For this community week, we reached out to Koyorin for some news on their work and to ask for some character designer insight!

Koyorin is a freelance character designer and illustrator, and Haven’s incredible character artist.

Can you tell us about what you have worked on since Haven? How about any future projects?

Since Haven, I’ve been tackling some freelance projects here and there for various applications; mostly animation/video game character designs but sometimes just illustration work too! I work with a lot of indies and smaller developers, but occasionally contribute to some bigger properties when offered. In terms of future projects, I still have some ongoing projects with long-term clients, and I’m also working on a personal project that I hope to be able to share this year if I can fit in the time to work on it more!

You do a lot of fan arts, can you tell us more about what drives you to a specific character?

Haha well, first it’s usually the character’s design itself that draws me to a particular character. But also if they’re written in a compelling way/well characterized, and have a strong personality, then that’s even better.

Your work translates characters into your own style while keeping their recognizable design elements. What’s the process in doing so?

Hmm, I think the most important thing is figuring out a character’s defining elements, and then from there deciding how much I can adapt their designs to my style. Those defining elements then become non-negotiables and have to remain the same even in my style. For example, if there’s a specific way their facial features or hairstyle must appear, or if there’s clothing elements or props that I must make sure are visible in the illustration, etc. Then if those things are in place, then the rest is fair game pretty much!

Koyorin’s Malenia x CEL 240 fan art

What’s your favorite Haven illustration you’ve done?

It’s tough to pick! I think one of my favourites is the one with Yu and Kay sitting on a rocky outcrop laughing and smiling, and there’s a large sprawling environment behind them, with a huge cliff. I believe it was used for the « Sweet Little Things » update as well. I really like that one because I think at the time of development, I was getting the hang of painting backgrounds a bit more and that one captured a certain sense of atmosphere and scale; then combined with Yu and Kay in the foreground I think it made for a charming piece. Otherwise, I also really like the Yu and Kay character selection illustrations I did, as well as the promotional artwork for the couples update! I think they capture their personalities quite well, in my opinion.

What’s your all-time favorite illustration of yours?

I’m not sure I can really decide, haha. I’m really critical of my own work, so my personal work beyond 1-2 years ago looks worse and worse to me every passing year. But I think that’s okay, because it’s simply a part of growth and improvement, and I would be more worried if I never saw any of my work with a critical eye. With that being said, if I had to pick a recent illustration of mine it would have to be something more recent that has some of the recognizable elements of my work (ex. bright neon colours or heavy contrast), such as my pieces « glass », « succubus // 4 » or « showtime ». I think for those specifically, certain elements just came together well.

What are some things you’ve learned from character designs on your different projects?

I think some of the major takeaways from the projects I’ve been a part of, is how to interpret a character’s personality, and bring that into their design. Even though it sounds like a simple thing, whenever I’m tasked with designing a character I try to think of various parts of their lives and how they might react in situations presented to them outside of the context of their game/animation. Working from there, as I did with Haven’s cast, has typically given me a greater understanding of the character and how to represent that visually.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?

I had a great time working on Haven and I hope people are still enjoying it today! It was a hugely pivotal project for me in my life and career, and I’m super proud of what the Game Bakers and I accomplished together, so I hope people are still having fun with Yu and Kay today too!

More of Koyorin’s work on Twitter Instagram Artstation or their Patreon

Hello everyone,

As per tradition, we ran a fan art contest during Haven last community week, and the theme was « We love them when they do… ». We have received amazing applications, the jury has deliberated, and now it’s time to unveil the winners.

First of all, we would like to thank each of you for taking the time to participate: Freya, TRCelyne, Sieghiro, Skyler van Alen, MrPimp, Will, Baktos, Garayann, Mikaila, Loustica Lucia, Daranee, Aeroshino, Miomiea, June Gloom, Sukara Daiko, Catherine A., Raven, Apis Azura, Val, Basil, Svengouli, Kour, KhanSJet.

And the winners are…

1st place

Will – A Long Night

2nd place

Garayann – Lovebirds Traveller

3rd place

Mikaila – I love them when they do the seed contest

Coup de coeur

TRCelyne – When You Have No Clue What Morphognenesis Is But She Looks Too Passionate To Interrupt Her

Thank you to you for submitting great artworks.
You can check the summary of everything that was announced or discussed during Haven Community Week here.

