Two Beasts Or Not To Beast! news & patch notes

Hiya! DocOliver here, I'm the Production Manager for Fakku Games. There's been some more questions we've seen since the last Q&A, and especially now that the game has released we wanted to get the community's questions and our answers together in one spot for you all.

But first, our team wants to send a big thank you to everyone who has purchased and playing Two Beasts or not To Beast! You've blown away our release day goals, giving us our largest Day 1 sales yet. We love seeing all your screenshots and excitement for this game.

Hope you're having a beastly time!

Post-Release Q&A

Oh no, my computer says this program may have a virus! Don't worry, the game files don't have a virus. The program is just not known to your software. Most antivirus software simply don't know about a lot of indie and foreign game engines, like the Japanese Wolf RPG engine used in this game, hence it saying it's unrecognized. Doesn't mean it's a virus, just that your antivirus wants to check that you know what you downloaded before trying to open it. The game is safe to open.

For Microsoft Defender, there's a "More info" text underlined that's a button. Click it and a button will appear at the bottom saying "Run anyway", which will allow the game to run. For other antivirus software, you may need to add the game as an approved app/create an exception. You can look up how to online for your specific software.

Will Two Beasts or not To Beast be translated into other languages?

We don’t currently have any plans to translate into other languages, we specifically focus on English localization. If you’re interested in translating or helping to get it localized in another language, please  contact the original developer and publisher, Tokinokogiri, about licensing.

How do I make the game full screen?

To go full screen you click F4 (F11 also works on some systems). Note that the game was only created with one native resolution option in a 4:3 ratio. There is no widescreen resolution 

What does “Show your love” mean on one of the Steam Achievements?

Hmm… might want to check in-game for that one. Have you looked through the Album yet from the title screen? The Achievements folder may have more details for you.

(The technical: Steam Achievements show in non-adult areas on Steam, so descriptions may be a bit more vague there. Full descriptions are still in-game.)

available

Where are the screenshots taken with the built-in screenshot function stored?

Screenshots taken using the game’s print screen functionality are automatically store in the game’s main folder on your computer. Navigate to the location your game was installed to, open the Two Beasts or not To Beast folder, and you should see them below the game’s files.

Do you always lose when succumbing to temptation?

The “win” condition of the game is to survive the day without temptations and prepare the perfect study date for your crush the next day. So yes if you knowingly give in to other tempting ladies, you have “lost” and must restart the game. However, whether that’s really a true “loss” is up to you, and not all secrets can be found by avoidance. I have a bug report!

First check if your issue is answered in the discussions’ Troubleshooting Tips thread. If not, please post in the Bug Reports & Help Requests thread in Discussions with as many details as you can (and screenshots if you have). You can also find us in the fakku-games channel on the Fakku Discord.

Thanks for reading.

That's all for now! Let us know in the comments if you have other questions you think we should add to a Q&A.

Welcome to our 5th Beastly DevLog! Where we give a little sneak peak into our process of localizing this game into English, and introduce a few of the extra guest characters you might meet as you hop around town. Today we’re talking about achievements with DocOliver… psst our first game with Steam Achievements!

Achievements: To Achieve Or Not To Achieve

Heya, DocOliver here. I’m the Production Manager at Fakku Games, and QA Testing Lead for Two Beasts or not To Beast. I also wrote the final translations for all the achievements, which while they drove me a little crazy, were pretty fun to write.

Achievements are not the easiest to localize, there’s often little to no context with short descriptions, can be unclear where in the game they unlock, what they relate to, and might make references that make no sense or are too vague in English. There’s also strict letter-counts dictated by text boxes made for Japanese character lengths which make things more interesting. I’m also not fluent in Japanese, I can speak and read a little but I’m not a translator (I write like a kindergartener lol), I come from the game industry side as the resident game designer and spreadsheet-obsessor.

