Before we get started with this post of awesomeness, we want to thank you all for your support and understanding regarding the delayed release. The extra time has certainly given us the chance to create something we hope you’d enjoy—and, in the spirit of complete honestly and full disclosure, I’m going to (temporarily) cast aside my eloquence and restraint, and say: aaaaahhhhhhh we’re all super excited about the release and are dying to know what you think about the new content and shinies and there’s this thing and there’s this other thing and it all happens but nononononooooo spooooilers and eeeeeeeep!!

(Please excuse me for a moment while I adjust my bonnet and regain my composure.)

Ah yes, the update. The hitherto elusive update that, we’re very pleased to announce, will be available in one month. That’s right: 30 more days before you can get some new Regency Love shinies! Being quite the (sometimes rabid) fangirls ourselves, we at Tea For Three Studios know those 30 days might seem like a long time, which is why we’ve decided to put together a month-long series of posts and events to help with the wait, and also to share with you some behind-the-scenes Regency-loving. Here’s what we’ve got planned:

• Tuesday Teasers that contain concept art and some commentary from both Jenny and Melody;
• Friday Features that discuss some of the writing process, as well as some information to put the Regency in context;
• A character reveal of this new gentleman;
• A giveaway to celebrate the release;
• A countdown that comes with a daily surprise;
• A special event on the release day

We hope you’re excited about this, because we certainly are (in an utterly demure, lady-like manner, of course)!

To kick off this April of Awesomeness, we’ve got a poll for you today. When we first started working on some of the minor characters, I put together some profiles to convey to Jenny and Melody what I had in mind for them. I’ll be posting one of these character profiles on Friday 10 April, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide who it’ll be. The options are:

• Mrs Worthington
• Mrs Earlwood
• Harriet Earlwood, the middle of the three Earlwood sisters
• Bessy, your maid

Please cast your vote using the following poll. You have until 8 April to decide.

Meanwhile, we’ll be hanging around on Facebook and Twitter (especially since I have a three-week Easter break to work on Regency Love full-time), so feel free to give us a shout about, well, anything. In any case, you’ll be hearing from us again soon—after all, Friday is just around the corner!

Yours &c,
Samantha, on behalf of the team

Dearest Regency Lovers:

My name is Samantha, and I am the writer for Tea For Three Studios and Regency Love. I have interacted with some of you lovelies on a range of online media, and I, like the rest of the team, am very grateful for and humbled by your continued enthusiasm, support, and patience.

And it is with deep regret and apologies that I must entreat your patience for a little longer. As some of you may know, my two wonderful co-conspirators and I have been working on Regency Love in a part-time capacity, in addition to our various full-time jobs. My main commitment is to my funded PhD candidacy in Shakespeare studies, which I have been working on alongside Regency Love for the past two-ish years. Doing the PhD comes with a set of various deadlines and academic events which my co-conspirators and I consider when scheduling our work for Regency Love. When we decided on the 14 March release date last year, it was under the assumption that our work situations would remain unchanged—and of course, as with every deadline, we’d given ourselves a bit of a buffer in case life didn’t go entirely as planned (as it is wont to do).

Unfortunately, something propped up a few days ago that will require a lot more buffer than that for which we’d accounted. I received a last-minute offer to teach on a Renaissance course at my university, commencing next week. This will be quite a time commitment for the next four months, and is in addition to the PhD (time- and brain-consuming as it is) and my singing in a cathedral choir (ah, those long-lost Sundays). All three activities pay for my rent (and food!), and I simply cannot find the time to work on Regency Love nearly as much as I’d need in order to make the 14 March release.

After discussing this with Jenny and Melody, we have decided to push the release date to 1 May. I know this might come as a disappointment, and for that, I deeply apologise. But I also want to assure you that we do indeed have quite a bit of content in the works. On my part, most of the conversations have been written, and are currently being edited before they are ‘parsed’ so they can be put into the game, and then checked for any errors or typos. According to my trusty spreadsheet, I have written 83 conversations related to this new character, and 26 have been edited and parsed. Additional things I have to do/write include epilogues, several conversations for consistency, and editing/parsing new material for the side characters. I don’t want to bore you with any more details, but the general gist is this: the bulk of the content-y work has been done, but they need to be finessed and processed. And such things take time, which is currently rather lacking on my end.

(On a brighter note, Jenny and Melody are on schedule and have done some amazing work. Jenny’s new art is rather drool-worthy, and Melody’s been drawing some beautiful backgrounds as well as doing her super amazing code-wrangling and putting everything together.)

Thank you ever so much for being such wonderful Regency Lovers. I apologise again for having to push back the date, but 1 May isn’t too much further away. Besides, I can promise you there’s a Mr ______ waiting for you, as well as pre-release shinies available from 1 April (which will include unveiling the identity of said Mr ______). In the meantime, if you’d like any suggestions for Renaissance reading (or anything pre-20^th-century), you know where to find me, remaining humbly and faithfully yours,

Samantha

A year after the release of Regency Love, we’re still very grateful for and humbled by your patience and support. Thank you for being such lovely gentlewomen and gentlemen!

But the wait is almost over—we’re extremely pleased (and inordinately excited!) to announce another release date, which will contain an update that will include the following goodies:

• A new bachelor;
• The complete story for the bickering couple (don’t remember them? Well, you’ll certainly be encountering Miss Ingram and Mr Winslow again!);
• New conversations with various characters;
• New trivia and hangman questions

All this will be available on 14 March 2015!

The new bachelor story will be available as an in-app purchase, while the other content will be included in a free update. We will be making several more posts and announcements as the release date approaches, including some teasers and hints about this mysterious new gentleman, so please stay tuned for those!

We still have many, many more ideas for Regency Love (including several new characters and locations), and require your help to make them real (or digital, as the case may be). So if you’ve enjoyed our game, please continue to support us by spreading the word and gently persuading your friends and family to check it out. Perhaps you could even give the gift of Regency Love this festive season—mulled wine, mince pies, and the company of Darlington’s inhabitants make quite a lovely combination.* We’d also love to know what you think about the game, so do please leave a post on our Facebook page or send us a tweet using the #RegencyLove hashtag.

Have a wonderful holiday season, and we wish you happiness, health, and lots of good tea for 2015!

* Feel free to replace with ice-cream at the beach, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere. Our writer, though she grew up in Sydney, has clearly spent far too much time in the UK.