13.5 Update | Bite-sized previews for the purpose of chomping on

Hi all! It's been well over a month since our last dev post and nearly two months since our last proper dev blog in regards to the dev game already??? i swear, time is an illusion and we're all being played for fools by the system. where the HECK did it all go

Speaking of time though, Jan's got his hands full, so I'm taking over for this month's post to give you all a bit of an update on what's been going on with development! I'm sure you're all plenty curious since it's been a while since our last substantial update, so let's dive into it shall we?

First off, screenshots! Some of these were shown on twitter, but I've included them in the case you missed them. Some are entire reworks, some are simple updates, some are... something else.

On top of area updates, Jan's actually been working on some QOL updates in regards to cutscenes! An excerpt from one of Jan's Patreon posts:

• "Looking at the pages of events I wanted to work on, the amount of text... was kind of insane. I've cut down on text quite a bit, and I've made things snappier and more involved.
  
  Speaking of trimming text, I've also been working on a QOL I think a lot of people will enjoy. Starting from 13.5+, you'll be able to skip entire segments on repeat playthroughs. These segments are usually ones that have a pause from the player's story and give insight elsewhere. It's neat that you can play as Melia in the library and all, but the purpose of this section is to give exposition and push the story forward. But on repeat playthroughs, you've already seen this! You can just skip it. This goes for Lavender's "escape" segment and the Diamond and Pearl segments (And more!).
  And for those who don't particularly care for the action segments in Marianette's mansion, I'm planning on having those be skippable as well, just maybe not through the same way.
  
  Please note that if there are relationship gain/losses in these segments, you will lose out on them. Additionally, this is a QOL that will only affect new save files, as the condition of multiple playthroughs is decided during the intro."

Next up are some extra previews of the new CG's I've been working on for the game! Two were previewed in the previous dev blog Jan posted and I've personally previewed two on twitter myself (they are included in here if you missed them!) so here's another small handful of previews. Now as some of you guys probably already are aware of I may be a little unhinged for doing this, but this is only a small handful of them-- the total will amount to roughly 30 new CG's to be used in-game, for both old and new parts of the story. If you want to see all of them, consider starting a new file to see them all in their proper context! or go through the game's graphics folder i guess once .5's out. but what's the fun in that?

Next up, in the case people missed it, fan-favourite minor NPC's Piano lady and Truck guy finally got their official art as enough money was raised for charity back in December in order for them to get theirs! The images were posted on twitter & tumblr, but hadn't been posted on the dev blog yet, so here you go. As per usual, all related artwork can be found back in the official art thread if you want to find it back.

Finally, we've got some music previews! Plural, because there's two. Both were composed by yours truly! No full loops this time around, just a few snippets- but enjoy them nonetheless :) Won't be telling where exactly they'll be used, but I'm sure you can figure it out from context clues! Maybe.

That's all for now! We've still got some work left, but things are slowly but surely coming together. It's shaping up to be pretty exciting, and I hope people are still just as excited about the update as we are! We're also extremely ready to just be done with v13 and .5 as a whole and move on to v14, but we're not gonna rush anything or diminish quality just because we want it to be over and done with, so once again we're asking for everyone's patience for a little while longer. this update is CHUNKY, but it's worth it.

thank u guys for bearing with us

until next time!

o7