Update 8/24

Hey, everyone! I have returned, and this time with pictures! Let's run through the past month's efforts!

To first address the elephant in the room: I went a month without updates and that's absolutely my fault. The new baby is a ton of work (he's 2 months old Sept. 1!) and his constant care didn't make for the best writing environment, but I should have popped my head in at least once to let everyone know what was going on (like this, only I should have done it weeks ago). Thankfully, he's starting to get on a routine, and a less chaotic schedule will hopefully be a more consistent schedule. I sure would like to return to at least one update per week, and I'm going to try that going forward. I may post another update this week, but for sure next week if not.

Okay, to Aria! We've been busy behind the scenes! Toro delivered an emergency background of the dock where the transport ship drops everyone off (somehow we had both missed its absence until a few days ago). All demo backgrounds should be done now! You can see this new BG in action in screenshot #1.

Second: Addressing the first demo release date. If I bullrushed forward with what I have, I could likely have it uploaded within a couple of days. However, it takes time to polish demo builds for release (each demo release is a fork of the main build and needs to have future assets preemptively removed to avoid spoilers and significantly cut the download size), and I've recently found that I may want to make a major change before releasing this to everyone. Specifically, how Aria communicates to others.

You can see in screenshot #2 how Aria "speaks" to others. That is to say, she currently almost exclusively speaks in player choices. I'd purposefully done this so that players could treat Aria as their own character, like in a RPG, with little input or personality of her own. However, I've been thinking back to Forks and how people really enjoyed Alex's personality. Players could make choices for Alex, but she ultimately had her own voice, and the major strength of Forks's writing that I got from players was the interactivity between characters.

Currently, Aria's effectively a narration robot, which drastically cuts into how much others can interact with her. I'd like to go back through each scene and rewrite them with Aria being guided by players and otherwise talking like her own person, rather than completely controlled. She'll be more like Alex. Going back through each scene will take some time, which means more time until the next demo, but this will be everyone's first impression, and I need to get it right.

Screenshot #3 is just Dorian in town, talking to Aria if players chose to visit there instead of Brie's restaurant or the school. Hi, Dorian!

Screenshot #4 shows off Brie's restaurant/food lab. For those of you coming from Forks, Brie's story is centered around weight gain. Bet you could tell, right :p?

That restaurant scene is actually what pushed me over the edge to redo my approach to Aria's character. There's 4 people chatting together, yet Aria has very little to say due to how I initially designed her.

Lastly, we've got the big surprise: Our first transformation concept step! It's still a WIP, so expect more detail once you see it in-game. This is huge for us, as it was imperative that Magical Aria nailed its character transformations. Rena was the very first Magical Aria character ever drawn, and (currently) also experiences the first chronological transformation (unless players intervene). 

Each character that can transform (not all do) has a "canon" TF, the one they default to as the vanilla story (without player intervention, as players can only be in so many places at once) progresses. For Rena, her canon TF is a fire dragon. Better put, a fire dragon monster girl. We want to make all of these cute, practical, and all more humanoid than beast. Monster girls whose changes are peripheral to the plot, rather than the focus. I'm trying to make Aria fun and interesting without just leaning into the kink aspects :p. If you've seen how Alex managed her weight gain with the ever-moving world around her, you'll have an idea of how I plan to incorporate TFs here.

Also, Toro's never done TF art before, but had a ton of fun with this! We're treating each step as its own unique portrait, guiding changes as we go along. This is the opposite approach to what we did in Forks, where we drew a character's thinnest portrait, then her fattest, and filled in the gap with similar-looking portraits at middle weights. In Aria, every portrait is unique and without a ceiling for what everyone will ultimately look like. Toro's able to get as creative as he wants, and he's running with it!

Think that's everything for now. Let me know if there's anything else I can answer or show before the next update! Patrons can also expect a Little or two as I rework Aria's dialogue (the character, thankfully not the whole game's). Bye for now!