Blog XXIII - 0.04.52 Update and September Retrospective

(Faora’s Note: This update contains potential issues for your existing saves. Please check the Update Notes section below before installing and using this update so you know what you’re getting!)

(Faora's Note 2: This build has been reuploaded to fix an error related to a variable, d4CommandLock, not triggering properly. If you're getting that error, redownloading the files here will fix that problem for you!)

Hey, everyone! Fae here, and what a bloody month September has been. Blimey. The world feels like it’s not going to stop for anything, is it?

Fortunately (and unfortunately), today everyone gets a little something! The 0.03.02 and 0.04.52 build for Itch and Patreon respectively have been uploaded, and the brand new, Patreon-exclusive story Skipracer is available for Patrons to enjoy. But what all’s been happening? What’s in these updates? What does this month’s transparency update got in store? Read on, and let’s get to it!

V0.04.52 Update Notes

Some very important updates have been included in this build. More after the notes!

 - Fixed Misplaced Variables and Scenes: a critical variable for unique dialogue and scenes that should have been implemented from Day 2 onward was never implemented correctly. This has resulted in no way to view certain scenes that are meant to be available starting on Day 4. These scenes were also on the backburner for so long that I forgot about them entirely, and had to divert writing time to get them in place. UGH.

 - Dave has been sealed away again, for now.

 - Credits Update: For those Patrons who are supporting the project the night before this update goes live, behold! You can now find your names in the credits. Thank you so, so much for your support for Void Dreaming!

- Bugfixes and Typo Corrections: Despite the madness of the misplaced scenes, I’ve also snuck in a bunch of the usual typo and bugfixes beyond that stuff.

THIS UPDATE WILL AFFECT YOUR SAVES.

It’s an irritating circumstance, but it can’t be helped. Due to the way I think Ren’py game saves are sorted out, any save after you start exploring the Dreamer on Day 2 might suffer some displacement from the point you saved. This is a small problem in general terms, but it could result in some unexpected behaviour when loading saves with the new version… especially if you’re displaced out of a scene you’re meant to be in, and into one you’re not.

The best way to solve this issue is to start over from the prologue (or your quick start option, if you prefer) and making the same choices on the way to where you currently are. This means the correct variables will be triggered, the correct content will be seen, and your new playthrough might let you go through and see some fixes and additions that have been made perhaps since the last time you went through. Ren’py games, and Void Dreaming, do include the Skip button, and you can use this to skip all content you’ve already seen (until the next choice) and quickly catch yourself back up to where you were. I know it’s inconvenient, but this way you get to see everything you’re meant to!

This begs the obvious question, though: why bother starting over? Honestly, you’re not missing a lot by not worrying about this update and just playing on with your existing saves. Certain mechanics won’t trigger in future updates due to the bugs that were in place affecting values that needed to be tracked, and certain scenes accordingly won’t be triggered as they should have been. In the end you’re not going to miss core, important story elements and character development, though. If you choose to simply continue on with your existing saves, do feel free! I just want to make sure you’re aware of everything going on; forewarned is forearmed!

V0.03.02 Update Notes

Some very important updates have been included in this build. More after the notes!

 - Fixed Misplaced Variables and Scenes: a critical variable for unique dialogue and scenes that should have been implemented from Day 2 onward was never implemented correctly. This has resulted in no way to view certain scenes that are meant to be available starting on Day 4. These scenes were also on the backburner for so long that I forgot about them entirely, and had to divert writing time to get them in place. UGH.

 - Day 3 splash screen now correctly displays the day and title instead of a blank bar.

 - Dave has been sealed away again, for now.

 - Credits Update: For those Patrons who are supporting the project the night before this update goes live, behold! You can now find your names in the credits. Thank you so, so much for your support for Void Dreaming!

- Bugfixes and Typo Corrections: Despite the madness of the misplaced scenes, I’ve also snuck in a bunch of the usual typo and bugfixes beyond that stuff.

THIS UPDATE WILL AFFECT YOUR SAVES.

It’s an irritating circumstance, but it can’t be helped. Due to the way I think Ren’py game saves are sorted out, any save after you start exploring the Dreamer on Day 2 might suffer some displacement from the point you saved. This is a small problem in general terms, but it could result in some unexpected behaviour when loading saves with the new version… especially if you’re displaced out of a scene you’re meant to be in, and into one you’re not.

