Hi everyone! I'm posting this a little early because I've hit a bigger milestone in terms of development and I probably will be spending the next couple of weeks working on one of the next big element of Epiosde 3 and so I wanted to go ahead and post now instead of waiting.

I do want to state that despite my last update I did indeed decide that I'm only releasing chapter 5 for this update. I changed my mind...mostly because I was losing it. My mind that is.

I'll talk more about this decision below. So read on.

But before that, if you haven't seen it already, please take the time to answer This Survey about your favourites characters, most anticipated routes, and theories.

Summary:

• Sprite expressions (completed)
• New outfits and variations (lots of 'em)
• Coded in new BGs and other assets
• Added new unlockables to the music room
• Set up some small animations for some of the BGs
• Coded in all SFX
• Started working on the flowchart
  • It's bonkers. The flowchart...is bonkers. Just saying.

Art

So I've been working on a few art related things lately. I have been doing a lot of new outfits and even some new hair for some of the sprites. I wasn't originally going to but somehow I just kind of ended up...working on some new stuff.

Because I don't do alternate poses for the characters, I like to take the opportunity the static poses present and just do a lot of different outfits and variations. I think it's fun to see the characters in different clothes or with different hair. I feel like it kind of opens a little insight into their personalities.

So yeah. Lots of that.

Some other stuff too. I've been working on a new key art for the game. Not sure if I'll use it or not. I'm sort of torn on it. But we'll see.

Technically in the art realm I have been working with two people to get two trailers for the game done. Unfortunately one commission fell through due to lack of communication and updates but the second one is progressing nicely.

Coding and Other

All the sprite expressions. All of them.

About 4200 of them to be exact. Give or take.

But I'm done with the expressions for chapter 5. The expressions are probably the longest part of coding any new chapter and that is out of the way.

I have also coded in new images for the music room gallery so you'll be able to unlock those in the next episode.

Mostly it's just been sprite expressions and coding in all the new variations.

So....Progress?

So I would say that as of right now, Episode 3 (AKA Chapter 5 - not at all confusing) is about 75% - 80% done.

I just need to finish the flowchart, do CGs, and one additional sprite.

So the release and why I decided to only do 1 chapter this time around...

Frankly because I can push it out faster than if it was two chapters. Chapter 5 is pretty long on its own. It is over 60,000 words of content. And I'm ⅔ of the way done with the episode and it hasn't been quite a month since the previous release.

Now I obviously still have another month of work ahead of me probably and we have to do beta and early access and all that.

But this game structure is pretty tedious to work on and I was losing my mind thinking about doing two chapters this time around.

It made sense to just preserve my sanity and work on one chapter at a time.

The benefit is that you're going to get it a lot faster than you would if I was doing Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 together.

Upcoming Month

The upcoming month is going to be focused on the three big remaining bits to this episode:

• Flowchart, which I hope to finish up over the weekend
• CGs which will...take a bit longer
• And the one new sprite which will....take a day. (Maybe two)

It's mostly the CGs. The flowchart is already about half done. I just have to go insert the unlock statements.

Once that is done I'm down to the remaining art.

There are some things like cut ins and some QoL stuff that is sort of nice to have but not necessary so I have that stuff as well. I won't be focusing on that as much until everything else is complete.

So as a whole, the episode development is going well. I've made a lot of progress and will definitely, I think, get the beta out sometime at or before Mid-March.

That's it for now. I'll see you all again in about a month or so!