First we had to find a list of all the achievements, which thankfully the Japanese developer, Tokinokogiri wrote a Strategy Guide back when the game was originally released in 2021. From that, one of our translators went through and wrote up a rough translation for me to work off of. Some were straightforward, you aren’t gonna get confused by “Collect 100 Soulcoins”. Many though had multiple possible interpretations, and that meant finding them in-game to see exactly how they work. I also wanted to make sure that the hints and unlocked descriptions were clear and easy to understand while still leaving some secrets to find, as well as give a bit more consistency to the title naming so they clearly fit each achievement.

ALL THE SPREADSHEETS! If you notice, the Hint and Unlock descriptions are the same in the original game. The different states already existed in the code though, so I added a little more fun, descriptive charm to the descriptions you see once you’ve unlocked an achievement in-game.

Figuring out the unlock conditions to edit the Hints was a bit of trial and error. “スコア50点以上を取る。” for example, is about scoring a certain amount (50) points, but that could be interpreted as over 50 points (so 51 plus) or at least 50 points (exactly 50 still counts). Then does the achievement trigger when you hit 50 points? Or when you complete the study date and get your final score? We even found some unlocked when you went to the Album menu from the title screen, without having to finish a day. We didn’t have an exact reference for how many points every action gives, so I had a bit of a guessing game trying different thing then finishing the day to see what the total score would be to create a guide. After testing, I ended up with the final hint wording of "Complete the day with a score of at least 50 points.”

Others were so vague I had to poke our programmer to check on Wolf RPG exactly how they were coded (we’re on opposite time-zones, so I try to figure out what I can on my own then send him a list for when he’s awake). Like we only realized there were more music tracks when we saw the achievements, then had to go on a hunt for them both in-game and in the code to even translate the track titles.

A useless fortune May awaken one’s soundtrack. Three to eleven.

As for the titles, many were re-written as they were often either very literal descriptors or didn’t translate well. I also created consistent naming for achievement sets that were clearly connected. The points were like a test score, so the set of score-specific achievements all have school-based titles - Unsatisfactory, Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, and Summa Cum Laude. The Mini-game achievements were my favorite I think, like the Lust Maze ones all relate to mazes - the highest level achievement for this one directly translated to “Ariadne’s Heart”, which I love being a huge mythology nerd (Ariadne being the one who game the ball of thread to Theseus to get through the Minotaur’s Labyrinth), so I re-worded the lower level achievement to better connect to the maze theme, using the idea that Ariadne is the master of the mythological Labyrinth while a Surgeon is the master of the body’s labyrinth, keeping the heart reference, to get “Heart Surgeon”.

Steam Achievements: How did we even…?

When we first saw that the game had achievements we were excited. Seemed like a perfect opportunity to set-up Steam achievements for the first time. Then we took a look at Wolf RPG and the Steam api, and honestly thought it would never happen. The game engine is just not designed to work with steam like that. But our programmer, donutgrind, is a magician who apparently never gives up, and two weeks before the Steam release was like so “not sure if we still care about achievements, was thinking about having a wrapper program that launches the game and watches the save data for changes”... a few hours later… here’s a build with achievements set up for steam (if you look in the game folder wondering why there’s two .exe files, one is what makes the steam achievements work). 

All that was left to do was fill out all the info on the Steam app admin page, make little icons for the locked and unlocked states, test that it works, and we could launch with them. In two weeks. We first talked to the image editor that worked on all of the English images for the game, but he was unavailable. With a week left, another artist we work with in Fakku and on some of the Orcsoft games, Aaryn, gave us a yes, and with a little back-and-forth managed to create all 100 icons using the game’s asset library (which thankfully had a lot to choose from) in a few days.

All unlocked states are different images, mainly using character sprites and the massaging emoticons, and he had the fun idea of creating a mosaic-like effect for the locked states as a nod to how adult games get censored with little mosaic blocks. There's also different borders for Bronze, Silver, and Gold achievements.

That’s all from me on achievements. Hope you enjoyed reading a bit of my process, and have fun finding all the secrets hidden around Two Beasts or not To Beast. Come find me in our discord if you need any extra hints!

