Weekly Update | August 24th, 2025

Brothers and Sisters and Siblings,

Canticle passed 5,000 downloads on Itch this week! I'm continually amazed by how many people seem to be responding to it. For me, something like this game has been missing from the gay VN space, and I'm happy there are a bunch of you out there who share that view.

Last week, I said how much I was able to do due to being on vacation from my job. This week, being the first week back, it's kind of the opposite. My full-time job demanded a lot of attention so work on the game has been slower than usual.

Still, update 0.2.8.3 (Acolyte) has been finalized and posted earlier today. It features a fixed version of the "first dates", as well as an added part in Ciaran's date to make it end a bit less abruptly than it used to. It also features updated CGs for the "star dream" sequences and updated prologue slides at the very beginning of the game. I wanted to do some revisions to Luca's date this week but found no time for it, and the Scribe Discord poll has Luca's date as #1 anyway, so I figured it might not be as urgent as all that.

I did have time to put in some work for update 0.2.9, which closes off Chapter 2 and is scheduled for next Sunday for Cantors. It's definitely my favorite part of the game yet. Now that all the exposition and set up has been done, I feel like I can finally start doing interesting stuff, and I'm very happy how all the scenes are turning out, both visually and narratively. I'm excited to show it off next week.

The game is still better on PC/Mac, but it's getting more and more playable on Android as well. Obviously, a more profound optimization will have to take place at some point, changing the ratios and sizes of things, and perhaps even having a completely alternative choice menu (the vertical "window" style is just a bit crowded in small screens, I think).

What I did this week:

• Finalized update 0.2.8.3, and tested it (especially on Android).

• Continued work on 0.2.9. Animated another CG which is more complex than a lot of the others I've made so far (except the NSFW ones which take a long time to animate). I can feel myself becoming faster and more adept at this whole animation thing and I keep aiming for more ambitious ideas, so I think as the game goes on, I really want to get experimental with it and push it further.

• Wrote a bunch of interconnected scenes and forking paths for this last stretch of Chapter 2. I'm definitely going to be relying on my Cantors next week to tell me if their playthroughs are consistent because a lot of variables come into play in how exactly these scenes play out.

• I've also been working on something nerdy and silly that I'm going to post on Patreon next week as part a series of lore posts for Scribes and Cantors.

What I'm planning to do next week:

• Finish and revise the last bit of Chapter 2. I was hoping to be completely done this week and just do revisions next week, but there is still some writing to be done. Still, I'm definitely good on time overall so the next update will be live on August 31st.

• If I have time, redo the parlor CGs for Jude and Luca (they currently don't really match their new sprites; and besides, all the parlor scenes are placeholders and not completely animated yet).

• If I have even more time, work on the carrels scenes with Emmett. Now that I've become a little more confident animating NSFW scenes, I am hoping to go back to all the ones that are currently in the game and clean them up, make them a bit more consistent stylistically and animate them. I'll be doing this throughout development, revisiting old scenes when inspiration hits. There will also be more scenes added to Emmett's carrels at some point in the future.

That's all from me. Now that all the patron tiers are on the same page story-wise, feel free to use #spoiler-chat on Discord to talk about it. Please still use spoiler tags! If you're unsure how to, just place the spoiler text ||in pairs of vertical lines like this||.

Have a great week ahead, and please remember to bring your plates back to the kitchen after you're done eating in the refectory. The Master Cellarer asked me to remind you that he is not there to clean up after you.