The best way to solve this issue is to start over from the prologue (or your quick start option, if you prefer) and making the same choices on the way to where you currently are. This means the correct variables will be triggered, the correct content will be seen, and your new playthrough might let you go through and see some fixes and additions that have been made perhaps since the last time you went through. Ren’py games, and Void Dreaming, do include the Skip button, and you can use this to skip all content you’ve already seen (until the next choice) and quickly catch yourself back up to where you were. I know it’s inconvenient, but this way you get to see everything you’re meant to!

This begs the obvious question, though: why bother starting over? Honestly, you’re not missing a lot by not worrying about this update and just playing on with your existing saves. Certain mechanics won’t trigger in future updates due to the bugs that were in place affecting values that needed to be tracked, and certain scenes accordingly won’t be triggered as they should have been. In the end you’re not going to miss core, important story elements and character development, though. If you choose to simply continue on with your existing saves, do feel free! I just want to make sure you’re aware of everything going on; forewarned is forearmed!

State of Affairs

Whew… I thought August was a lot! September has been even more of a ride (and a pain), and there’s been so much to get done that I don’t even know where to start. The above-noted shenanigans have certainly messed up my planning, and ensured that I’m behind where I want to be for my writing, but we’ll get to that. Let’s sit back and have a look at our stats over the last month!

 - Since the initial release, Void Dreaming’s various versions have been downloaded from Itch.io over 10.7k times now. That people continue to be interested in Void Dreaming is something that I’m immensely grateful for, and I’m glad they seem to be enjoying it!

 - To that end, Void Dreaming’s rating there continues to hold! I’m retaining that 5 star rating (still technically 4.9 but who’s counting?) thanks to your kind ratings. Of the 250 total reviews, 238 of those are those magnificent 5-star ratings. Thank you so much for your generous ratings, and I hope I can continue to make Void Dreaming worthy of it!

 - The Patreon support for Void Dreaming has actually risen more than I expected this month (we are currently on 238 active subs, including 37 who are subbed at the higher Officer tier) and as you’ll see below, this has put the project financially in a very solid position. To every subscriber to Void Dreaming’s Patreon past and present, thank you for helping me to bring this story to life!

 - Over on the Discord, we’ve now got a whopping 487 members there. That’s madness! The theorycrafting is delightful, the sharing of fanart continues to grow, and there’s recently been a surge of reader interest in Guild Wars 2. Not related, just nifty. I do love GW2!

- And finishing up as per usual with the Void Dreaming Bluesky page, we’re now up to 972 followers! It really is a great way to keep up with all of the news on the fly coming out about Void Dreaming and fanart of the characters, and also what some of my esteemed peers in the VN space are doing, too. Give us a follow!

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

 - Whew. Fixing and correcting the core errors I’ve made has resulted in me needing to rejigger a lot of writing and add a lot of new stuff that won’t really kick in until Day 5. This has completely thrown my schedule out of the window, and has resulted in me needing to divert attention from Day 8 to go back and make sure everything is ready to go in Day 5 for Patrons next month. That said, some Day 8 stuff has definitely gotten done. I feel like I’m roughly 80% of the way through it now; it’s not a big boost, but it’s a boost. Unfortunately, what’s left is a lot of fiddly stuff that’s going to eat up a lot of time.

 - The edits for Skipracer will easy to work with, thanks to Ty Fox again being an absolute peach and going through some passes of the story with me. I think that this is a really fun story and I’m glad it’s sorted! I also laid down some foundational work on the four stories that will be going up in 2026, starting with Shadows in January. Exciting!

 - Bugfixing has, naturally, been the biggest thing I have had to focus on this month. Consequently, as much as I’d like to say that September has been a productive month for me, honestly, it’s probably been the weakest month of actual work being done. This isn’t just the nature of all the corrections and fixes I’ve had to make to Void Dreaming, but it’s also just been a really, really hard month for a lot of different reasons. Physically, the last couple weeks have been pretty awful for me. Mentally, to be frank, I’m struggling a bit. I’m being pulled in a lot of different directions and I’m stressing at how far behind I’m starting to get compared to where I want to be. Holding it together for the moment, but I won’t mince words. I’m having a hard time of it.