And join The Game Bakers community, stay posted about our news and give us your thoughts directly by joining our Discord, or on our social media or signing up for our occasional newsletter.

Haven Community Week is now over! Thank you so much for your participation, all the messages and the submissions to the fan art contest. It was fun for us, we hope it was fun for you all too!

You will find below a summary of everything we shared, to be sure you didn’t miss a thing!

• The Haven Cutest Creatures contest on Twitter is now over and the winner is Salamash (Oink). What a surprise!). We also shared the story behind the names of the creatures in competition.

• We unveiled a new Haven t-shirt (and you seem to like it a lot). It was exclusive to our team members, but you can win one with the Haven Fan Art contest. It will also be available this Spring when we re-open our merchandise store. Stay tuned!

• We shared 10 secrets about Haven on Twitter.
• With the help of our Discord Community, we created a bingo of things you should do while playing Haven. Have you filled it already?
• You can read a full interview with Florian Coudray, concept artist who created most of the creatures on Source.
• We shared on YouTube Haven’s credits video, if you haven’t reached the end of the game yet, or just want to enjoy the sensual outro video one more time
• Our team shared their favorite love stories, if you are looking for recommendations on new things to read, watch or play, it’s here.
• We shared new wallpapers & the super cute new avatars that Koyorin drew for this Community week.
• You shared with us which streamers you would like to see playing Haven together, and you had great ideas, thank you!
• We interviewed Thomas Brasdefer & Diana Díaz Montón about translating Haven, which is available in 9 languages.

Now, the Community Week is over, but the Fan Art Contest is still live for a few more days! I hope you loved it as much as we did.

You can join our Discord or register to our newsletter to stay in touch until the next Community Week!

Hello everyone,

Over the last two years (time flies!), you have been sharing with us your stories playing Haven, how you thought Yu or Kay reminded you of people you knew, how some of you enjoyed playing the game with a partner, and how you were touched by their adventures in the world of Source. We received so much love from this community, so again thank you for all the messages, artworks, or recipes shared. It’s time to give a little back, so let’s have a new community week celebration!

For this new Haven Community Week, we will share some behind-the-scenes details and secrets about the game, new wallpapers, interviews with some of the team members who worked on Haven, a selection of our dev team’s favorite love stories, and more! As a tradition now during our community week, and because many of you are so talented, we are having a Fan art contest on the theme “You love them when they do…”. All the details and the prices to win are available here. We can’t wait to see what this subject inspires you!

Haven is also discounted with the highest discount ever, -60% off on Steam, GOG, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and 50% off on Xbox so we count on you to spread the word among your friends!

They love each other, but they can’t be together, so they do what anybody would probably have done in this situation: escape to an unknown planet.

This is the story of Haven, a romantic space adventure about two lovers trying to stay together against all odds. Who are these two lovers, you ask? Well, with this Couple Update, the question just got more interesting.

Haven originally let you play as Yu, the hot-headed mechanic and Kay, the cautious biologist. This free update introduces two new characters: Yu, the hot-headed mechanic; and Kay, the cautious biologist. Which means you’ll now be able to play with Yu & Kay, Yu & Kay, or even Yu & Kay.

Still confused? Ok let’s clarify a bit: while Haven originally let you play as a heterosexual couple, you will now be able to play as a same-gender couple.

It could feel like a small change, but Haven being a game about the freedom to love whomever you want, we’re really happy to provide more ways for players to identify with our precious couple.

Whoever you chose to play, the main story won’t change, nor will the personality of the characters. What will change is their design, models, art, animations, quite a few lines, and of course, their voices, since the 80,000 lines of dialog have been entirely re-voiced by our amazing voice actors, Lexie Ann Kendrick (Kay) and Ryan Highley (Yu).

When we first started to work on this update, soon after the release, I was curious, as a writer, about how the original dialogues would translate for these two new couples. Will some of them sound odd? Unnatural? After all, I wrote Kay as a man, and Yu as a woman, didn’t I?

I was pleasantly surprised to realize that, pronouns and minor details aside, almost nothing had to be edited. Overall, the alchemy between the characters remained unaffected.

As if characters weren’t determined by their gender. As if men and women could have the same interests, the same thoughts, the same feelings.

Funny.

