NINA AQUILA: LEGAL EAGLE, SEASON ONE′s out TOMORROW, and today, on a “very special episode” of this studio blog, I want to take some time to thank our community.
1,000 days.
That’s roughly how long NALE has been in development, leading up to this Steam release.
A lot can happen in a thousand days.
I got married.
The UK left the EU.
We lived through a pandemic (one that’s still going on!).
I developed and released three chapters of the game, and collected them together into the bumper Steam release coming tomorrow.
You people, many of you, played the games. You left reviews. You left comments. You posted about it to your friends and family. You joined our Discord, followed NALE on Twitter, voted for it on Newgrounds.
And whether you discovered NALE early on through itch.io, or via searching Newgrounds, or maybe got Chapter 2 as part of the giant itchio Black Lives Matter bundle, whether you’ve been here since 2018 or if you found out about the game moments before reading these words and you’re excited to play it for the first time tomorrow…
… you are all an equal part of NALE’s community, if you want to be. You all came with us on this journey, and we appreciate that immensely.
I want to mention some people below who have been a huge influence on NALE’s success. If you’re not named below, please don’t take this as a snub, as that’s not the intention; it would be impossible to name everyone.
HawkZombie & Missylaneous
NALE has been streamed by many people, and I sincerely thank them all – but I wanted to give special thanks to the two of you.
HawkZombie was one of the very first streamers to carry NALE, and watching them play the game was a surreal experience for me; having never watched someone do a complete playthrough before.
Missylaneous did an amazing job with her playthrough, which caused a noticeable uptick in our traffic; they’re also fantastically entertaining.
Thank-you.
Arcturus64
This person volunteered with the huge task of recording large amounts of video footage of NALE for the chapter trailers; really I can’t explain how much this helped me, as it freed up time for development that I would’ve otherwise had to spend recording good-looking playthroughs.
Arcturus64, thanks for your help.
& The NALE Beta Testers
Our Discord server has a subgroup of volunteer testers who found literally hundreds of bugs that we were able to resolve for both the chapter and Season One releases. Many of these were things I could never have found myself, even if I’d played the game for years.
- Autumn Leaves
- BuckytheDucky
- CamCam the Legalese Queen
- Derp
- Doctor Joshua
- doobes
- Gui
- IllegalLoli
- iornhide132
- Lulink
- retroPacifist
- SentientViolin
- srime
- Tempest
- Sebastian
- Arashi
- Scarlet
- Swansong
- Andrew
- Dlanor
All of you, thank-you.
The communities of itch.io and Newgrounds
This can’t be overstated; with all your reviews and comments… When I uploaded NALE originally, to both platforms, I honestly didn’t expect much. I mean if you upload a book to Amazon Kindle and don’t support it, it sinks without a trace like gently dropping a brick in a lake.
In both cases, the response I got from the community was warm, welcoming and, well, there. I couldn’t believe the number of reviews that kept coming in each week, month, and, eventually, year!
Each and every one of you is part of NALE’s success. Thanks a bunch.
Sam Ferreira
Sam is the editor of Anime Herald, and runs their Discord of which I’m a member. However, more importantly, she’s an incredibly supportive soul who gives so much back to her community, as well as a very creative person in her own right.
Sam, thanks for all your edits to my press-releases. You’re amazing.
Starwulfen
Starwulfen is one of the moderators of our Discord server, so many fans will have had contact with her at some point.
Starwulfen is my longtime friend and was one of the first fans of my work. She read through both my books in beta form and the final versions, before I moved onto NALE, and she’s always gone as far as they could to help me get the message of the game out to other people.
More than that, they’re a fantastic person, who in my experience never fails to bring happiness to any room that she’s in.
Starwulfen, you’re an important part of NALE’s success and I can’t thank you enough.
My wife
I saved the one most vital until last. I won’t labour this point (the wedding speech did that!) but my wife is my friend, my partner, my cheerleader, my sounding board, and an endless source of encouragement.
And thanks for understanding about the thousands of hours I’ve spent in our back room, hunched over my desk.
Wrapping up
I’m signing off.
Thanks, once more, all of you, for your help so far.
Launch tomorrow. Let’s see if we can crush it.
Thanks for reading this!
NINA AQUILA: LEGAL EAGLE, SEASON ONE will be released on Steam TOMORROW!
We’re inviting players to WISHLIST the game now; just click here and hit the “Add to my Wishlist” button!
We’re marking the run-up to launch with a range of daily blogposts about many different topics relating to NALE, such as how we achieved certain things in the editor, character bios and even a giveaway, which you can enter now over on Twitter!
Finally, if you’re a fan of the game, make sure you join our newsletter (and get a free pack of high-res NALE backgrounds for desktop displays & mobile devices).
And we hope to see you TOMORROW over on Steam!
Tanuki-sama Studios 