The Early Access Build is here! Beta Testing fully begins!
about 2 years ago – Thu, Apr 18, 2024 at 05:01:22 AM

It's meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee - m.

tl;dr - The early access beta test build is here!

This update will be brief and I'll mostly go over the new early access build.

IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE 

After 6 thousand years... it's finally here. The early access build is ready to be played by you! 

Before you set off and get your hands on the game to play it, here's a few things you need to know:

• The game is available on Windows, Mac, Linux. Just download the one that's corresponding to your system in the download link.
• If you are a backer of the "I Just Want - To Give My Friend a Gift" a.k.a. the double of everything or the double rewards tier (or any tier above), you may feel free to share the build download link with your friend of your choosing.
• If you're a backer of any tier that is eligible to play the early access build, you will receive an email containing the download link soon. (maybe in the next few days, whenever the email service lets me send a bulk email without banishing me into the shadow realm for being a spam bot)
• If you don't want to wait for the email, then you can join our Discord and get the download link access immediately!
• If you're a patreon supporter (yes we have a patreon now) you can download the link from the patreon page, and it will be integrated with your Itch.io account.
• This build contains the prologue of the game only, just like the old public demo but fully overhauled with new scenes, dialogue, art, mechanics and more!
• The early access build will be continually updated until our expected full launch later this year, so check in often, provide feedback through our discord or the forms and keep up to date so you can see the new content as soon as it's out!
• Build updates will NOT be frequent, but whenever a big milestone is reached, I will announce it in the public channels (like here and discord) and let you know whenever there is a new content update for the early access build.
• That's it!

We're ecstatic to finally show off what we've been cooking up for so long! If you choose the play the early access build, please give us feedback and let us know what you think!

In the next months update we'll be going over more deeper game development topics now that not everything will be a spoiler anymore! And we'll be going over your feedback from the early access build. Looking forward to hearing back from you! 

Our socials:

• Twitter/X
• Discord
• Patreon

Good news and Bad news.
about 2 years ago – Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 06:25:47 PM

おはようございます。ｍ.－です。

tl;dr - Okay real talk. There's gonna be a lot of money talk in this update. If you're just interested in what game stuff is new, skip to the part that says "good news". But I encourage you to read all of this update.

It's already march wtf.

For the general update this month, I have good news and bad news, which one would you like to hear first?

Well, I'm starting with the bad news first. While some of you will say "it's not that bad", some of you will likely be disappointed in me. Maybe you'll be upset, but I do want to be transparent and everybody deserves to know what's going on. So let this live on as documentation of the development of this game.

Okay, I'll very direct here. We ran out of money.

The budget raised from the original campaign has finally run out.

I've been alluding to it in the past couple of updates, I've been trying to find any alternative source of funding with no success. Publishers haven't really been that interested unfortunately. I've been coming to terms with this back in December of last year when I realized that funds were running out. I had been looking for a publisher since June 2023.

I've been hoping that I'd find something to help us with funding or boost development in some way, but I was not fortunate.

You might be wondering, "Okay why do you need more funding? Wasn't 70k enough for the game? Your original goal was a measly 20k! You exceeded that amount by 250%! You had plenty to finish the game".

-and you would be correct.

I will admit it, I just simply got too overly ambitious for my own good. I grew extra confident after we smashed our goal that I would be able to do absolutely everything I wanted for the game. This is my dream game after all, and after the campaign I saw that as permission to go nuts, go crazy.

That was my mistake. I planned way more features than I originally promised, every possible outcome ending for every scenario and choice, tons of minigames, an original soundtrack, 3 brand new routes on top of the original 5, updated backgrounds, sprites, comics art, updated and upgraded merch and backer rewards. Nobody asked for those things and yet I wanted them anyway. I wanted to make the best game I could, but I think along the way, I've incepted into my brain that "making the best game I can" meant the same thing as "making the best game ever".

That was never possible, clearly.

I know, it sounds sooooo stupid. I AM stupid. 

But I just wanted to make a good game. After all, I didn't spend any of the money for myself (except the money I reimbursed myself from pocket before the campaign). All of it went to the game and I can prove it (not that you don't believe me or something).

So what happened? How did the money run out so quickly? Surely it must have been enough to get at least most of the game done?

Well, yes. Most of the game is done. Almost all of the money was invested into paying the artists of the game. The visual novel is 80% art after all.

But there were other things too. Contractors who ghosted me - with half done work. Leaving me with only two choices, use half done work, or start from scratch with money already being paid for the half done work.

