(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 guys, sorry I didn't post a weekly update on time! Now that I'm back to work, and trying to not do too much, I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to work around my mental health. I worked for probably 7 hours on Friday, because I felt fine the entire time - but after I was done, it hit me real hard how much of a mental toll that took, and I had to step away for a few days. Sorry about that; I'm all good now, but I'm still learning that I need to be careful with how much I work, even when I feel fine in the moment, so that sort of thing doesn't happen again. I'm going to be changing up my work schedule a bit, but update days will remain Saturday for the time being, so that won't impact much on your end.

Just to give you guys a quick update from what went on last week, there wasn't too much - I'm starting to get used to the ADHD meds, and it definitely feels like they're helping with my focus. The 7 hour work day last week was spent doing a big refactoring to our animation system that I've been wanting to do for ages, but stuff like refactoring and rewriting code has always been one of my biggest struggles in development. With the medication though, I had no problem staying pretty focused the entire time, so it definitely seems to do the trick! Aside from the refactoring, I also pretty much finished up the Ledge Vault and Slam abilities. There's still a tiny bit of work to be done on them, mostly bug testing, but they're 95% complete now so I should get some time to work on other stuff this week, like implementing the H-scene xray animations. I'm also planning on doing another refactoring for the H-scene system; as you all know, with last update's refactor, there were some unfortunate crashing issues introduced, and upon reexamining the whole system I realized there's a much better way to handle it that should be easier to work with and avoid crashes. I wouldn't be surprised if I made some stupid mistakes on the last refactor too, since I was heading in a bad mental direction while working on it, and didn't have the benefit of medications.

As one small aside, Orexius is basically done with the xray animations now (the only thing left is the Azulisk BE scene); he's working on more special effects now, and I plan to have him work on some less-important animations after, like Alicia idle fidgets, and stuff for the rest of the gang to do back at base camp instead of just standing around. He's still waiting on me to implement the Golem WIP animations in-engine, so he won't work on finishing the Golem animations up until after I get to that.

Like I've said before, v0.45 is still a ways off, between me just now getting back to work and needing to take things slow for now. Thank you guys so much for being so patient with this. I was admittedly worried about how it would feel when I finally got back to work, before; I have a tendency to feel real guilty about things when I feel like I've let someone down, and since it's been so long, I had the fear that I'd feel pressured to crunch hard to get the update out in a reasonable time since you've all been waiting so long. After all of your support and kindness, though, I've been able to stay rational and not wreck myself from self-inflicted pressure like I normally would, so getting back to work has been much easier and more enjoyable than I expected. All that to say, thank you again, and I can't wait to deliver you guys more real content! See you again on Saturday!