Guest Character Spotlight

Say hello to Haruki’s secret crush. Can you create the perfect study date and complete the game with a perfect score (hmmm… I wonder if there’s a secret award for that)?

The “other-worldly” Tome-san simply wishes to help your restless heart relax for a good night’s sleep. Will you be able to peel your eyes away from her… or will you succumb to your isekai dreams?

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

Two Beasts or not To Beast Launch Day

It's been a long process, and the FAKKU Games team is so excited to announce that Two Beasts or not To Beast is now available on Steam!

At long last you can dive into this furry dating sim paradise! Which character will you romance first? The matronly Madoka? The flirtatious Anne? Or one of the many other furry femme fatales hanging around the town? Let us know in the comments!

A Special Surprise

Y'all have been asking for it since we published our first game on Steam. When we first took a look at this game, we thought there's no way, the engine isn't designed for this, no idea how to make them work.

Thanks to the magical efforts (seriously dude is a wizard) of our beastly programmer, donutgrind, we are thrilled to announce that Two Beasts or not To Beast is the first FAKKU game to include Steam Achievements! Our production manager and achievement writer, DocOliver, will be here next week to talk more on that topic and what it was like localizing and testing all 50 of the game's achievements. Until then, we hope you enjoy a beastly time this weekend. Thanks for reading!

- The FAkkU Games Team

Welcome to our 4th Beastly DevLog! Where we give all our wishlisters and patient fans a little sneak peak into our process of localizing this game into English, some extra snapshots of unique parts of the game, and introduce a few of the extra guest characters you might meet as you hop around town.

DAYS UNTIL LAUNCH: 4

Next up, our very own Fakku Games Director, Meru, is here to chat about a some of the language-based mini-games you may find while wandering around the neighborhood...

Mini-Games Galore!!!

Hi, this is Meru, publishing director and occasional translator!

I came into the Two Beasts Or Not To Beast project after translation of the scripts had mostly been completed. However, that's only one aspect of a game localization project, so there was still a lot of work left to do, including uncensoring the sexy scenes (which the developer helped us out with!) as well as finding and translating text that appeared in other places in the game.

Here I'll talk a little bit about localizing the quiz minigames, which was a fun challenge!

Quiz 1

Originally, this language quiz was about English grammar. It's the kind of thing that Japanese people would learn in school, but could easily have forgotten if they didn't keep up with their language skills. We could have simply kept it as an English grammar quiz, however in our version Tsarin is a "foreign language teacher", and it wouldn't make sense for her to be quizzing you in English when... you're already playing the game in English!

First, we considered using Spanish, as it's the most common second language in the US, but there are many other English-speaking countries that don't have such a connection to Spanish.

Eventually I decided that since this is a Japanese game, it would make sense to use Japanese (plus I don't speak a word of Spanish!). I then came up with a few questions about simple words in Japanese, including two animal-related words to fit the furry theme. To start with, we had the answers written out in roman letters, but then decided this was way too easy, so in the editing phase I changed to writing them in Japanese hiragana characters. But don't worry if you can't make heads or tails of them; the "penalty" for failing a minigame is very enjoyable ;)

Quiz 2

In the second quiz, there were some questions on Japanese grammar and language. Again, these are things that people would have learned in school–in other words, pretty simple, but might make you pause for a second to remember them.

As the first question was kind of equivalent to a spelling question (asking the reading for a kanji compound), I chose a word in English that can be difficult to spell. The others consisted of a translation question that asked for the meaning of an English word and a grammar question asking for the modern-day meaning of a phrase in Classical Japanese. I again thought about animal-related words, and came up with the idea of a question about collective nouns, and one about Latin names, which I figured would be a nice nod to the original question containing classical language.

I hope this has given some insight into the difficulties of localization, and how it's never as simple as just replacing one word with the equivalent in the other language! While my first reaction upon encountering something like these minigames is usually along the lines of "oh no, this is going to be a real pain to translate", they usually end up being some of the most interesting parts of a project due to the creative thinking required.

