Well, it's been a month - you know what that means. It's time for another Chapter 3 update!
Oh boy oh boy I know you must be on the edge of your seat! Don't worry, I won't keep you waiting. Let's dive right in.
Game exposure has really stalled, and I mean really stalled. That's just part of making a game, right? I don't bring this up to feel sorry for myself but rather to provide this information to help developers understand what they should expect when starting out on their own like this, especially going into a genre like the one I chose. Since this time last month, Divine Omen has gained 10 Steam wishlists. The TikTok account has died and I do plan on just starting up a new one. That's another thing: don't be afraid to start over. I've even contacted support over the account and they just told me I was submitting my request into the wrong portal then guided me to one that genuinely, actually didn't exist on my screen, which was...interesting! I've given up on it - we'll move onto a new account and take everything we learned with us. As for itch, views died down. Usually these devlogs give me a little spike which is nice! This is very much a calm period for the game - a time for me to focus on just getting it done and worry about people seeing it later.
I have a story to tell and I don't mind how unpopular visual novels like Divine Omen are, so I feel just fine. Life isn't without risks - sometimes you devote your time to something others don't see the value in. As long as you see it yourself, who cares? I think this is a good attitude to have. Indie devs are rarely successful. Do it for the love of the game and you can't be disappointed if you aren't one of those special cases.
"Blah blah blah, shut up K. Show us the progress chart."
Fine. Here.
As you can see, we've made loads of progress since the last chart. I've really tried to lock in and get this thing DONE. This chapter is CRAZY so far and it's only getting crazier for the most part. We're finally learning a little more about what's up with this whole Echo thing and our choices are starting to matter now more than ever before, which is saying a lot, 'cause...I mean, your decisions are determining who lives and dies already. Imagine it just getting worse. Yeah, you're welcome. This game's evil. With that said, you can imagine there's a ton of artwork involved in that process. I've been trying to slow down a bit with the sprites just because there are so, so many and as cool as this nearly fully CG game is, at the end of the day it's a visual novel and leaving just a TINY bit to the imagination isn't a bad thing.
With that said, our Chapter 3 sprite count is looking like it'll peak around 300 sprites. Right now, I'm at about 230. Compare that to 375 sprites in Chapter 2 and 390 sprites in Chapter 1. Each chapter folder will get smaller as the amount of sprites/backgrounds is always growing with it, but it looks like I've cut out a lot of unnecessary work in C3, which is a very good thing for everyone. Reuse as much as possible, but also be aware of when it starts to look tacky.
As for the rest of the progress bar, things are pretty self-explanatory. There's still a lot of playtesting to be done, but other than that most everything is handled save for the final art and SFX, which we've already established I always save for last. So with that outta the way, here are a few progress screenshots!
That last one's a little crazy, huh?
ANYWAY!
That's all for this update! In the next one I expect to be fully finished with the draft phase and we'll officially be moving onto the final thing. There'll be quite a lot of playtesting before I actually get to start on the artwork, but it shouldn't take long. We're finally making really great progress!
Looking back at my timelines for the older chapters, it looks like it took me from September 2025 to April 2026 to finish the final artwork for Chapter 2. With that timeframe in mind, I feel semi-confident in saying Chapter 3 could be available sometime around March of 2027...? It'll be interesting to see how that goes based on my estimate! Usually I'm wrong but we'll see!!!!