Art Assets

 - Rico’s getting some Day 6+ BG work going in the background (ha ha), but his recent change in life circumstances and living arrangements has put him in a position where he’s pretty damn busy, and all for the best! He’ll be getting back to work on Void Dreaming stuff soon, but in the meantime he’s got himself to worry about!

 - Vallhound however is about to be very busy! A slew of CGs and splash screens have been organized for the days to come, and there’ll be even more soon to throw at him, and then we have to get geared up for 2026 content we need to get ready for. Exciting! Expensive!

Project Finances

 - Patreon’s earnings continue to grow, albeit slowly! We’re now sitting at around AUD$1.75k per month, which has met the mark I need to make sure (if it holds or improves) that I can afford all of the absolutely essential content for the year to come. That means CGs and splash screens, as I currently still pay for the backgrounds out of pocket and shore up CG costs where I need to. Case in point, I withdrew AUD$7k just last night to cover the AUD$8k I’d spent securing Vall’s continued work for the project a couple of days earlier, leaving my personal funds overall down. Every cent from Patreon continues to go into Void Dreaming, and I continue to support it myself!

 - Fortunately, on my personal funds, my tax return did come through and that money has been used for a few things beyond that art purchase above. For one, my local NAS is now up and running again thanks to some new hardware, which allows me to properly store all VN related assets locally. I’ll also be looking into some cloud storage options this weekend to the end of securing essential art resources for Rico and Vallhound at my expense rather than their own, so that they have access to everything that they might need there as well. Finally, I’ve paid Rico in advance for some more BGs as above, for once he’s able to get to them after the move hassle is cleared up.

October’s Goals

 - Finish all Day 8 content if possible; I’m not optimistic but I’ll be working hard

 - Prepare final testing and release build for Day 5 Part 1

 - Begin initial writing on Shadows for January release

Upcoming Main Updates:

Nov 1st: Day 5 - Mendacity Part 1 (Patreon Release)

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

Jan 3rd:  Short Story Shadows (Patreon Release)

Release Plan Status: On Target*

Hot damn. September’s been a lot, but my sincere hope is that October will prove to be a very productive month for me. Work is going to be a pain in the arse moving forward for the rest of the year, but if I’m careful I should be able to set myself up to spend much of the rest of the year focusing far more on Void Dreaming than anything else. If I can do that, I think I’ll do a lot better.

That asterisk up there might look worrying, and honestly, it isn’t helping my stress levels. The reason I’ve appended an asterisk to the release plan being “on target” is purely because my writing has now, out of necessity, slipped behind being a year ahead of releases. I am no longer twelve months of writing ahead of releases; for that to have been true, I needed to have Day 8 complete by now. I cannot, in honesty, claim to be on target to what I want to be hitting.

What does that mean for you and the project? Not a lot! The writing is still way ahead of the release schedule, and this means that in the immediate future (and probably for at least a year) there’s nothing at all to worry about in regards to the project. Financial goals are being hit, the writing is in place for most of 2026 already, and I’m still working away!

Transparency is the name of the game, though! I want always for everyone who reads and supports Void Dreaming to be completely aware of exactly what’s going on, both with the project and in my own head. I know that this is a massive undertaking at the best of times, and this last month or so hasn’t exactly been the best of times. Sharing my triumphs is one thing, but you need to be aware of when I’m struggling, too. Fair’s fair.

That said, I’m not broken and I’m not done. There’s been setbacks, but that’s what the planning of this project has taken into account. I’m even confident that once the mess of Day 8 is sorted through, Day 9 will feel like a soothing balm by comparison and Days 10 and 11 will just roll on by. I should be able to catch up on a lot of writing in that time, and be well and truly back on target by Day 12 writing. It all sounds so far away, but it’s not as far as it might seem. Certainly not to me!

2025 is almost through, but there’s still plenty more Void Dreaming to come before the year’s out. Thank you again for reading and supporting Void Dreaming, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed this update to where the project’s at. We’ll be back soon enough with more for you to sink your teeth into.

Until next time, stars guide you.

 - Faora