✦ Happy Spring, Sushi Rolls! ✦

This month's newsletter is jam-full of updates including new ownership of the species, a new adventure prompt, mod hiring, and more!

If you have any questions, please ask us in the community discord server. Enjoy!

Sushi Dog Discord

Change of Ownership for Sushi Dogs

Can you believe the Sushi Dogs group is turning 11 years old this year? Sushi Dogs has been around before that, too!
If you've been around for most of it like I have, then you've heard it before: Sushi Dogs has a new owner!

What does this mean?
Well... nothing really, yet! (Besides me changing a lot of things on the masterlist...)
For those unaware, kayy and I have been in Sooshes together when we both joined as mods in 2017. That's more than half a decade!
We did a lot of group work together, and a lot of development I personally helped with. She was the calm to my storm. This is why when life got hectic for her, I offered to handle the community as much as I could. This meant learning how to upload site assets, prompts, newsletters, and more! It was a big undertaking but I did it for my appreciation for Kayy and my love of Sooshes. She was just as passionate for the species as I am, and I am forever grateful for everything she helped set up in the species! This site wouldn't be so manageable if it weren't for her, and I again thank her for the dedication to it.

Though she has stepped down as owner, I'm excited to know that she is able to participate in the species as a regular member again. I have lots of ideas and plans I'd love to come to fruition, and nothing is more exciting than being part of the community to get those surprises. I'm already well-equipped for this role as the fill-in for her absence, so if you enjoyed any of the previous festivals, thank you! I do my best to take in suggestions and ideas from the community, and I will continue to do my best from here on out.

I cherish Kayy with all of my heart, and I know this was a big decision for her. Her role with me in Sooshes was a lot of my life, and I am eternally grateful. I wish her all the happiness in the world! So please don't feel like she stepped down due to a lack of love; it was quite the opposite. She wanted the community to get more and felt she was no longer able to dedicate herself to that. I know it was a hard decision for her, and I just hope she can come to enjoy and love Sooshes as much as we always have.

My treasured art from Kayy from around the time we first became mods. Time flies!

Snowfall Festival Winners

Custom Sushi Dog Raffle

Each submission to the festival prompts granted one ticket for this raffle, for a max of 7!

Available artists: aisu, PrinceDipper, Rannarbananar, Staryon

This Sushi Dog custom is allowed up to 3 gourmet OR winter seasonal traits. You can mix-and-match those as well!

Grand Prize Winner: ThorinFrostclaw

Feel free to comment here or DM Staryon the artist of your choosing to establish contact for custom details.

Seasonal Traits Bundles

One entry was granted to each user who submitted an entry to the festival prompts for this raffle.

3rd Place: LightWind
You've won 1 seasonal trait and a winter pet box!

2nd Place: Robotic-Sparks
You've won 2 seasonal traits and a haute potion!

1st Place: GlitchedOcelot
You've won all 3 winter seasonal traits and a Sooshapon Token!

For 3rd and 2nd place above, please comment here or DM me on Discord with which traits you would like!
For a refresher, the winter seasonal traits are: Gemstone Cheeks, Patterned Bandana, and Magic Aura.

Congratulations to everyone, and thank you for participating!

A new adventure prompt is now live!

Ready to gain more virtue points to further your quest to become mythical? There's a new adventure prompt live today!

Seems like there was a giant crash! What was it? Are you brave enough to check it out?
Maybe you want to befriend one of the strange creatures mingling around? No matter the purpose, maybe you can solve this mystery for the town!

ADV - Crash Landing

Bunny Hop Day approaches...

Sounds like the eggs are back and some Sooshes are hiding along with them...
Worried about being too slow or unable to find the time? No worries! This year, all Sooshes will be raffled off to give members ample time to participate in the hunt and still have a chance to take home a sweet Soosh.
As usual, eggs will have goodies inside so you still take home some fresh new stuff even if luck isn't in your favor!

March 31st, 12pm EST the hunt begins!

Sushi Cat OTA on March 9th & Sushi Dog Carat Auction on March 16th!

To celebrate Star's new ownership of the species, he has designed two cute and fun Sooshes that don't require IRL currency to obtain! Better save up those carats or maybe keep a hold of those Sooshes you want to mirror...

Some members in the discord got a sneak peak at the upcoming designs during a livestream!

We're Hiring!

We opened a pool in the past but with restructuring, we have different needs now!
There are a few openings, so please be sure to read these jobs clearly to know which one(s) you want to apply for.

Approvals Mod

• This moderator is responsible for approving soosh designs in our design queue. This role has vast knowledge of our traits, unallowed features, and guidelines regarding accessories on designs. This role is best suited for someone with a keen eye for detail, and good memorization to ensure sooshes do not break any design rules. You will need to have an easy time transferring images and text from our site to an offsite source for the entire team to approve together. You will also need to be comfortable rejecting designs and informing users of the issues to resolve. You will also handle appraisals for the species.

Discord Mod

• This moderator is responsible for managing the activity in our official discord server. This role sets up and hosts game nights, giveaways, drops, and more they see fit. This role is best suited for someone who can work independently and take feedback as needed. You will have access to bots used in the server and their dashboards in order to set up giveaways, drops, and more. This is a more technical role and is best suited for someone already with experience running a server and its bots.