Bad hiring practices, and in some cases to no fault of the contractor. Sometimes I hired someone who didn't fit the project, resulting in scrapped work and wasted money.

One thing I overlooked was that adding a whole character and their route to the game is NOT CHEAP. At least not as cheap as I hoped. Adding 3 bonus characters and routes alone without anything else increased the game's scope by 30%.

Another thing that I didn't calculate very well at all is that just simply having the money for things you've already budgeted for isn't enough. One of my biggest mistakes was not accounting for the amount of money being used simply because time is passing by.

For example, when we first did the original campaign, we had an estimate calculation for how much shipping could cost us.

Those very same shipping costs have almost tripled since that point.

Okay so, that's a lot of words to say "I'm bad with money". So what does this mean for the game? Firstly, let me just say - we'll still finish it, don't worry. It's not in danger of cancellation.

What it DOES mean, is that I'll have to make some compromises in terms of scope of the game. What are these "compromises", exactly? Here they are:

• I'm going to cut a lot of the planned endings for the game (I had 100 endings planned).
• And most of (if not all) the minigames (also 100 planned) will also be cut. 
• The full original soundtrack is not on the table anymore. 
• A free roam mode like I wanted won't make it in the game.
• The game won't have full voice acting.
• The game may be shorter than I wanted (but it is hard to describe how long it would have been)

That's it.

What DOES the game have left then? Here's the list:

• It still does have 8 routes with fully fleshed out arcs. (Akane, Nozomin, Katsumi, Kaede, Shizuka, Random Girl, Mika, Chloe - respectively)
• There's still animated cutscenes and comics, but not as many.
• There's still the typing mechanic - ALBEIT it is now a hybrid mode. For normal dialogue choices you will simply be able to pick the thing you want to say, no typing required. These normal dialogue choices will be very common. And then there are dedicated sections where you have the ability to type anything you want, those will work like before but better. Also there is no timer for it anymore (this was an accessibility issue).

So...

It's basically like what I promised originally for the game to be, you know... before I went insane and crazy with power.

I dunno, maybe I shouldn't be making light of this situation, considering that some of you might feel scammed or betrayed by my weird back and forth behavior. But after all I just said, I just wanted to reassure you that at the very least, you'll get the game we originally promised in the beginning.

Every backer who is obligated to get a reward from us also should not fret. We have those accounted for (even if the shipping costs will probably kill us.)

All of the rewards promised such as:

• Physical stuff you will get
• Keys
• Backer OC cameos
• Silly hats for Aya to wear 

-All of these will still be done and taken care of. If we run into problems, I will simply take the expenses from the sales of the game and use that.

I know some of you have been telling me for a while even in these KS update comments that I should just focus on the game and stop being stupid and trying to add weird new features nobody asked for and work on the base game! I know you've been yelling at me! I'm like that dumb streamer guy who is really bad at the video game and is too busy talking about this side thing you don't care about and you really just want me to play the game competently. I'm that guy right now.

I know, I'm sorry. I've already talked about it in the last two updates, that that is exactly what I'm doing right now, I've changed my priorities to just focusing on the base game and trying to finish it as soon as possible. I'm sorry I wasted your money on dumb stuff and doing the exact thing I said I wouldn't do, and the exact thing you told me I shouldn't be doing.

I'm sorry.

And I'm also thankful for everyone for being so patient with me and supportive. My dumb ass does not deserve any of you.

---

Okay. Here is FINALLY, THE GOOD NEWS.

What is the good news? Well, the good news is-

I have an (ESTIMATED) release date for the game! I plan to finish the game in August of this year. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO PLAY THE GAME THIS YEAR!

Yes, I'm keeping my promise on focusing on the core game, hunkering down on actual content and not stupid features, and ramping up production in the following months, to finally finish the game THIS YEAR.

AND-

If you are a backer that has the beta-tester/early-build reward, then you will be able to play the game later this month! (The early build, that is.)

And, if you are a backer (or just someone who is reading this) who DOESN'T have that perk, you can get it too! I will be putting the early build on our Patreon so anyone can get to play the early access build of the game while supporting us!

Updates on the early build will be sparse, but I will always keep you up to date on what's going on. I can guarantee this much since you've seen how consistent I've been with these public updates (I haven't missed a single month!).

And lastly, even if you don't fit any of the categories above, and you do not have the means to sub to us on Patreon, there's good news for you too.

