Blog XXIV - 0.05.00 Update and October Retrospective

Hey, everyone! Fae here, and whew! The year may be winding down, but my workload continues to grow!

Today’s a big day not just for the Patreon build! While Patrons today have access to the Day 5 Part 1 build, the 0.03.03 build for Itch also includes some nifty updates and some important fixes. So let’s get into it, shall we?

V0.05.00 Update Notes

Been waiting for resolution from the last update? You’ll get some today!

- Day 5 Part 1: While a shorter update than most, there’s a lot to get through! Follow up with the crew of the Dreamer as they decide how to deal with their new threat, and then how they deal with… certain other internal matters. Also, I have some thoughts on the update below that may serve as a fair warning. Do please read them!

 - UI Test: A test of new UI elements has made its way into the Prologue of Void Dreaming, and into the quick start menu. Readers will have a much sleeker and more informative set of options when starting a new run through Void Dreaming, and I’ve also updated the screenshot on the Itch page to reflect the change.

 - Credits Update: Due to circumstances beyond my control (and helping out friends), the credits have been updated a little earlier than normally done. Thanks once more go out to all the Patreon supporters who help keep Void Dreaming rolling along!

- Bugfixes and Typo Corrections: There’s been a lot of corrections this time around, across the whole story. Sprites now won’t be flapping about when they shouldn’t be, and typo corrections have been implemented at length.

In terms of actual wordcount, transparency dictates that I’m up-front about how small this update is. In terms of wordcount, the 0.4.50 build that included Day 4 Part 2, with Bromm’ka’s game night and the end of the day, clocked out at about 880k words. The Day 5 Part 1 build, according to Ren’py, is… only about 8k words more than that. It’s very short.

There’s a couple reasons for this. For one, some of the changes and fixes I’ve made have shed a few thousand words from the project here and there. No getting around that, alas! And for two, the structure of the Patreon releases means that I have to get this part out before I get the Part 2 build out, which is where the bulk of the wordcount will be coming from. That’ll be the social scenes, the Dreamer exploration, Event scenes, and the real bulk of the Day 5 wordcount.

I expect this update may disappoint a few people in terms of scale; it is, after all, shorter than one of the short story updates. Day 5 is the trickiest of the Days to split up in this manner for the Patreon (Day 9, it turns out, is similar… but circumstances give me better options for it). I ask for your patience; the update next month is going to be much bigger! In the meantime, there’s plenty of fixes going into this update, as well as the fruits of some of my UI work!

State of Affairs

The tail end of the year doesn’t mean I get to slack off, and October’s proved to be a pretty busy and intense time for me. Far more than I expected, honestly. Would that we have only good news today, but some figures aren’t as rosy as they have been. Let’s get into it!

 - Since the initial release, Void Dreaming’s various versions have been downloaded from Itch.io over 11.5k times now. I wish I knew how many of those were brand new readers, but I’m still glad for people’s interest in my work!

 - The project’s 5-star rating on Itch also has held for another month! While still technically a 4.9, the 260 total reviews include 248 perfect 5-star ratings. I am continually grateful for the kind words and generous ratings readers are putting up there.

 - The Patreon support for Void Dreaming has dropped off this month for the first time since launch, unfortunately. As of when I prepared this post the day before the update, we’re down to 222 active subs. This is still pretty damn phenomenal, though, and 36 of those subs are subbed at the higher Officer tier to better help Void Dreaming out. Project finances aren’t better off with this drop, but still healthy moving forward! And again, to all Void Dreaming subscribers past and present, thanks so, so much for helping me create this story!

 - On the Discord, we’re now up to a massive 512 members there. It’s crazy to think that there’s that many people hanging out in the Discord, but it’s always wonderful when I see people talking about the project (or whatever else!), so feel free to pop on over and say hello!

- And finally, we have the Void Dreaming Bluesky page, where we’re now up to 980 followers! We’re so close to the 1k mark there which absolutely blows my mind, and it’s your best place to hear about what’s going on not just in the world of Void Dreaming, but also updates on other awesome FVNs too!

Transparency - October 2025

It’s time to give the monthly transparency update! It’s the start of a whole new month, so where are we at now that we’re getting into October?

