Hello everyone,

It has been a while since I've written a proper devlog going over progress for my project(s). A lot has been going on for the past year or so, and a big portion of that stuff has been kept private for one reason or another. I used to be very transparent about what I spend my time on, though recently I've wanted to keep things a little quieter to mitigate pressure from the community, though unfortunately it hasn't helped a ton.

This devlog will go over updates, big and small, for basically everything. The POPGOES series, other FNAF stuff, and other personal projects as well. Please read, try to understand my side of things, be civil, and try to keep your friends informed as well, it helps a lot.

Also, this is very big. Skim over things you are not interested in. I won't mind.

POPGOES Evergreen:

I'm going to start things off with the game that a lot of you care exclusively about. Development of Evergreen has been somewhat rocky ever since its conception in 2020. We have had to deal with Covid, The Pear, contributors disappearing, files being lost, a difficult budget, and plenty of other obstacles. But the game still progresses, and I still do my best to show things off and keep people excited.

I am truly sorry that the game has not yet released, and that there is still no end to the game's development in sight. That does not mean that it is in trouble, or in a bad spot. Nothing negative has actually happened. It's just a slow, awkward, confusing, stressful process. I must emphasise, again, that I am one guy in one room, talking to people around the world whenever I and they are free, to tick off tasks that feel like they never end, for years. I absolutely love this series and my passion for it has never waned. But, my god, it can be difficult. And that's normal. I just regret that you guys sometimes suffer from it as well.

We naturally run into periods where nothing much is going on, obviously. It's inevitable. Nobody is in an office, on a contract, clocking in and out. Sometimes people are gone for days, weeks, months. Sometimes we need to wait for an official response to something. Sometimes we just need a break. And during those empty periods where things seem to pause, I get motivation to create brand new things to keep the community entertained. That's why POPGOES Arcade and myPOPGOES exist. That's why I commission artists to make promotional content, or merchandise, or Game Jolt stickers, etc.

We've been in a bit of a pause, like this, for a chunk of 2025 so far. Major 3D assets have been developed in the background, but the focus for Emil and me has been the upcoming major update for POPGOES Arcade. I understand many people do not care about POPGOES Arcade, but it is important to me to finalise that game with something I am truly proud of before it is ported. The game is a paid product with thousands of customers, and the update will be free, and I deem it necessary. I just want to say, in regards to the POPGOES series, Evergreen has been slightly lower on my list of priorities (though I implore you do not worry about this).

I wanted to show off and give some new things for Evergreen. For a few reasons, these will not encompass gameplay. But trust me, I know you want to see more of that, and it will happen.

Firstly, here is an animated mockup of the main menu for the game:

This UI was made as a collaboration with @Derpmii , and he is also the one who made this awesome video preview of how the menu should eventually look. This is not in-engine, so a lot of this is subject to change. But designing this was still a massive task, and every other sub-menu will follow similar design principles.

Each level of the game will have a custom tile in the middle of the screen, featuring the newly introduced character of that level. Blake is introduced in Night 2, so he's front and center on the Night 2 tile.

When you click/select the Continue button with this character, there will actually be an animation of them "activating", which is reversed when the button is deselected. It's a typical "boomerang" animation basically. The preview above ^ does not show how this looks. It actually looks like this for Blake:

Though a background will be added. This was animated by the amazing E.Breddy. Some of you will think this kind of presentation is unnecessary and just a waste of time. And, yeah, maybe. But I won't release a product that I'm not proud of. I want you to know that your support, patience, and eventually money, is going towards a product that is full of awesome, though perhaps "unnecessary", stuff. It will ultimately make the game feel more professional and satisfying.

I have also designed other important menus with Derpmii, including the save file selection screen, the trading card pack shop menu, the "token tree", the phone selection menu, and some other bits. This was all done around a year ago. I hope to work with Derpmii again this year with assets that can be put into the game engine. He is very good at what he does!