I hope you all enjoy the game when it releases later this week!

Guest Character Spotlight

These next ladies are awaiting your attendance to instruct you in the ways of seduction with their dominating presence.

Will you be able to resist the lure of your provocative Professor Tsarin...

...or your stunning fellow classmate, Hyuri?

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

A Little Q&A: For A Beastly Friday

Hiya! DocOliver here, I'm the Production Manager for Fakku Games. Some folks have had af few questions in the comments (don't worry we've been reading all your comments on the devlogs, thanks for all your questions and excitement!), many asking about the same things, so I wanted to get all our answers together in one spot for you all.

When will the game release?

March 20th! That's NEXT FRIDAY, only 1 more week!

Is each new devlog gonna be posted on a Monday? How many more until release?

Yep every Monday, a relaxing start to the week, and will continue past the release day for a few more weeks as we have some extra fun announcements related to the game coming soon. (Any guesses?)

What version of the game is releasing on Steam?

The English release of Two Beasts Or Not To Beast contains all of the free DLC that was originally added to the base game. It does not include the paid Dream Lovers Collection DLC.

What about the DLC?

No, the newest paid Dream Lovers Collection DLC is not included at this time. We will be taking a look through it once Two Beasts has fully released on all platforms. No promises yet, but it is definitely on our list of possible next projects

Will my favorite character be in the Steam version?

Romanceable characters included in the Steam version: Madoka, Anne, Hiyuri, Midori, Momo, Kanae, Rai, Whibbet, Kaede, Ohagi, Chifuru, Cha-ko, Tsarin, and Tome-san.

Questions about other version releases?

Steam has strict rules, and as such we can only discuss the Steam version of the game here. Our team is pretty active in the fakku-games channel in the Fakku Discord, its a great spot for other general release/game questions.

https://discord.gg/5JCWFs2M8R

You can also follow us on social media for more info, as we'll post about other releases, sales, etc.

https://x.com/fakkugames

Thanks for reading.

That's all for now! I'll be checking the comments here and will update if there are any other pertinent questions. I will be back on Monday with our Games Publishing Director to chat a bit about translating some of the mini-games found in Two Beasts or not To Beast.

Welcome to our 3rd Beastly DevLog! Where we give all our wishlisters and patient fans a little sneak peak into our process of localizing this game into English, as we speed closer and closer to launch day.

TWO BEASTS OR NOT TO BEAST IS COMING MARCH 20TH!

Next up, Fakku's own Image Editor & Letterer Extraordinaire, Randall, has popped by to give a little behind the scenes insight into the work he did on the game…

Visual Friction & Graphic Immersion

Hello, this is Randall (often credited as Uranohoshi Graphic Design Club), I did the Image Editing and Logo design for Two Beasts or not To Beast. Normally, I usually work on stuff like manga editing, but a lot of those skills transfer over easily to games where large swathes of the graphics require Japanese text to be replaced with English text. Two Beasts or not To Beast was probably the most complicated games project I've done yet, with some of the original images from Japan not having layered files. This isn't exactly uncommon, and honestly a big part of what I do for work already, but it introduces a larger problem: Faithfully recreating/redrawing some of the assets to match the Japanese ones in order to not ruin the experience for the player.

In my opinion, what I like to call "Visual friction" is one of the biggest issues with making a localized piece of media (whether it be manga, games, or anime) a seamless and immersive experience for the person experiencing it. Think things like shoddy redraws, a bad subtitle font, text too big or too small, colors being wrong, etc. While most people might not notice them or know how to single them out, they create a sort of mental stumble to the reader/player/etc., even if they don't consciously realize it. With this in mind, I approach all of my projects the same way: Adapt everything I can, as closely as I can to the original, with as little "visual friction" as possible. Of course, as many people in this field can tell you, there are some compromises you must make just due to the size of assets and fitting English text into a small space while keeping visual consistency with your previous assets. One particular example I wasn't particularly happy with was the "Achievements" button, which is a long word in English versus the Japanese word for achievements. (I do not know what this word is, because I am simply the image editor. But I know for sure it isn't nearly as long as "Achievements". It's probably like 2 kanji max.)

