Branded Progress Update - 31/08/2025

Hey hey,

Another week, another update. First up I want to share a small teaser of an upcoming Irellia scene (as shown in the banner). I'm sure she's whispering nothing but friendly encouragement in Cams ear.

This week I did some work while on the discord in chat to be able to answer anyone's questions or just give a bit of a peek behind the curtain of how it's all made. It went super well and got a much better turnout then I was expecting. It was really great to get interact with fans and see just how much people enjoy the game as a whole! I was surprised by the amount of lore questions in general, but it was so fun to get to actually go into more detail on the world and how some things work or just general world building that I've not been able to get in the game without it being super ham fisted. Given how interested people were in that though, I'll be adding in some nice extra lore bits around the maps and maybe even some books you can interact with for those who are interested in that stuff. I'll also 100% be doing more of these calls in the future, which I'll announce in the discord when they're happening like I did with this one.

One of the big things that's been taking up my time this week is the bar revamp. So I want the bar to be an infinitely repeatable job that can be used to gain corruption or money for El. But I don't want it to hit a point after like 2 shifts there that you just see the same dialogue over and over and its basically just mashing through for stat gain. So to make it feel more fresh and interesting I've been adding in several rng elements to bar, shuffling who will be there, which conversations they'll be having etc. There will still be some instances you'll hit a "contents done here you just serve the table and move on" dialogue, but that will mostly be for instances like dealing with Tristan where there's an entire progressive route there in it's self.

Now I did unfortunately let scope creep take me slightly with this, and with the variety of the people and dialogues, so the bar is certainly looking to be a great spot to be able to repeat. BUT, I've been focusing art production on main content, so some of the scenes and things going on unfortunately will be using sprites not full CG's for the moment and I'll be adding the CG's (as well as some variety in the old ones so its not the same one grabbing scene over and over) over time.

Finally, I'll be doing some more sneak peaks and polls over the next few weeks, so look forward to those coming up!

That's all for now, thank you all for the support and have a great week!
-BaconSoap