Hi everyone!

The time for Chapter 3 of The Last Embrace is almost here!

Without beating around the bush, I will go straight into it.

Early access for Chapter 3 will begin on April 6th for Gold and Diamond tier supporters, April 9th for Silver tier supporters and then official release on April 13th for Bronze tier supporters on Patreon, Subscribestar, Oppaiman and Itch.

This leaves me with a week of testing and preparing some promo and bonus material for supporters.

Also, this will mark the beginning of testing for the first Steam build that I will be sending for review to Steam staff. If all goes well, this first build will become a permanent demo on Steam. For Steam crowd, this specifically means the demo should be out sometime in April.

Now, with that out of the way, let's talk numbers. While I will post a full changelog next week, likely sometime tomorrow, here are some stats for chapter 3:

- 1020 renders (2574 total)

- 0 animations (16 total)

- 46187 words (134.184 total)

- 4677 lines of dialogue (16091 total)

- about 3 hours of reading across all paths (8.5 hours total)

- 8 new music tracks (28 total)

- 16 new SFX (51 total)

- 18 new gallery entries

As you see, this is the biggest update yet! We came far since 250 renders in the prologue, didn't we?

Time wise, this time around, some routes are a bit longer while some are shorter. For instance Clara's route is the largest one with just over 52 minutes, Miles's at 43 minutes, solo good at 42 minutes and shortest one is solo evil at 40 minutes. But this is normal, I can't possibly make all routes the same exact length as some of the content for each route is different and unique for that path.

You may have noticed 0 animations and may ask why? Well the simple answer is, I didn't feel like there was a good place to put them. This means no sex scene in this update either for the same reason. I don't want to force in scenes in places where it doesn't feel natural to do so and in this chapter which is mostly centered around vampire and mystery themes, it didn't fit right to me.

But fear not! For chapter 4 I plan to have a sex scene for each route! That chapter will be more grounded in normal stuff so it will fit better I feel. So plenty to goon over haha. But more on that when it's time to talk about it.

That said, this chapter is not without lewd moments. On Clara's route we get a nice bathtub moment with Kyra and Clara and on Solo evil we get a visit to a strip club where there will be some eye candy, among other things.

I can't show you any explicit stuff since its a public post but these should be fine, I hope:

This is on Clara's route after the bathtub scene.

And this is the strip club in question on solo evil route. Spoilers, there is more than one girl in there.

In this chapter, if you play all routes, you will be able to meet 9 new characters! Some are just there for the scene while some will become supporting characters and you even get to meet the final main character, sort of as he won't show his face just yet.

You can check on this site who these new characters are:

https://gamestorylog.com/games/the-last-embrace

So WTF actually happens in this chapter you may ask? Well, first of all if you played the demo you know that we start a week after the previous events at a park location where we basically do some recaps and some affections take place on romance routes.

Then we go into the first feeding scene, with Clara as well if you are on her route. This plays out mostly the same on all routes except on evil route which is a bit different and has a more darker tone.

After that as you go home you get an unexpected message to meet at a nearby cathedral. So you go there and you will meet with Woman in Red once more, now with a full complement of armed order members. And there you will also meet a new face and someone else who makes a return. Some more bits about these characters will be revealed, mainly the name of the woman in red and who she is exactly.

Conversation goes a bit different depending on your path, and very different on evil path, after which you leave, but are intercepted by certain someone and we get to have a first fight scene in the game! Here, you will have to make a major choice that will affect your character, meaning the fighting style. You can chose between direct physical fight with claws, stealth, which allows attacking from the shadows or blood magic which is a ranged combat type of thing. Each will unlock a new ability but also lock you out of the other types of combat so chose which you prefer here. Upon using, each will give different stats, meaning strength, agility or intelligence. If Clara is with you she will fight alongside you. However if you are on evil path, you get access to all three fighting styles to use in this fight at once, seeing as this is the only path where Kyra now remembers everything and on that path the interaction with the attacker will go a bit different.

These first scenes are mostly the same on all paths but after the fight, routes go into different directions where on each route scenes are different for that particular route as seen above in case of Clara's bathtub scene or a strip club visit, which certain someone owns.

And then it all ends with the first meeting between you and the mysterious man who's been after you since even before the very start of the game but he won't be fully revealed just yet as it's too soon, but will instead appear as a shadowy figure, like this:

Now, let's get into the client changes. Hopefully you are still with me because this part is important.