Writing and Programming

 - Progress has been made this month, though it doesn’t feel like it. A lot of Day 8 stuff had to be rewritten to account for changes I was making, and this has set me back considerably. However, I do believe that now I’m going to be in a good position to actually make the progress I need to nail the day down. Because of the retools, I’m having to revise my estimates for Day 8 back down to about 70% complete. Irritating, but will make things a lot smoother in future.

 - Throughout this, as loathe as I was to actually prep other stuff, I had to finish the outlining for the next Patreon-exclusive short story, Shadows. That’s all complete, and I hope to actually get started on that soon.

 - Bugfixing has for the second month in a row been a significant part of the workload. None of the issues corrected have been game-breaking bugs, but it’s still something I want to stay on top of. It’s important to me that Void Dreaming be as clean an experience as possible for you all!

Art Assets

 - Rico’s plugging away at BGs that’ll be around in a few months’ time, and has also been prepping some assets to help Vall with CG work. Looking forward to you guys getting to enjoy that!

 - Vallhound has kicked into high gear, though! He’s been churning away at a number of spicy CGs for Day 5, and will still have some splash screens to get through imminently too. I also have more CGs for him to get to, once I finish nailing down the scene itself…

Project Finances

 - Patreon’s earnings, as noted above, have fallen off a little this month. We’re now sitting at around AUD$1.72k per month at the time of writing. While this represents a drop from last month, I’m still confident that the amount of money coming in fulfills the need to cover expenses for the project well into the next year. If this is the start of a downward trend I may need to start getting concerned, but I’m not there yet! Immediate expenses are all accounted for, and I believe the future work that needs to be paid for into early 2026 will all be in order so long as the Patreon income doesn’t slip too badly. At current I’m still supplementing gaps with my own personal money and probably will be for a little while to come, but as I said, I’m not worried yet!

November’s Goals

 - Advance the Day 8 content grind. Completion may not be likely but I can get close!

 - Prepare final testing and release build for Day 5 Part 2, and Day 4 for Itch.

 - Complete first draft of Shadows for January release

Upcoming Main Updates:

Dec 6th: Day 4 - Initiative (Public Release), Day 5 Part 2 (Patreon Release)

Jan 3rd:  Short Story Shadows (Patreon Release)

Feb 7th: Day 6 - Inflection Part 1 (Patreon Release)

Release Plan Status: On Target*

Whew! I was hoping I could knock out that asterisk up there this month, but it looks like it may be sticking around for a bit longer. As last time, the asterisk only means that my writing is behind where I want it to be. The release schedule is intact and not going anywhere. At present, the writing for Void Dreaming is probably a month to two months behind where I’d like it to be. That’s not catastrophic, since “on schedule” means me being a whole year ahead of what I’m releasing, heh heh.

That’s still not an excuse for me to slack off. Day 8 is a difficult mess to be getting myself into, and honestly work on the UI updates has been very good for me. Seeing a problem I can shift to, work at, and fix with positive results in short order has been just what I needed after the struggle I’ve been having with Day 8. While it’s not been noted in the writing section above, I’ve also taken to doing a little preparatory work on Day 9 in between other things, just so that I’m still actually making progress toward the story being completed. This means that when Day 8 does finally get sorted out and completed, a lot of the Day 9 work will already be done. I’ve actually already structured the day out in code with everything accounted for, and all that remains is the writing of the scenes themselves. Some of them are even done already, and most of the Event scenes that can be triggered on Day 9 are scenes that are possible earlier in the story. All in all, I’m cutting down on how long Day 9 will take to write by cutting into that work whenever Day 8 has frustrated me to the extreme.

So if nothing else, I’m staying productive! I’m working hard, the artists are working hard, and I hope that there can be some more movement on the Patreon soon too. I’d like to do more awesome things with the UI, and maybe start securing some bespoke music for the project as well, but none of that can happen without additional support rolling in on the regular. My fingers are crossed what I’m doing here is going to be worth that investment for you all!

2025 is almost out, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. Still so much to come! Day 4 is up next month for Itch readers, and the rest of Day 5 for the Patreon. I’d like to have some more UI work to show off next month as well, but we’ll have to wait and see just how busy I am. Which is very, very busy indeed.

But that’s the name of the game, and Void Dreaming’s just getting started! We’re barely a quarter of the way through what’s still to come, so thank you so much for coming along on this journey with me. Stay tuned for more updates and bugfix builds as they’re necessary, and keep your eyes on the horizon for the big December update. There’s a lot for everyone there!

Until next time, stars guide you.

 - Faora