January 29 Update (Patreon)

Surprise announcement before the main post: I have another audiobook out! For those who have been waiting for this, please check it out:

https://www.audible.com/pd/B0BT8BRVDK 

Release periods usually drain me, but it can't stop me this time: the TLS update is too close to finished, so I am productivity incarnate. So back to your regularly scheduled post...

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It's happening, guys! Barring a testing problem the likes of which I've never seen before, release next weekend!

Everyone should give huge thanks to Decanter, CyberForte, Annikath, Runcible Technician, and especially Grim8P for assisting with the portraits feature. This includes both making RPG Maker do things it really wasn't designed to do and pushing through a huge amount of work. Without their help this feature might not have existed at all, and the release definitely would have been delayed another week or more.

Originally I was going to post a screenshot of the finished feature, but I forgot and don't want to go back. Instead, have a different screenshot: this is one of the denser maps in the game in terms of events:

I want the endgame to have a variety of content. Yes, some quests will send you across the entire world, but others will be densely concentrated in one location. That one you see up there has been... so much work. It's not even that complex, there's just a lot of pieces.

This update as a whole is more "interesting" than "challenging". The combat is very puzzle-fighty, and in a way I wish I'd balanced it with a more conventional dungeon. The quests will be pretty easy to optimize. However, I think this is good content that will help balance out the endgame as a whole. Those who want new character interactions should be very happy.

Finally, last week I put out another art preview, so you can look forward to five new illustrated scenes in the upcoming release. See you then!