Hey sabin, here's a small update. A LOT of content has already been written and I have begun porting it over to the VN.
- Chapter 14 is finished. Excluding all the gameplay portions, it's 10k words.
- Chapter 15 is written and currently being edited, soon I'll begin porting it over to Renpy. It's 34k words. We might split it in two, but the content is done.
- Chapter 16 is currently being written, 20k words so far. This will be the last chapter of the build.
- The optional ruthless route content is very close to being done writing, sitting at 38k words (God I hope people give it a chance because we put a lot of work into it)
- The next Hinterlands portions, which the main story will cut to between chapters, are sitting at about 22k words right now and over halfway done.
- There's optional introductions to three new guests, kind of like when you first get Luke and Kota. One of them is halfway done, the second is brainstormed and about to begin writing, and the last one is still in planning. These will be kept short so it's not going to take up a lot of our time.
I did a coding revamp for 0.4.1, and most of the new features are finished. Here's the big one: the MC can do side quests while the staff works on R&D and exploration.
This demands additional content as well so the systems are not barebones and there's plenty to do and replay as soon as 0.5 is released. This includes new R&D rewards, extra scenes with the staff if you give them time off (so far there are a couple for Luke but we might keep these at a minimum since the build is taking so long already), a sidequest to add an optional guest, and a side project for Asterion to work on. Some of these are done, but we want to get this fucking build out already so I expect we will add more with smaller builds in between big releases.
The sprites for most of the new characters are done, there's one last optional guest we have to design. I still have to make assets like CGs and a couple of backgrounds and NPCs, but the bulk of the art is done already.
So, yeah, I'm really sorry it's been a such a long wait, but it will be worth it when 0.5 is eventually released. The content we already have is way bigger than build 0.3. We're working at a REALLY good pace now, but I don't feel confident in making an estimate for a release date yet. Thank you for your patience.