(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everyone, I don't have too much to talk about this week. Like I talked about in last week's update, I'm trying to limit the amount of time I spend doing work for now - the last thing we want when I'm finally making progress is to push it too far and end up going backwards.

This week, I pretty much just continued working on the same things from last week, the ledge vaulting and slam attack. They might have looked fairly complete in last week's update (aside from the WIP animations), but there were lots of bugs and missing functionality, which is what I worked on this week. The slam in particular had some annoying issues when trying to bounce off of slimes that were on the ground, so it took a good bit of tinkering to get it all working properly. It's nearly finished now, I just need to make it actually deal damage to enemies, and do some more testing to make sure everything is working as intended.

Aside from work this week, I had another doctor's appointment, this time a followup with my general doctor. We mostly talked about my high heart rate (and I scheduled another visit for some other health issues I want to talk about), but there's not too much to talk about there. I've been measuring my heart rate at home, so I can confirm that it does reach the ~110-120 range that they measured, even when I'm at home, but my heart rate was actually a little lower this time than the last few visits which is good. Still too high, but it wasn't at the 120 they've been measuring the last few times. My appointment anxiety is getting better, too; it's still there, but I'm starting to be able to deal with it better and not get quite as worked up. Anyway, she's going to give me a referral to cardiology so I can get more thorough testing, probably using a holter monitor, and then we can figure out where to go from there.

I'm going to continue taking it slow with work - I'm paying a lot of attention to my brain when I'm working, and any time it starts feeling stressed or overwhelmed I stop - but it feels really good to actually be able to work semi-regularly again. My mental break happened pretty much immediately after the last CPE update came out, so unfortunately the next one is still a ways off - I'm basically starting at the very beginning of the update development process, and I'm not going to be working as much as I was before. I just want to be upfront about that so you guys know it'll be a while, even though I'm able to work again now. I'm also thinking about streams, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be doing them again any time soon - I think I want to wait until I can consistently work for several hours straight without stress, so I'm not just streaming for an hour or two then stopping. I'll keep you updated on that in the weeks to come, maybe something will change.

And that's about all I have to talk about today. Thank you so much for reading, and for being such incredible supporters! I don't know where I'd be without you guys; most people don't get the luxury of being able to essentially take a 4 month break from work for mental health reasons, and the fact that I was able to do that is just.. still mindblowing. You guys are absolutely amazing to me, and I will never forget that. Anyway, see you again in next week's update!