potter” and this image is reminding me of any number of nice sims I used to play on Nintendo handheld consoles…

SDV still in testing, no news yet. Thought this sneak peak might tide you over. We’ve learned a lot of lessons from working with Stardew. pic.twitter.com/EcabZ8DGb7 — Tiy (@Tiyuri) August 31, 2017

The obvious comparison is probably Little Witch Academia but I’m going to suggest we go with the hope that it’s a reworking of The Worst Witch books. Or Meg and Mog. I LOVE a bit of Meg and Mog, although I probably couldn’t cope with the emotional rollercoaster of Mog having a case of the mumps again. Poor Mog :( So poorly!

Anyway, I think the language of that first tweet struck a bunch of people as being unclear, especially as Chucklefish also have another game in the works (an Advance Wars-y, Fire Emblem-y thing) and are continuing to support Starbound so Brice followed up with:

“To everyone asking, it’s our other new project. Something that builds on what we learned from Stardew. No formal announcement for a while.”

…and then corrected the spelling of the original tweet, which I appreciated: “Also *peek, damn it”. It’s only ever the tweets with spelling or grammar errors that get traction, eh? That said, I have a soft spot for “sneak peak” specifically:

The amusingly misspelled “sneak peak” could probably stay because it makes me think of this pic.twitter.com/CNRwp6URxT — Philippa Warr (@philippawarr) March 4, 2015

The “no formal announcement for a while” thing is interesting because the game appears to be in a state of semi-announcedness, right? Like, there have been a few hints/heavy-handed puns to indicate it’ll be called Spellbound:

https://t.co/ryHxhoouy6 This mockup has me even more Spellbound — Tiy (@Tiyuri) October 27, 2016

Plus there was the art style demo video showing what was essentially a still image from a witchy, simmy-looking game but with flickering candles and dust motes:



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And then there was the statement to PC Gamer to note the Stardew Valley meets Harry Potter general direction and add “Lots of the sim features are present, day night cycles, dating, classes etc. But with some interesting gameplay twists.”

Would you say that was announced or not announced at this point?