Though, again, I won't be able to show gameplay today, I did want to provide some other content to hopefully appeal to other types of POPGOES fans.

Take this:

Speculate, if you dare.

Another thing I wanted to give, to maybe tide some of you over, are some new renders that can be used as phone wallpapers. I know this kind of content isn't super substantial, but some of you seem to love it:

I also wanted to give some very important, and super recent news regarding development of the game.

As most of you know, Emil Macko is the programmer of POPGOES Evergreen (and POPGOES Arcade). He has total control over his time, and often chooses to spend it on his own projects (so please don't perpetuate the idea that he's bound to the POPGOES IP, because he is not), but with the upcoming POPGOES Arcade update still being in development, it made me think about potential adjustments to how Evergreen is programmed in the future.

For a long time Emil has made it clear that sharing Clickteam projects between multiple programmers is generally not optimal, and it's certainly not an easy fix for slow development. However, because Emil has developed so much of the main night gameplay, but very little of the post-night gameplay, the idea of specifically assigning the post-nights to a different programmer has become a bit more attractive.

Because of this, we are currently talking with Tuparman about potentially bringing him on to provide programming work for major sections of Evergreen's gameplay. For those who don't know who Tupar is, he's an extremely talented Clickteam programmer who was brought on to develop the New & Improved version of myPOPGOES. Anyone who has played that update knows how EXTREMELY polished it is.

Things still need to be confirmed and we'll try to have a proper meeting about this over the weekend. But it is looking very good at the moment. This would be a huge weight off of Emil's shoulders, and likely speed up Evergreen's development in a big way. Because of this, I will aim to give more substantial updates on Evergreen's programming with previews and footage this year, though I imagine a lot of this will focus on the post-nights (the Vaults).

Be warned though, that since I don't want to spoil the other 4 post-night locations, it's likely that we will give updates exclusively via the Red Vault. A lot of people are sick of seeing False BB, but I must warn you that he may be a necessary inclusion in some future updates simply so that we can present gameplay of the post-night section. I hope you understand.

Speaking of BB, we recently released some BTS images of his three forms in the Red Vault, and it had some backlash on Twitter. Some of this was because people are sick of seeing BB and not an announcement of the game's release... but some of it was due to the renders not looking very good compared to other Evergreen imagery.

Some people complained that these BTS shots had flat lighting, and that the scene looked cartoony and bare. And those people are not wrong at all, but I wanted to clarify that this is primarily due to the circumstances of the render and not because of a dip in quality. I have made mockups of in-game scenes using the exact same models and poses that were in the 3rd and 4th BTS image here:

Hopefully you can see that the BTS images were not doing the scene justice... The flat white lighting and giant blocky shadows makes the scenes look cartoony and cheap, but in the renders used for the game itself the lighting has a creepy flash photograph look, because almost no shadows are visible at all. Like that scene in Black Panther where T'Challa is hiding in the tree. You know what I'm about.

I go into more depth about this here and here. I know most of you probably didn't see any issue with the BTS images (I saw no complaints on GJ anyway) but I wanted to relay this here just in case.

Anyway, I think that is enough for POPGOES Evergreen specifically. Well, of course, it's never actually enough, but it'll be all I write about it today. I really hope this has given some context and interesting information, and that it gives some hope, and some new stuff to be excited about. I will try my best to keep things interesting without spamming the same kind of stuff.

POPGOES Arcade:

Specifically regarding the POPGOES series, POPGOES Arcade has been my priority for many months. I've made that clear I think. It's a project that I am very proud of (I think it's by far the best thing I've released), but its imperfections have annoyed me for years. Fighting Chance, an update we unveiled in June last year, was my opportunity to overhaul certain parts of the game, make it more fun, more efficient, and more suitable for newcomers.

The showcase for Fighting Chance is available to watch here, and I do recommend you check that out before reading the rest of this section. Or, if you would rather go into POPGOES Arcade entirely blind, I would just skip past this!

