Once again, I'd like to thank you all for the overwhelming amount of feedback and support. I am using all of your feedback to consider changes and improvements to the game. So far, there has been a fair bit of work done backstage too.

Let's make this quick. Here are some of the changes that have been added (These will not be accessible until the next patch).

✧ Programming ✧

• Dynamic battles are a work in progress.

  • Sparing methods will be more elaborate, taking slightly more effort. Names will be highlighted yellow when the maniac has been pacified.

  • Fighting is now fair. It is a turn-based Earthbound style battle system, no actual bullet hell, sorry.

    • Bullet Hell will no longer be an instant-kill spell and will deal a fair amount of damage, based upon the opponent's DEF, Ace's ATK, and RNG.

    • Damage from spells cast by other maniacs is calculated in a similar manner.

    • Please remember that Recognized Maniacs is a visual novel and that gameplay is not the main meat of the game. Battles will not be ridiculously hard.

  • Ace's HP stat has increased up to 50 HP.

  • Several maniac stat changes have been made.

    • Like in Undertale, some bosses have stats that will not align with their actual in-game stats. (e.g. The Executioner does not actually have 16 ATK or 16 DEF)

  
  

• Minor bug fixes

• Minor adjustments to the UI

• Credits sequence changes

• Updates to when Ace changes from her Pacifist/Genocide Sprites

• A new SFX indicator for an aborted genocide route / continuing genocide route

• Impractical elements, such as the "keylo." track in the music room which is inaccessible, have now been removed

• Special easter egg for cheaters who think Acedia is spelled differently

✧ Music ✧

• New music has been made during the past month, but all of the tracks are for later chapters. You may view and listen to them on either the following Soundcloud pages:

  • https://soundcloud.com/shipel

  • https://soundcloud.com/recognized-maniacs

✧ Art✧

• Many RM designs were either old or did not exist before RM was made into a game. Now there are polished concepts for designs, including for the main cast and minor enemies.

• A consistent art style for game sprites is being decided.

• No new sprites have been added... yet.

• Backgrounds may be redrawn.

✧ Writing ✧

• Typos, grammar mistakes and spelling errors have been fixed

• New important story elements have been scattered across

• More references to UTSC (part of our main goal - celebrating UTSC and its injokes)

• With the addition of dynamic battles, enemies have new dialogue during battle

✧ "Now, with all these pretty little bits of progress, when can we expect to ACTUALLY see it?" ✧

Mid-August is probably a good promise to make. I, Shipel, am the lead and only programmer and I am approaching exam time so I will be fairly busy, but all I really need to do is some extra touch-ups before I can finally release the next patch.

I hope you will all be excited to see a functioning battle system, I certainly am.