Hazelnut Latte v0.14 Progress Report 9/9/25

Howdy everyone! Welcome to this week's Progress Report!

Sorry for bringing it to you so late D: Normally, I write these the day before, but I had to take a mental health day yesterday as the burnout was getting to me. Then today I've been working, so this just kept getting pushed, but I'm here now!

Writing

The second draft is done! But it never means the writing is finished. The last thing I had to do was all the ace/asexual moments in v0.14. There are likely still moments that aren't perfect or scenes that can be expanded or included. The script is never done, but it's at a very good place! Good enough for an Alpha build.

In addition to this, I want to say that I finally did the math on how big Episode 6 is and uhh, it's actually gigantic. For comparison, here are the episode word counts:

Episode 1 - 7,674 words.

Episode 2 - 19,629 words.

Episode 3 - 13,141 words.

Episode 4 - 25,752 words.

Episode 5 - 17,714 words.

Episode 6 - 53,749 words

Double our largest episode. So, if you think about it, every update has been Episode length. It's just that the story is now split up and free roam. Lots of small moments and interactions, along with alternate story beats depending on your choices. It's been a beast.

Coding

Coding moved a bit, but honestly, we are in the weeds. Our project's Git probably looks crazy today, as Noba and I have been ping-ponging builds back and forth, fixing stuff. A lot of what we are currently doing is playing the game over and over, trying to break it, and then fixing what we've broken. It's hard to put a timetable on this because it's basically over as soon as we stop finding problems. It could be this week or in three weeks. It's a war of attrition, but it means we're almost done with v0.14!

I did a Podcast + Unity

https://youtu.be/Tu6Q5h8Rqc4

As you may have seen, I was on the Sexy Business Podcast last week getting interviewed! I had a fun time, but I also revealed the first real bit of information on the Unity build we are working on.

For those who didn't give it a listen (how dare you), I'll reiterate it here.

v0.15 is going to be a completely reworked Episode 1. The original Episode 1 was quite short and very different in tone compared to the game that followed and doesn't do the rest of the game justice in setting up: Tone, promise, character, and setting. Basically, all the standard storytelling things you'd expect. Why? I didn't think I'd make more than 1 episode of HL back in 2022. So now we are essentially restarting and reworking the game from the beginning. v0.15 will not be Episode 7.

This does not mean a complete and total ground-up remake. Much of what has been done is staying in; we are simply making it better and expanding when necessary. Rewriting scenes but keeping the essence of what the scenes were. Adding new scenes to make the overall game better. Some of these changes are things I noticed as being flaws, and others are ones that have been pointed out ever since I released the early builds. You'll get to see Isaac in Newhaven pre-Jade City, and setting up more of his character arc.

We'll have more information as we progress, but yes, the Unity build is starting over with improved storytelling.

Wrap Up

We are working hard; it's just a lot of fine tuning and detail work.

Thank you all so much for your support. Have a fantastic day, and Stay Rad!