Alright this is gonna be a decently long one, I am gonna divide some sections into points and go from there.

1. What happened during development?

   It's a mix between a few things, after XanderCat had their initial leave the game was sort of in a coding crisis for a while. The Blender files sort of just sit on my computer until I decided to try and work with making the game be based more off V2 (more info on that later.) This caused a decent amount of modeling restarts as I would figure out everything but then decide to restart so I could polish the rough edges. Here's some scrapped area that won't be in the final game.

   

Also admittedly a bunch of procrastination happened. On top of restarting development multiple times I had multiple anxieties (they are pretty much just the average "What if people don't like this?" things everyone has). It almost got to the point where I was debating whether cancelling the game would have been better for my mental health.
Thankfully I didn't, and that's when the current plan comes in.

2. So what's the plan now?

This may sound weird, but a mix of V1 mechanics and the setting of TEOD V2 with it's own lore tweaks. I don't wanna spoil too much so just expect this to be a brief outline.
First of all the environments are based off FNATI 2.0, exactly how V1 was however they all got the TEOD V2 style. Take a look for yourself.

(gonna have to fix some lighting on the final one)

(final render is ironically kind of an old screenshot but it basically looks like that)

(didn't have an empty version of the old meat freezer, oh well it's not like much was lost.)

I was honestly really happy with all these renders, and when I went to some friends about it, they said they looked great and offered me constructive criticism (thanks colton despite not being on gamejolt even more)

As for the character models.... uhhhmmmm .
Yeah, some look okay but I definitely gotta redo them. If any of you guys are willing to help please add me on Discord at busterthemagician (also make it clear in the comments you want to help since I don't like receiving random friend requests without reason)

In fact, we could use some help just in general but I'll go into more detail later.

3. What about the plot?

Okay this one is still kind of up in the air, and while I wont want to spoil anything I have a base idea that goes something like this.

"A person who has some issues with mental health and their family is heavily interested in researching what happened to Discovery Island, this gets to the point where it turns from a hobby to an unhealthy obsession. Putting off friends and family aside and becoming easily frustrated when it comes to not being able to connect every mystery of the island together. He decides one day to actually sneak closer to the island nearly half a century after it's been abandoned to try and investigate further."

I think it's a somewhat solid idea, but it definitely needs some rough edges polished and there needs to be better explanation for what is actually going on (I've actually never looked too deep into any FNATI lore)

But I did make a little concept of the main room the character would be doing research in.
When I say little concept I mean I used minecraft as a referenc-

4. FNATI: Help Wanted (I'm not funny)

Okay so we simply just need the following

- Someone to help out with a bit of the character modeling (I will admit to using some of anarts characters as a base)

- Voice actors, mainly I think we would just need like 2-3 for the suits. If I decide that the game will be more focused on people speaking then a new post will be made. I can do the rest of the audio production.

If you are interested in helping out with the game, please add me on discord as "busterthemagician"

Also, please keep all of this in mind.

Thank you for taking all the time to read this, if you have any additional questions please ask below (or perhaps in my discord server, link is in my profile bio and I will attach one to the game page as well as overhauling the game page altogether.) As for a release date, hopefully before the end of the summer?