dev diary: a new cat boy is here

heyyy posting this a little late today because i've been distracted drawing fast food au over on cohost. sorry about that, i've been having too much fun!

mild syrup 2 spoilers below

the new cat boy's name is BARLEY! i was struggling to write the syrup 2 scenes that take place in nyapeta city (one of the later places you can go), and realized i should make a new character for toffee and syrup to bounce off of. barley is a very enthusiastic malt fan--he runs a fansite that toffee is familiar with. i want them to become friends. i like writing characters that are deep into their interests because that's how i feel about the stuff i'm into too!

the story premise for visiting nyapeta is that syrup is taking toffee to a little event where they can meet malt. the ticket to get there on the train AND the ticket for the event (where she gives her autograph) are both really expensive so toffee could never afford to go before. syrup does all this as a favor after they get in a little fight, to try to make it up to them.

i still need to color the background, but malt is here!!!

malt is an oc from all the way back in 2015. she was in the background of syrup and the ultimate sweet (usually covered by butterscotch or toffee tho), and she's been mentioned a couple times in another piece of candy. i'd never gotten a chance to actually USE her in anything, since... she's a celebrity, so it's not like i can just put her on the street somewhere. i knew that for syrup 2 i had to find a way... so here she is now!

this is my first drawing of her (from almost 10 years ago!!!!!)

i love malt a lot so i'm excited to finally write some dialogue for her. it's wild to me how i've thought about her story so much but she hasn't gotten to say a single word in canon... i think that's part of why i've gotten so nervous about writing her scene hehe.

and now for something completely different

the other thing i did recently was add astragalus's apothecary! you could get to it in the previous WIP build, but you couldn't buy anything yet... astra has TONICS now!!!!!!!! i want to draw different shaped bottles to distinquish them a little better, but here's her shop:

they get more expensive each time you buy one, but they boost your base stats permanently. once you drink one, you can buy a null essence to cancel everything out and start over (huge waste of money but i wanted to give the option anyway). power essence buys you to level 10, and frail essence resets you to level 1. these are really just postgame items (as you can tell from the prices) but they'll be nice to use against the later bosses if they get too tough for you :)

there's not that much work left for the syrup 2 build, so i'll set the estimated date for the next update to be the end of this month... i was actually trying to finish it for august but i ran out of steam (finally). i'd been focusing on it pretty hard so it's good to take a week off and do other things before wrapping up what's left.

that's all for this week. thanks for your support as always~