My biggest hurdle was the loading/eyecatch screens by a wide margin. These were, quite frankly, a nightmare. As previously mentioned, these weren't layered, and were maybe the worst files to not have layers for. They are very visually beautiful images I think, with the parchment colored background and brown line work giving a very warm vibe in their presentation, and the red accents at the top and bottom envelop the whole image in a nice composition overall. Matching these colors was The Big Problem to overcome, as they had Japanese text that had to be replaced completely on the top left portion of every image, where there was usually some line work under the text. This required me to manually redraw the lines that *should* be under the text, using a lot of context clues and trial and error until it looks "right". This is a very time-consuming process to make it look "right", as even just a few mistakes here and there can make the effort look a little too obvious. 

Here's what one of the "eyecatch" images look like before and after. There were around 20 of these, and all of them had to be edited.

I remember it being a long period of experimentation and color matching until I got it as close as I possibly could, and was pleased with the results. The brown line color changed ever so slightly under the pink accent via a multiply layer style, which was my main source of headaches and experimentation. If the color was just a little bit off, it would be incredibly obvious to people, and I don't want them to be thinking about that. If you're looking at the image and thinking, "What the heck is up with the color here? Why is this line not the same color as this one over here?", it distracts you from the cute anime girl on screen. A horrible thing to happen to anybody, and an experience I hate to have myself.

A screenshot from my experimentation PSD. I'm pretty sure I ended up using math somehow to find the correct color, and then changed its opacity until I found the correct value. I don't know math, so don't ask me how I did this. Even though these images show up for a few seconds on your screen, I need those seconds to be as frictionless as possible. This is, and always has been, my work ethic with everything I do.

Another memorable part of working on Two Beasts or not To Beast was the sound effects/onomatopoeia that shows up on screen during the erotic scene segments. Depending on who you ask, this is probably where my work shines the brightest, as it is among maybe the most recognizable things that I do. (You have probably seen my handwriting in font form without realizing it, but I sure notice it every time it's used.) There are 165 of these files, all individually done by hand with no images repeated. I always find it pretty distracting when a sound effect is obviously a repeat but just rotated/repositioned/resized in a creative way, even if I do find it a valid way to save time. I think probably 99% of people that aren't me don't notice when it happens, but I do, and that's a good enough reason for me to go out of my way to really make each unique. After all, I want to enjoy this game myself, and what's better than doing something for yourself in the future? 

Come on down to the handwritten sfx store we got all your sex noises in different sizes and varieties

One of my other favorite images to work on was the "Mind break" screen that comes up when you fail one of the mini-games (which people definitely only fail because they're hard minigames and for no other reason). The text is \ (lit. reason collapse), which is is typically translated culturally to "Mindbreak". The "cut up" effect is quite simple: Rasterizing the text layer, using polygonal lasso to just "cut up" the area I think would look best, and moving the pixels aside to give the desired effect (I remember learning to do this specifically for making forum signatures for the halo 2 clan I was in!). For this text I ended up using the font BestTen-CRT, a free Japanese font that I'm pretty sure was the original font to begin with. However, this leaves the text in the middle awkwardly missing. The visual nature of it having a tapered curve in the middle reminded me of something pretty obvious, as I'm sure you are already thinking "haha I know that". The "destroyed" text is the same font as previously mentioned, using a similar style to move the pixels aside (rectangular marquee in this case). 

see me in +r btw (i will lose)

I hope you enjoyed reading my little devlog where I was able to convey my thought processes, even just a little bit. I put a lot of thought and care into a lot of this stuff, so it's kinda fun to put those thoughts into tangible words where hopefully I don't sound like too much of a maniac. Working on this game was certainly a challenge, but I think the payoff was pretty good.

Guest Character Spotlight

Meet Kaede! The even-tempered, helpful store clerk hiding her true, feral self.