A new public demo for the game will be available for free on steam during the Next Fest June event!

Remember, if you want to access the early build whether by Patreon backing or claiming your Kickstarter reward, you should definitely join our Discord to get instructions on how, plus - we'd love to hear your feedback on the early build!

Alright real quick, to end things off we're doing a lightning round FAQ for any questions you might have for me (I get these questions a lot).

"Will the game be available on PC/MAC/LINUX?"

• Yes, it will be available on all 3.

"Will the game be on Itch.io?" / "Will the game have a DRM free option?"

• Yes, it will be on Itch.io, along side Steam.

"Will the game be available on console?"

• Not at the moment.

"Will the game be in X language?"

• English for now.

"When will the game come out?"

• August, this year (if nothing goes horribly wrong).

"How do I support you?"

• Back us on Patreon!
• If monetary means is not possible for you, just talk about us with your friends and share! Also, join our Discord.
• Also wishlist the game!!! It's really important! (I even updated the steam page)

That's all for this update, I know it was a heavy one but I hope you understand where I'm coming from. Please, feel free to tell me your thoughts in the replies and be as harsh as you want. I would love to know what you're thinking!

Pushing through the hard times will make your future worth it
over 2 years ago – Sun, Feb 18, 2024 at 10:44:29 AM

it's me, m.

tl;dr - not much progress this month, sorry.

This month's update took a little longer than usual to write, sorry about that.

I haven't been in the best mental or physical state recently and it's been affecting my ability to focus and work on the game in a meaningful way. However - updates may come out late, but never for too long. I'll always try to get them out whenever I can, I promised as much.

Renpy is the engine we use to make the game. I've had many times where I've wanted to switch from it and try something else in order to have opportunities to add features that would normally be hard to implement. 

But in recent years, Renpy has gotten a lot of good and helpful quality of life updates that make a lot of things possible to do that were previously just pipe dreams.

Even when we first started, the features we heavily rely on now didn't even exist, so this was quite recent. The features I'm mainly talking about are the ones you can see above in the Gif. Speech bubbles (the textbox being in a unique location and size for each line) and the 3D camera. Renpy isn't a true 3D engine, but it now has quite a few ways to greatly mimic the effect, and as you can see here, we have sort of a pseudo 2.5 D thing going on ala Paper Mario. 

With this technique, you can get quite silly with the sprites in the game and the goal is to make them as animated as possible without actually animating them. It's still art intensive (we need a lot of sprite variations for this to work well) and time consuming, but I hope at the end the result is worth it.

I haven't really talked much about the writing of the game at all in these updates since it's quite hard to do without spoiling.

I'll talk a little bit about that in this update, and how our process has changed a bit.

One question I get a lot is that - "have you gotten feedback from the demo and have you changed anything according to that?"

The answer is - yes, we got a ton of useful information and feedback data from the old demo. That's a huge reason why the demo is currently taken down from the Steam page and no longer accessible. That demo is simply just too old and outdated for people to be playing it. 

But yes, the we've changed a lot of things from the demo since then, from the art, to the gameplay systems, to the writing.

Now, don't worry, this isn't necessarily a knee jerk reaction fix. It's not like we got any feedback like "this is horrible change everything completely!" but it's more that we've aligned the game towards our true intentions according to how people felt about the game.

This includes the way we write some characters. Not everybody has changed, but a few characters changed quite a bit along the way, and not everything was because of feedback we got either. Sometimes, you just try something and it doesn't feel right and you change it.

One of the biggest examples of this is Akane. She's probably changed the most from how she was in the demo, but probably not in a way you'd immediately expect. 

She's still the sporty Red Beast you know and love, but her motivations, character arc and deeper character nuances has definitely changed over the course of development. In the beginning my intention with her was very different and her story arc revolved around very different plotlines from what it is now.

The current Akane compared to the old one, is more aggressive, a bit more selfish, and maybe even a bit dumber (I say this in a loving way) too. Previously she was a leader and a mentor and wanted everyone to try their best together. Her current iteration cares a little bit more about things like competitiveness and rivalry, winning, and having fun.

Maybe when you get to finally play the game, you won't even notice the difference but motivation is a big difference maker in the overarcing story. 

Writing process has also changed quite a bit. The writing has changed hands quite a bit and at the current moment me and Tsun are handling the main writing.

I've probably mentioned before that the hardest characters to write are prominently Random Girl and Shizuka.