First of all, previous saves WILL NOT WORK anymore! Due to the amount of changes with the coding of the client which I will get into in a bit I am forcing a clean save for everyone so do not attempt to copy old saves into the latest version because you will get a bunch of errors. You have been warned!

I apologize for this upfront, but it had to be done, I couldn't avoid it, and believe me, I tried.

First of all, and the reason for the forces restart, is a points system rebalance and change. Now, stats and other points will no longer be granted automatically, but instead you will get a choice menu where you can either chose to get the point or not get anything. There is no more negative points and all points now only scale by +1. For solo route, you can still do balancing act between good and evil if you want, but now there is a clear route of choosing either a good option or a evil one, until the end of chapter 1 at least, when at the start of ch2 your final route gets determined based on your good vs evil points balance, as before, only difference is that now you go for only good or only evil points if you want and you won't be getting the opposite ones anymore, unless you really want to balance them. But once ch2 start you will be getting either only good or only evil points going forward depending on your path. Romance paths don't get evil points at all anymore, you can only be good on those paths. Also now, if you didn't have enough points with Clara to be able to reject her and get Miles's path, she will now no longer be pissed at you for rejecting her and will be instead a more friendly interaction, but the end result is still the same where she leaves.

Second change, one I talked before, is the game now has an achievements system, which can be accessed in the journal. Most achievements are visible, but some are special and hidden. You need to play all routes if you want to collect all achievements, just like with journal entries and gallery unlocks.

These are the final client changes I will do, the game is now feature complete, meaning no new systems will be added apart from expanding what is already there with new entries. So hopefully, this is one and only restart you will have to do.

Also, the game has a new main menu music, created by one of the game's supporters! He also made the credits music as well for when you finish the update. Both songs are game themed and have lyrics that directly tie into the game's story. Main menu lyrics were written by myself and he provided the music while outro he made entirely on his own. If these do well with people more such songs, and eventual OST, may happen down the line!

Last but not least, I made some minor tweaks to the saves system. You can now name saves up to 30 characters from 22 and now save is a button consistent with the rest of the game. You can also now skip saves 10 pages at the time, this helps if you have a lot of saves to go through. Not that you will have any now haha.

So, after this is done, what's next to come you may ask?

Well, I don't have all the details down yet, but roughly chapter 4 will be a more grounded episode with modern stuff taking place and virtually no vampire and mystery stuff at all. This next chapter will have heavy focus on romance, normalcy and sex, lots of it. More than anything I have done yet. As such, these will take longer for me to produce as this will be the first time for me where I actually make a sex scene between a man and a woman. So yes, in this chapter, Kyra gets deflowered by Miles! At least on his route. On Clara's route we get a new scene with them, and this time it will be a bit different as they will be for the first time ever, using toys, so some penetration there as well! On solo good we will get an optional threesome scene with Erin and Yuna, seeds of which will be planted in ch3. As for solo evil, I have been thinking I may either use Miles for this one as well but as just a one night stand with no emotion behind it or we see a return of the club guys where they get to finish what was started in ch1 but was interrupted, meaning it would be a threesome with two guys, full on sex this time but still optional, and if you want a girl there instead, I am considering doing that as an alternative. This is just still just an idea in my head at this point so who knows how it all turns out in the end. Either way, chapter 4 will have the most lewd scenes yet, maybe even for the entire game, IDK. But apart from that, we get to deepen some relationships with the girls, Erin and Yuna some more and also we get to interact with Miles on Clara's route some more but on a more friendly note. Also, a thing that has been a thread since the very beginning of the game, will finally be revealed. Why was Clara in that alley in the first place? What drove her to prostitution? This thread will be relevant for Clara's route and solo good route especially where this news could impact Clara's very future when she wakes up from her coma. Which won't happen yet, but soon...

Anyway, that was a bit of a long one so I will wrap it up here.

I hope you guys will enjoy what is in store for Kyra and the rest of the cast next and I'm looking forward to reading your feedback on it, and hopefully no bug reports hehe. But if it happens, I encourage you guys to report it, either on my Discord or on the platform of your choosing. I have found a number of bugs while reworking the points system with renders which no one reported for instance so if possible I would appreciate you guys pointing out issues, it's the only way for the game to improve.

Either way, that's it from me for now. Take care everyone and have fun with the game!

NoX