Progress Report

Greetings!

I've been making good progress since last week's update. All the new actions have been added to Evelyn's, Primrose's, and Callie's night scenes. Additionally, several of the Samarra/Nell scene actions are already in place, with more rapidly being added. This was the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the update, making me feel good about predicting its imminent release. 

On the negative side, I believe I will go to the rare step of cutting a "promised" feature. I'm talking about the ability to "leave her like this" or clean up after yourself in the night scenes. This was something I added a long, long time ago when I wasn't quite sure about the overall feel of the game and where its development would take me. As the game expanded and its themes solidified, this choice felt more and more out of place. I struggled for the longest time in trying to think of a way to smoothly integrate the consequences of this choice into the story without breaking everything. In the end, I don't think there is a way to do this without spending an update on this feature alone, and that's not something I'm willing to do at this stage. Besides, it doesn't really fit the game's current style. Not only that, but there would be no benefit gained from picking "leave her like this," which is just dull. What is the point of a choice if one choice is always the objectively best one?

So, I'm just going to cut it. In those places where you used to get this choice, you will automatically clean up after yourself from now on. I'm sorry to those of you who were looking forward to seeing the results of this choice. Still, I genuinely don't think I could have delivered upon your expectations here. I built an impossible situation for myself, and in the end, I saw no realistic way of painting myself out of the corner. On the plus side, cutting this feature means that the most significant remaining challenge for this update is gone, which means it will come out faster.

All my focus is on finishing version 0.38 now. It feels incredibly close now, though I still have a lot to do. If nothing unexpected comes up, I could even see if getting released by the end of next weekend. However, I'm not making any promises. 

Until next time!