General Mod

• This moderator is more flexible, and is able to help in numerous facets of the community. This role is best suited for someone with skills in art, discord, and database management. You will be knowledgeable in all things Sooshes, and will help in areas that need that extra hand during busier times. If you love being helpful, and love to learn new things, this may be a great fit for you!

Moderators are paid with in-game currency on a monthly basis. You will also gain the privilege of participating in monthly mod sales, which is optional.
Moderators also help develop future events, traits, and get special behind-the-scenes looks at future content!

Apply now!

Site Changes 03.01.2024

Limited Opening Changes

• Shop items no longer have limited stocks. Everything is unlimited! Items do not sell out that often anymore, so this is no longer a concern of ours for users to buy items in large bulk.
• The Enchanted Mirror is permanently open now! No longer must mods and members be burdened by the mirror's limited magic. Pommelraie has noticed that every Soosh that looks into it gets stuck inside now, so he has a special disclosure form and the mirror in its own separated room now. Great thinking, I guess, Pommel!
• Koinpeito forms are closed. This is going to be temporary as Staryon works on things behind the scenes. If you are in desperate need of KP, feel free to DM Staryon or comment on the post. However, if you can wait, I suggest so as there may be changes to the cash shop in the future!

Rarity Changes

• Adjusted colors for all rarities
• Added Specialty, Seasonal, and Felidae rarities. This was to divide up the previously overfilled Limited trait which is now retired.
• Supreme Soosh and Celestial Soosh have had the term "Soosh" removed for redundancy. They are now just Supreme and Celestial respectively. This also allows this rarity to be tied to their unique traits.
• Specialty holds the remaining traits that are tied to more abstract situations such as Limited Foods and Magic Affinity. It also holds the Confetti Swirls trait as that is our special trait to celebrate all things sooshes during our anniversary event.
• Reverted Weresoosh back to Vampsoosh.

Trait Updates

• Adjusted all previous seasonal traits to move from Limited to Seasonal rarity.
• Enchanted Bell and Kitty Whiskers are now under the Felidae rarity.
• Celestial (theme) has been changed to Cosmic (theme). This is to help encompass the more abstract themes allowed previously, and because I hated seeing "Celestial (theme) Celestial (rarity)".
• Changed Cosmic (theme)'s rarity from Limited to Celestial.
• Similarly, Specialty Food (theme) has been changed to Limited Food (theme) so we did not have "Specialty Food (theme) Specialty (rarity)". Also limited helps further push the fact that many sooshes with this theme will never share it with another due to copyright issues or retired allowances.
• Added Colossal trait - this trait is for the large build that Supreme rarity sooshes exhibit to further differentiate them from standard sized sooshes. Also mods and members kept forgetting the village leaders were big.

Masterlist Adjustments

• Added Bihead, Trihead, Triptych, and Diptych subtypes. In the current framework, the subtype class works best for these. The former build traits to differentiate these bodies are now retired.
• Sooshes are now classed by their highest rarity trait. This is why we needed the build trait for Supremes, and the adjusted rarity for the themes for Celestials. This does mean any Soosh with 1 mythical trait are classed as that mythical type - wow! Others with mismatched traits will be classed as the type they most resemble.
• Created new character categories for previous owners of the species. OFF (official) will only contain original Witchpaws/Spikedpeach sooshes, while CHI (Chital), KAYY (Kayy), and STAR (Staryon) will contain their designs respectively.
• Created new character category for collaborated designs (CLB). This is due to the confusion on older designs that were done by both the original owner and a second party.
• Created new character category for moderator designs (MOD). This is once again to help divy up the types of designs better so members no longer get confused vs who is/was an owner, mod, or guest artist.
• Created sub-masterlist for NPCs so new members have an easier way to separate them for use in prompts.
• Numerous adjustments to masterlist code numbers for sooshes to make up for new categories separating large chunks of designs. This mostly affected GST sooshes, so make sure to update any off-site links accordingly!

Road Map

Priority Updates

• Patch art! A lot of patches never got art as we were stretched very thin during events. With the hiring of new mods, we hope to alleviate a lot of this and have a lot more focus on site assets.
• Reuploaded/redrawn assets.
• Site images. This includes shop art, inventory art, and others!
• Readjusting Soosh's categories and correcting their numbers.

Planned Updates

• Site refresh! I do adore the teals and paws used for Sushi Dogs but as we further push into foodie culture, I feel that a rebrand would help solidify that.
• Site asset refresh. This includes renaming items, updating or changing their art entirely, and more.
• New items! We've said this before and we've done it for seasonal traits, but now that those are mostly caught up we're able to focus on other traits now.
• More extensions! I won't specify which, but this simply means more things on-site to interact with.
• New events and prompts!
• New things for Sooshes! What could this even mean...?

Known Issues

• Mirror purchases don't go through for members 90% of the time. It has to do with the coding for different currencies allowed for purchasing, so this may be removed in the future if it cannot be resolved. This is a very tedious process behind the scenes so it's difficult for mods to manually send Sooshes!
• Patches were never made for previous festivals, or were oversized. This will be corrected in future updates.
• Mismatched art styled assets. We are branching away from the faux-sticker look, but this requires reuploading many of the site's first items.
• Koinpeito purchases need to be reenabled so users can continue to purchase slots or items using IRL currency.