Renpy 8.1
I routinely check the GitHub page for Renpy to see where they are. They have two crucial milestones: 8.1/7.6 Prerelease and 8.1/7.6 Release. Currently, the only thing in the "Release" milestone relates to Live2D. Now, I am familiar with Live2D and like some of the games that use them. However, not something I use. So unless there is something stops the game from functioning, I will likely start work with the pre-release. Good chance that it will be pre-released before I finish the bug testing for Eric Day 1. So included in that release will be updated images/movies.
Size
I did get a comment about file size (as long as it doesn't exceed 500MB). I have a few thoughts of game size:
Size of Game
Fire of Life: New Day could get big if I am not careful. I remember back when played my first RenPy game, and going "Wow, that is a large file". Furthermore, I remember how disinterested I got because I had to update it with yet another big download. Thankfully, Steam only sends the changed/missing files, and Renpy has ways of organizing files. Part of why I put all the scripts in defines.rpa is that if there is a bug..it is a 1.6MB download vs. 200MB. Given the complex story, the size of the RPAs will get larger, but I want to make sure it is within reason.
Quality
However, I am not going to randomly reduce a file size. I once went too far, and the renders looked..eh. Right now, WebP should be at 95% quality and the WebM should be at 22 Quality according to Handbrake (export as mov, and use Handbrake for final compression since Adobe doesn't have a native tool that works well in my opinion). The AV1 version split the video file size in half with the same quality. On average, I saw the AVIF achieving the look I want with a much smaller size then WebP was achieving for the same result.
Ability to Play
It should not affect your ability to play the game at all. Renpy uses FFMPEG to play, which is always included in the renpy folder as part of the install. :) There are small things in 8.1 that will make me change a few things to ensure it plays, but...easily fixed.
7.6
One of the primary reasons I use 8.0.3 is because of Python 3. Long story short: I am an IT person. So, I recognize certain issues with using a language no longer supported by the community (python 2.7). However, the drawback is that Renpy 8.0.3 only delivers 64-bit executables, which will not play on 32-bit Operating Systems.
So...
If someone wants me to make a version that able to be used by Windows 32-bit (Windows 7 to Windows 10 since 11 is 64-bit only), let me know. I will create a 7.6 version of the game. :)