We hope you’re as excited as we were to discover or rediscover your favorite couple. Oink, for once, can’t wait to meet his two new moms. Or dads.

Haven Couple Update is available for free on PC, PlayStation 5 & 4,Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.

Pierre Corbinais

Hello everyone,

Haven is a game about the freedom to love whomever you want, and that’s why we’re particularly happy to bring this free Couple update to all platforms. You can now choose to play the game with the Yu and Kay you prefer: either a woman and a man, two women, or two men. Check the update trailer:

This update will not change the story arc for Haven, and you still play as Yu and Kay, but the game offers more options as to the composition of the couple. Haven can now represent love in a broader way!

This update is special to us. Originally, the concept for Haven featured 8 couples, with a diverse range of relationships. It became clear during production that we wouldn’t be able to reach our initial vision for the full cast of characters, so we focused on the two characters you know well. But right after the game launch, we went back to work on this update to add the alternate couples!

You can read more about the Update in two very exciting blog posts:

• One by our Creative Director Emeric Thoa for Sony Playstation: Read the blog post
• One by Haven’s Writer Pierre Corbinais on Xbox Wire: Read the blog post

We’re very happy to be able to provide the lovers’ story in two new ways that more players can identify with. We’re looking forward to seeing which Yu and Kay you will play, as you enjoy the two lovers’ adventures on planet Source (and catch up with Oink!).

As always, a big thank you for playing our games and your support,
The team at Game Bakers

Haven makes you play as Yu and Kay, a young couple who are not supposed to be together. While everything in the universe is trying to tear them apart, they keep fighting for the freedom to be in love.

In Haven’s first version of the game, Yu and Kay are a young man and women. But one of the key theme of Haven has always been about “being free to love who you want”. Initially, our game concept featured 8 couples, with some of them being gay and lesbian. It was a very natural and obvious way to go with such a theme.

But production constraints made us cut all these characters and refocus the story and the game over two characters only. This allowed us to craft a very unique and moving story about two persons in love. Two personalities, two lives tangled with each other that players would come to know and fall in love with during the game.

After Haven released last year, we took some time to work on a unique update that would better support the game’s theme: you can now choose to play the game with the lovers you want. Either a woman and a man, two women or two men.

This is a fantastic update that lets you play the game with the same couple, Yu and Kay, but offers you the choice for them to be two men or two women. Let’s make things clear though: this is not a new story arc and the new couples do not have gameplay specificities. This is “just” a way to allow more people to enjoy Haven in a way that represents them better. We are very proud to make Haven represent love in a broader way!

You might have noticed that Kay as a woman and Yu as a man look very similar to their opposed gender versions. There are two reasons for that: first they are the same characters in the story, they share the same backstory and life. And second, for technical reasons, we had to keep the same body size, hairstyle and body shape.

This update may seem like a small addition but it actually took us more than eight months of hard work. We had to design and create new 3D models, but also redraw all the 2D assets in the game the dialog portraits, the loading screens, the key illustrations, some contents in the endings… The only thing that wasn’t redone is the opening animation, which plays before the couple choice.

We also made sure the dialogs were correct with each couple. This means supporting new translations in all 8 languages (2 new translations, one if Kay is a woman and one if Yu is a man), as well as changing and recording some lines that had some kind of explicit or implicit gender in English (like if Yu says “Mister” to Kay… that doesn’t work with a woman anymore). And we re-recorded all the dialogs of the game with two new actors, Lexie Ann Kendrick and Ryan Highley.

When you make a game over many years of development, there’s always things that you wish you had done differently. Players sometimes ask us “why can’t I choose the gender of my characters in Haven?”, but at the time we could never have made that feature. Especially as it’s the story of Yu and Kay, unique characters crafted with strong intentions. But a year after the original release, we were able to make that very special addition to the game, and we hope many new players will be able to meet Yu and Kay ! (and Oink)

We hope you had a great summer. On our side we kept busy: we launched Haven physical editions with Limited Run and we were working on the first content update for Haven… And that’s it, it’s ready: Sweet Little Things is available today for free, on every platform!

The update brings in particular:

• Two new costumes for Yu and Kay: « Streetwear » the hot style in the street, and « Top/Truth » inspired by the style of their origin planets.
• A meloglide: music is a huge part of Haven’s experience. Now, you will be able to choose which track of the OST by Danger to listen to while chilling in the Nest or exploring Source.
• A concept art gallery: we know many of you love concept art and we wanted to share a bit of the making of Haven, and the work of our talented art team.
• A new kiss for our two lovers.
• A Theme for your PS4 background
• And many quality of life improvements based on your feedback.