I would say pretty much everyone's routes/character arcs have gone through at least 3-4 hard rewrites at this point. Some are a little less developed than others but some are in a good state.

The narrative design, or to explain it easier, the gameplay segments like the decision choices you make in the game are also quite hard to design. That stuff basically as a whole has probably gone through 3-4 reworks as well. You know what I'm talking about if you've read the previous couple of updates.

I will say though, I'm currently feeling really good about the choice system we have planned for the game. Maybe it's a bit too late for a game we've been working for 2 years now but... better late than never?

Some final things to mention: 

Nothing concrete yet, but in case I haven't said it before- I want to finish development of IJWTBS this year.

Hopefully if things go smoothly we'll have a early access/beta test build out soon in the next few months, and later on we'll be able to finish the game near the end of the year. I'd love to be able to work on the game longer, but at the same time external pressure has been mounting so doing this for any longer may not be the best idea. Maybe the game can't be perfect, but it can be finished.

Things don't always go according to plan, but that's my plan for now.

Don't forget to join our Discord, and help keep supporting development in our Patreon.

I hope you guys are doing well and have a safe February. I'll see you guys next month.

Random Girl is here!! And securing the future of the game
over 2 years ago – Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 05:14:12 AM

hey its me! Goku! i mean m.

tl;dr - RANDOM GIRL IS HERE

ITS JANUARY HOLY SHET ITS 2024 IM OLD UR OLD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE

anyways how you been? you do any of that new years resolution thing? I dont really do those myself, lets just say ive cancelled one too many gym memberships...

Back in December I've been doing a ton of reflecting, and I feel like I ended the year with a ton of regrets, even more so than usual. I want to find myself in 2025 much better than I feel right now so even though I won't do any resolutions, I want to do better. Or at least not have as much regrets as I do now. Maybe that's asking for too much but I'll try anyway.

I've always thought that I'd never be one of those naive devs who overestimate what they can do, the artists who are paralyzed by fear of mediocrity, the creators on kickstarter who aim for the skies and budget too low.

By all means, I'm very proud of what me and the artists have been doing for the past two years, but the job is far from done yet and the finish line seems so far away...

Family pressure, life circumstances and inflation has all been putting a heavy weight not only on my but also my friends' shoulders.

There's always an immense pain of guilt upon me and whenever I don't work on the game, whenever I'm just chilling and taking a break, I feel like 'hey why aren't i working on the game?'

That's obviously not healthy to a cliche point, and nobody is exactly guilt tripping me over it but I feel responsibility to see things through, I just wish it was at a faster pace. Maybe if this is just how its going to be then what I said about some kickstarters way back taking far too many years to get done is going to bite me in the ass (It kind of already is).

That's all stuff I've already talked about before to death to you in many updates previously.
But these days it's a different kind of anxiety and fear and guilt that is holding me.

It's the feeling of "what if this game isn't good enough" which is a feeling I've never felt before. It's something I was always confident that I could do a good job about - or at the very least I've always thought as a game that "only I could make". 
I still feel that way but somehow I've been feeling paralyzed, like this sort of dilemma of "what if my game is not good enough" that makes me avoid working on the game, but the more I avoid working on the game the less likely the game is going to be good or even finished at all.

At the end of the day I've put a lot of myself into the game and I can only work hard and hope for the game to be successful. It's not wise to have so much hinging on the success of a passion project, that just sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it just means so much to me and some people.

I've decided that while I've still been very ambitious about the game this whole time, and there are still many many people who continually support us and provide morale, I think that with the fact that no publisher has really picked us up (it's been a hard year for the industry) - I think I'm going to hunker up and focus on solidifying the game and working on core content and polish this year. 

I'm not exactly in a rush but I do want to pick up the pace and get at least the MAJORITY of the game done this year. I might need to downscope on some plans, compromise on some ideas, but finishing is more important than being perfect.

A year ago I wouldn't have been saying this, I would have said being perfect is more important than finishing. I feel like 2023 me was wrong. I think that I've been getting to caught up in the details, and missing the trees for the forest. I want to get the core content done, and not focus too much on the minor details.

I want - no, I NEED to get this game done. Not because I'm tired of it no no, I LOVE working on this game. But I also need to stop being selfish and actually deliver something to the people I made promises to.

This is how Tsun draws and prepares the sprite files for the game. Each part is individually draw, layer by layer and sorted into categories. This way we're able to save on file space and organize and reuse assets efficiently. It's a tried and true Visual Novel technique.