And Chifuru, the shy neighborhood friend and secret lover of all things BL.

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

We are excited to announce that Two Beasts Or Not To Beast will be releasing in two weeks on on March 20th!

In the meantime, keep enjoying the devlogs, and start picking out the characters you're most excited to meet. With so many, we know it'll be hard to choose!

Welcome to our 2nd Beastly DevLog! Where we give all our wishlisters and patient fans a little sneak peak into our process of localizing this game into English, as we speed closer and closer to launch day.

(psst... looks like our devious little virtuous fortune teller got into graced the game's store page and updated our "coming soon" with her own release prediction...) Ahem, well today we have the lead translator of Two Beasts or not To Beast, and long-time fan of the game, CafeDX, here to chat about the challenges surrounding the sort of hints system within the game…

The Un-Lucky Fortune Teller

Two Beasts features a "Fortune" system where you can spend currency earned throughout the game--typically by completing in-game achievements--to reveal walkthrough hints. Although the term "Fortune" is a bit of a misnomer, because they're written more like premonitions. Their purpose is twofold: to steer you both to and away from encountering erotic scenes. Preparing a perfect date for Kasumi is actually surprisingly challenging, and you'll need all the help you can get to succeed.

Two Beasts has fairly complex, branching gameplay, and the developer provided us with a spreadsheet to assist with localization that outlines every possible character interaction at every possible time and location throughout the game (more on that in the future when we talk about beta testing). Fortunes are an invaluable resource when considering this, as they help narrow down possibilities without simply relying on trial and error.

As the lead translator on the project, I was tasked with localizing said Fortunes, and they were the toughest part of the project for me. There are dozens and dozens of them, and they're written in a literary, antiquated manner in Japanese that resembles poetry. I tried my best to convey the same feeling in English while retaining all the critical information for the hints themselves. While the vast majority of them contain hints pertaining to the game, some are joke hints that are best described as simple life hacks.

So to sum it all up, if you feel stumped about how to encounter a particular scene or character, try having your fortune told!

Guest Character Spotlight

Of course we gotta start off with the old-fashioned, friendly neighborhood ghostly fortune teller, Horobi! Your local guide with clues on where to avoid (or “accidentally” run into) all the nearby irresistible beauties, in return for some mystical Soul Coins. 

Horobi’s not the only mystical ass-et however… Kanae is here to ass-ist in purging all your sinful desires.

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

Welcome to our first Beastly DevLog! First we got a quick, exciting announcement...

Two Beasts or not To Beast has just been approved for release on Steam!

While we smooth out any last sneaky bugs, we want to give all our wishlisters and patient fans a little sneak peak into our process of localizing this game into English, some extra snapshots of unique parts of the game, and introduce a few of the extra guest characters you might meet as you hop around town. Starting with…

KnotsApp Messaging & Stickers!

In today’s world we all spend the day staring at our phones, and our protagonist Haruki is no different. You’ll have access to a number of useful apps on Haruki’s phone, like a task list, map, a timer to “speed up” time, and the ever important music app to choose your soundtrack for the day.

One app Haruki will use frequently throughout the day is KnotsApp, where friends and new potential lovers will send him messages containing hints for a perfect study date, or to make their own sultry plans with him themselves. Our translators had some fun here figuring out how we thought each character would type and chat slang to use.

And, what chat stickers with very short text and little context would mean in English while still being readable and fitting where the Japanese text was.

Some of the stickers were simple and obvious. Our image editor had some fun finding just the right fonts, and adjusting the layout of text to be readable and fit horizontally…

Some were a best guess or had some variations until we edited and checked them in-game, or needed shortening (or even lengthening) to fit nicely. These ones below especially took some time looking at synonyms to find just the right English word to get across the same concepts and formality...

Or made more sense when we looked at them all together, and made sure they fit in their set, like these cute Rock/Paper/Scissors stickers...

Guest Character Spotlights

Meet Momo and Ohagi, two voluptuous babes, and horny drunks!

Thanks for reading, until next time...