November Recap, December Plans

Big thank you to those who have joined the Patreon on the yearly subscription option! I didn't expect that to get used at all! Hah. I'm delighted that you're enjoying the game so much and want to be a part of it for the long-haul! And of course a big thanks to all of you still supporting the game!

Also, thanks to everyone for your patience this month. It was an awkward, low-content month due to the choice to participate in the Steam Next-Fest and ensuring the game demo was prepared in advance for that event.

November Recap

• The demo is ready for Steam's Next-Fest and live on Steam. All demo routes were prepped and polished, along with some GUI improvements, play flow, bugfixes, and backend stuff were updated.
• 2 endings added to Quinn's route, 1 of them a new silver ending with 5 CGs! o__o (Reminder: 'Silver Endings' are endings that advance the Particles mystery plot. This is the last silver ending for Obsession, but there will be one more Particles chapter before release.)
• Julian's intro had some rewrites
• 1 new What If in Julian's route (This demos a lot of the future changes that will be made to Julian's character.)
• 1 new side story in Julian's route
• Lots of decisions and plans were made about future changes to Julian's route.
• 1 Beta released (The holiday and demo prep limited me to just one this month, I usually try for two.)
• Quispe, Lux, and Head Council sprites added into the game (not yet updated in all routes)
• Walkthrough updates, various small bug fixes
• 3 sprites are currently in progress (Luciana, Casper, and Isabella)
• Writing for the next paths in Quinn's route already started

Release will be tomorrow!

December Plans

• It's Christmas time. I will be taking some time off due to family obligations (just like Thanksgiving).
• Quinn, Quinn, and more Quinn! 5 more endings to do. I'm hoping to finish all of the writing for Quinn's route by the end of the month at minimum. Due to the holiday, everything may not be programmed in time for January's release, but we'll see!
• Two CGs (Julian's What If, Quinn future ending) are in the queue for when the artists are ready.

Beyond December

Once Quinn's route is done, I'll do another graphic about the timeline up for release, but here's the gist of what remains:

• Julian's rewrite
• More side stories for all characters
• More What If stories for all characters
• As part of that new side content, I want to do 1 holiday story per character. Currently I'm thinking Christmas-Quinn, Sebastian & Alexander-Valentines, Thanksgiving-Julian, not sure about Brandon yet. Maybe Halloween or another Christmas story when they were younger. Not sure yet.
• Flesh out the scenes when AO content is disabled
• Determine if there are any more CGs I want to add anywhere
• GUI improvements for the remaining menus
• And of course The Great Polish Phase (the last step before release).

What does 'Polish' Entail?

A lot! That phase involves:

• Updating all of the expressions for Monika and the Ethereals in all content
• General scrutiny towards typos, phrasing, coherency, consistency, etc
• Bug hunting
• Updating the 'Notes' and the ending sequences
• Maybe sprinkling in more dialog-only options
• Tweaking text colors,
• Adding in blood SFX for violent scenes
• sprinkling in Lux/Quispe commentary
• Verifying that achievements are in the right places
• Verifying all CGs and side content and chapters unlock as expected for fresh playthroughs
• Ensuring the 'glitch effects' and cat appearances are done when appropriate (I think I've messed these up in a few locations which has meant the glitches didn't send the appropriate clues I hoped for)
• Adding our longest Patreon members to the cafe menu board in game (with permission, I'll reach out to you personally through Patreon when the time comes!)
• Adding in little clues/suspicions about characters during other character's routes (Julian is wayyyy to pure and innocent in Sebastian's route, and I think Brandon is a little bit too mean in some places)
• Ensuring notifications occur properly (when content is unlocked)
• Ensuring all AO content is flagged and respects the setting
• Ensure all endings unlock when completed (had a couple bugs around this before)
• Double-check silhouette sprites are used appropriate since they've all been changed

As you can see, it's a pretty huge list!

In reality, polish and new side content will be happening at the same time so there's no dead air for new content. :) But I'm breaking things up like this so I can provide good estimations to figure out a realistic release date later.

But all of that will come after December once Quinn's route is complete!