There's also an in-engine GUI based interactive sprite chart we use to mix and match on the fly, it looks like this.

I've also changed some of the UI a bit. The speech bubbles have this new sharp look as well as the iconic rounded font has been changed. I've been thinking and working on a suitable upgrade for the longest time since I've always felt that the old UI was a bit too simple. There was always a compromise between readability and style, but I feel like I found a good balance this time (even if it means it looks a bit like Persona 5).

Alright, I know what you're here for. There's no point in stalling any further.

Without further ado, here's Random Girl:

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She finally has a face! But her name is still Random Girl, that hasn't changed.

You've probably heard me say this before but back when we were making the demo, Random Girl was only supposed to be a temporary antagonist that only had a brief appearance, and wouldn't appear later on in the game. However, she was SO popular that people kept asking for her to have her own route! Which was very surprising to us.

We didn't want to waste the opportunity and I especially have always liked the idea of having love interests in an anti-dating sim be sort of like antagonists themselves, forcing not only the main character protagonist, but also the player to have conflicted feelings. Are you supposed to like them or not? Nobody knows, even me.

That being said, Random Girl has been such a challenge for us to implement ever since we hit the stretch goal. Not only in terms of design along with the other stretch goal girls (I talked about how this led to the complete overhaul/revamp of all the sprites in the game in the previous update), but also because of her character.

I would rank Random Girl as the second hardest character to write for in the game after Shizuka. This is just because she was originally written in the demo to be unlikable as possible. How can you make such a character redeemed? Well, you'll have to play the game to find out how we did it.

Now we get to finally show you the 'full cast' of the game!

This has been a long time in the making, we're really happy to be able to finally reveal all the main characters in the game after so long and here they are! They've come a long way, haven't they?

I'll be talking a lot more about their designs in our Patreon-

Oh yeah. About that.

------

Finally, I want to let you know that we are actually opening a Patreon starting this month. If you enjoy what we do, and you want to support us even more, you can go and subscribe and become our Patreon.

For now we do not have robust rewards but we do have exclusive content, behind-the-scenes devlogs and polls for things that are being developed on, as well as WIP screenshots and clips.

At the moment we only have two tiers you can choose from. The Tsundere supporter and The Yandere Enjoyer. Eventually when the time comes, we will also allow the Yandere tier supporters to get access to early playable builds of the game although this is not currently available (This will be still available to you if you have the Beta Tester tier and/or above tiers from our Kickstarter).

One key benefit is that you can view all the images I post for these updates in high quality. Kickstarter has ASS quality and downsizes, compresses everything. Even this month they removed the ability for me to upload videos so I have to upload everything to Youtube now.

If you just want to support us and don't really care about extra benefits you should pick the Tsundere tier, and if you're more interested in exclusive content you should pick the Yandere tier.  You'll also be able to get access to the associated locked channels in our Discord. As always, you can join the Discord itself for free and especially if you want to ask us about the game!

(If you are already subscribed to us on Discord, or you already have the Beta Tester tier/role and above you most likely already have all the benefits you could gain from the Patreon, thus you do not need to subscribe.)

In general I would recommend that you only subscribe if you want to support the longevity/sustainability of the game, and not so much for the content/rewards since we do not really want to focus on content outside of the game, and updates will be sparse. However, you will be able to see exclusive content or at the very least, earlier than other people.

This is our first time ever doing a Patreon so content will be a bit barren for now, but I will work on updating it in the back end.

Lastly, if you feel like you do not want or can not subscribe to our Patreon, do not fret! It will have no impact whatsoever on these monthly Kickstarter progress updates (which are free to the public). I will still write them as same as I always have, so be rest assured.

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That is all for this update, I want to wrap up by saying thank you as always for keeping up with the game, and I shall leave you with this image.

Chloe Reveal! And my thoughts on 2023
over 2 years ago – Tue, Dec 12, 2023 at 04:16:51 AM

tl;dr - goodbye 2023.

Hey, hope you're doing well.

Today marks the 19th consecutive month of me writing updates since our original Kickstarter campaign ended in April 2022. I just want to pat myself on the back for being that consistent cause I never thought I'd be able to keep it up this far!

It's been a long time since then, and whenever the subject comes up in conversation I always feel immense guilt because... I've talked a lot about how I never wanted this game to be 'one of those projects' that end up in dev hell for several years and end up amounting to nothing in the end.

