Public Progress Update 12-5-21

We've been working so hard lately that we just realized that we never publicly announced our plans for the December update.  We're actually going to be releasing a v0.09 for everyone this month, instead of the v0.08 public.  This update should be considered a "soft reboot" of the game, and will require you to start a new game.  We know you're disappointed about that, but there are four main reasons why we decided to do it:

1) It solves the android build not responding bug.  (It loads and shows the disclaimer screen, and then inputs to continue from there are not recognized.)  We needed to upgrade to a newer version of ren'py to fix this.  The good news is that several beta testers who had this bug before have confirmed that it has indeed been fixed.

2) It solves the save corruption bug we fixed back in v0.04.  Our fix worked for everyone who reported it at that time, but we still get this cropping up here and there.  When it happens, it's almost certainly caused by our custom save system, which has been taken out and returned to the default ren'py system.

3) Code cleanup.  Now that we've got the majority of the game's systems fully implemented, we better know what worked the way we originally intended, and what needed patched or updated as we thought of new ideas or received feedback.  It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but starting over allowed us to remove a few hundred lines of handling code for updating old saves to still be compatible.

4) It allows us to make a more robust, objectively better game.  Again, we've heard your feedback and are using this fresh start to add or change several quality-of-life features.  We can also do more in-depth stat tracking (for the progress screen, achievements, etc.) that needed to be in place at the beginning of the game to work fully.  Here's just a small list of the kind of thing we're talking about:

• A "cheat" button during the drinking game, available if you talk to the right people
• An option to pay extra to complete attraction upgrades faster
• A rebalance of villain events - no, they won't occur any less frequently, but they'll pop up as event markers on the map.  This way, you can choose yourself when you want to activate them...but if one pops up over an attraction, you won't be able to visit there again without doing the event!
• The ability to visit attractions, paired with new and improved random events, which reward doing so regularly (or not!)
• Redrawn backgrounds and added animations
• A "Skip to Cinderella" button to help ease the pain of starting over!
• And more!

v0.09 will include all of the content that v0.08 would have had, plus all of these additions.  The update will drop as scheduled on 12/15/21!

-SID Gaming