We hope you will enjoy it ❤️.

You can read the full patch note below!

Patch note – « Sweet Little Things » – Content Update 30/09/2021

Versions number:

• Steam, GoG, Epic: v1.1.258
• Switch: v1.1.250
• PS5: v1.1.246
• PS4 SIEA: v1.1.246
• PS4 SIEE/SIEJA Asia/SIEJA Japan: v1.1.255
• XBOX One, Series/ PC UWP: v1.1.246

Common to all platforms:

New features:

• Two new outfits for Yu and Kay: “Streetwear” and “Top / Truth”. They can be worn after finishing the game 
• A Meloglide to listen to the game music of your choice while roaming or hanging out in the Nest after finishing the game 
• A gallery to discover artworks and concept art from the making of the game, they unlock during the game

Improvements:    

• Load save menu now shows your progression in terms of ship parts and equipment
• Multiple capsules can now be crafted at once
• After cooking, it’s now possible to choose which dish to eat
• Bonus loot is now rewarded when pacifying multiple creatures at the same time during combat
• Alternative kiss animation added
• Some settings can now be configured differently between the first and second player in co-op
• Added more sounds and visual effects to several menus

Bug fixes:

• Fixed main menu music stuttering sometimes
• Fixed the scrolling behavior in the settings menu
• Fixed an issue when starting a new game where the intro cutscene wouldn’t play
• Fixed a case where characters would keep their spoon in hand in a post-meal dialog
• Fixed a dialog about slugs dividing into two. They now do.
• Fixed a music overlap problem when exiting camping
• Fixed vibrations that continued when skipping some cutscenes
• Fixed several typos in some texts and dialogs

Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS5

Bug fixes:

• Fixed an issue blocking the start of the Holobug cutscene
• Fixed missing portraits in some story events

Nintendo Switch

Improvements:

• Balancing on the rust needed to craft, upgrade and repair
• Flowburst ability doesn’t consume flow anymore
• Added a generic animation when using the shower after exhausting every dialog
• Prevented Beruberu to start fighting during the flow burst tutorial
• Bridges guarded by Tamajus open automatically after the player uses a flow burst
• Grass in the menu looks better, even when it’s far
• Added sound effects when interacting with a Nokk creature
• Improved character animations and navigation
• Allowed characters to jump more often
• Improved creatures animations and navigation
• Islets can be cleared even if there is still a nightcrawler roaming
• The anti-gravity sticks can’t be missed anymore
• Added a field of view option

Bug fixes:

• Fixed an issue blocking the start of the Holobug cutscene
• Fixed a black screen if returning to the main menu while characters are in a building
• Fixed a bug where the game appears blocked due to a tutorial’s popup being hidden
• Fixed a bug on the climb interaction when Birble is leaving the islet after a bait
• Fixed a bug where players could miss the event to upgrade the gloves after repairing the last ship part
• Fixed a bug where players could miss a mandatory cutscene before the end
• Fixed a bug where a character could end at 0 hp after combat
• Fixed islet descriptions that did not update properly while being discovered
• Fixed a bug that could get the Beruberu stuck if the heroes lose it by gliding onto a flying flow thread
• Fixed visual glitches on creatures walking close to the edge of an islet
• Fixed controls issues while cooking
• Fixed a visual glitch on the Nest greenhouse visual
• Fixed the duplicated guitar glitch in the Nest
• Fixed the last seed dialog playing twice
• Fixed a soft lock on the credits scrolling when players played the epilogue twice in the same session
• Fixed the cooking reward popup that wasn’t allowing the gamepad stick to be used
• Fixed a bug on the capsule tutorial dialog in combat
• Fixed missing portraits in some story events
• Fixed some typos
• Misc bug fixes

PS4

New features:

• Added a free PS4 dynamic theme that can be recovered in the gallery menu

PC Windows

Improvements:    

• Keyboard and mouse controls rebind overhaul

Bug fixes:

• Fixed an infinite loading issue when launching the game on Windows 7
• Fixed an issue blocking the start of the Holobug cutscene
• Fixed missing portraits in some story events