That's honestly one of my biggest fears these days, not living up to the expectations to those of you who are extremely patiently waiting for this game. But at least I can say that I always try my best to let you know what's going on in the dev side of things. I think that at the end of the day, you deserve to be aware of what I'm trying to do and what I'm doing since you've given me your trust (and money).

So I hope that even as the year is ending, I wanted to just say thank you all for still continuing to wait patiently, for me and the rest of the team to create this cool game for you.

Meet your Cybernetic Classmate - Chloe!

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As you probably know we had two new stretch goal girls originally in the campaign and we reserved those for characters we really wanted in the game.

Tsun wanted a gyaru to be in the game and I wanted a robot girl to be in the game. Those ended up being Mika and Chloe and we're very happy how they turned out. Another thing to note is that, while the original stretch goal says "alien" that part was retconned into another character, so while there IS an alien in the game, it is not Mika. She originally was planned to be but now has no connection to that aspect anymore.

Next month's update will be the first update of 2024, and we will be revealing the fan favorite stretch goal girl, Random Girl. Look forward to it!

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Now this following section might be a bit of a bummer so brace yourself.

One thing I wanted to touch upon for transparency sake is that we've been looking for a publisher for the game. The reason for this is that I mainly want support for our game to be ported to consoles like the Switch and having localization in other languages. I've talked a little about this in previous updates but I think this is the perfect time to talk about it detail.

Many people over the course of development have requested (or at least asked) if there will be translation/localization in their specific language or if it will be supported on Switch. We really want these things to happen but unfortunately they cost a lot of money, and especially so in the case of a long visual novel like ours with a ton writing, localization can do a big dent in funding.

And of course, the most important thing: I would like to add more content to the game, and help it feel like you're getting the most out of your purchase in the end. I want there to be lots of endings, CGs and illustrations and nice features for the game, and for that we need additional funding to finish the game.

Now you might be asking: "But m, you already met your goal of $70,000! Where'd all that money go!?"

All the money has already been spent on development of the game and we'll finish the game whether or not we get additional funding from now. 

I guess the one thing I didn't really account for is how much inflation and cost of living would have shot up since we originally did our campaign. For example, shipping prices for rewards and merch have risen more than DOUBLE than we originally calculated back then.

But we're currently in a situation where, unless we get more funding somehow, we'll have to finish with some compromises. Maybe not all the features you expect will be there on launch. Maybe that's okay.

Okay, so - why am I telling you all this?

Well, transparency, inclusion, diversity are all things that are really important to me as a developer. And I want you to know everything that's going on. Maybe not anything personal, but I think it would be honest of me to share the hard times with you along with the good times. I don't want anyone to feel blind sighted by what we're doing and what's going on. Game development is difficult and shit happens in life.

It's not all bad though. At the very least, we WILL finish the game eventually and I'm not just saying that to save face. 

Although we haven't really been able to get talks anywhere close to getting a deal in terms of publishers yet. We've been in contact with a couple of publishers/people, but it seems the game hasn't really connected in that way.

My current plan is that we will be setting up a patreon in January so people can help support us directly that way.

The other plan is that if we do not secure a publishing deal until then, then I'm also considering releasing the game in multiple parts, ala early access. The game's story already supports this kind of multiple release structure very efficiently, so we wouldn't be changing anything from the game itself - just that it'll be released in parts.

That way the game can be officially purchased, and the funds can go directly back into helping development of the later parts of the game, and people can get to play the game without waiting for years. This is already something that games like Scarlet Hollow and Deltarune do quite successfully, so I believe it's doable for us too, albeit it's only a consideration for now and not a concrete idea.

I want to hear you guys' opinion on this and don't be afraid to be vocal about it. I CAN and WILL change my mind if there's enough consensus one way or the other, just like the update where I talked about gameplay stuff before. So feel free to let me know what you think.

One last thing to mention in this update seeing as it is the last thing I'll say to you before the end of the  year (unless you're in our discord in which case say "hi" to me next time you see me there.)

I just wanted to let you know that even if I don't know you, or what you went through this year, that you did a good job. When we look back on our lives we like to think about the big things we did or didn't do. The opportunities we did or didn't reach. Promises we did or didn't fulfill.

But I want to remind you that you got out of bed that one time.

You went to work/school that one time.

You made someone smile that one time.

Maybe you don't even realize it or remember it, but you did that. And it mattered.

And most of all, you survived. You made it this far.

This year was a difficult one for many, definitely hard for me. But we're still here.

So here's to another year of seeing each other at the end.