This is a Slog Report, an end-of-the-month progress report to assure you that development is still enslaving me.
We're back to doing this again. Well, to be frank, there's not much to write for this month.
Changes for the public demo
I have ultimately decided to cut the demo short. This means that the public demo will only include the Prologue and Opening in its entirety. This is to make the demo more properly bite-sized as opposed to having 1/4th of the game which may spoil too much for its own good. As for the release date, as I said previously, I plan to release a public demo this Q1 of 2026. It's either February or March, but regardless of the month, it will be released on the middle of the month.
Things to be completed before demo release
Cutscenes, animations, level assets. For the cutscenes, there are still a few more missing that's mainly focused on adding context. I also want to enhance some of the existing ones by making them more dynamic; If there's a story to be told then I'd need to put extra effort to present it. As for the animations, part of it refers to the cutscenes having more animations and such, the other part mainly refers to the missing playable character animations. There won't be much difference in terms of changing the gameplay of the characters, but expect some minor tweaks here and there. Lastly are the level assets. There are still some levels that lack detail, but outside the visuals, I would also make some improvements/extensions on the lackluster ones.
Some save file shenanigans
Going forward, save files from older versions will be incompatible with the upcoming steam demo, and hence forced to delete when attempted. However, an important thing to note is that the save file from the upcoming steam demo version will be compatible when transitioning into the early access version.
Final notes
Again, for now it's all about polishing, polishing, polishing. I won't be able to begin development on the next acts until I have released a proper demo. Lastly, once the demo is ready, I will also publish it in my itch.io gamepage.
Thank you for reading, and I will see you all again next month.