Fighting Chance has evolved into something that feels more like a substantial expansion to the game. It is not its own chapter - it's not like you get to play another story after beating The Machinist - but it has quite a lot of content. Definitely enough to justify replaying the game. Its scale hasn't become hard to manage however. We have not been working on the game non-stop, filling it with tons of stuff. In fact, it can be difficult to find time to work with Emil on the game. But the time we do find, is used well.

New music has been made, new particle effects, tons of new dialogue, even new contributions from Turntail (the artist behind the enemy sprites in The Dead Forest!). I really do enjoy working on this game, since I am able to directly contribute to so many aspects of it. Almost everything you see and hear was made by me, to some degree. It's very satisfying, and I think it is for Emil too. It's a cool game.

I would like to show off two things from Fighting Chance here, for those interested. Firstly, a new Battle Gift, called Shockwave:

This Gift is exclusive to your adventure in POPGOES and The Machinist, the second chapter of the game. That's why it has a little brown cog asterisk next to its name. And the reason for this exclusivity is because it interacts with one of your Battle Gifts (which is something you only get near the end of The Dead Forest, but are present throughout The Machinist).

This is also a positive Gift, which means it only has an upside. It won't grant you any bonus coins for completing the battle (unlike neutral and negative Gifts, which will).

Let's see it in action:

Boom! The landing from my jump dealt 50% of my ATK power to Rusty Popgoes, automatically. That's not a crazy amount of damage, but it could be the difference between life and death, or at least the difference between using an item or not!

PA veterans know how powerful the Jump ability already is. You tend to use it a lot. Now it's even better, but only if you're lucky enough to pull this kind of Gift.

I also wanted to show off some new things that you'll find in The Puppet's room, which are now both fully implemented. Firstly, a box will appear to the left of the room after you interact with The Puppet for the first time, and interacting with this will toggle Battle Gifts on or off:

The streamer particle effect is very fun. It's like we're looking at miniature versions of the good, neutral and bad gifts, as they are scattered across the world.

Next, here is The Wishlist:

This is essentially the Battle Gift equivalent of The Bestiary, or The Index. It is a checklist of every Gift you've encountered in the game, as well as reminders of their names and effects.

You can also purchase boosts to the likelihood of encountering Gifts in battles, from 50% all the way to 100%. It's not cheap to do this, but I imagine once you've beaten the rest of the game it'll take no time at all, and you'll want to do it to find out what happens when you check off every gift in The Wishlist...

There's lots more we have worked on for the game, but I dare not speak of it. You'll find out more when the update releases, hopefully fairly soon. Development of it can be super unpredictable, mostly due to things that Emil has discussed on his own channels. But hang in there PA fans. I really love how this has turned out.

myPOPGOES:

Nothing major to talk about regarding this project, but I do want to remind some of you that we were working very hard on the New & Improved version of the game at the end portion of 2024, and the beginning of this month. It was a total reprogram of the entire game, made from scratch, to address complaints that the original release had (some of which could be attributed to the 10 year anniversary release date that we were given).

The New & Improved update had a very positive reception. Its many improvements and additions were appreciated by players of the game and as a result it seems to have an improved reputation. I'm thankful.

It is important to note that the incredibly polished code for this version of the game was contributed by Tuparman, who as you know is now being brought on to help us out with POPGOES Evergreen. It is safe to say that New & Improved has cascaded some bigger, better changes for the POPGOES series as a whole. Definitely worth it!

The game is currently being ported to consoles and mobile by the Clickteam development team. It is out of our hands. I know a lot of people, especially Spanish fans, are excited about the idea of playing the game on mobile. Trust me, I will give updates as they happen! Thank you for your patience.

M*rchandise:

I know talk of this topic upsets and disappoints some people, but it simply comes as part of the position I am in! The Fanverse is not just about games; it is about characters and stories. Scary stuff, beautiful stuff, disgusting stuff. POPGOES is an IP, and physical products are releases for it, just as much as games are. You can buy those products if you are interested, or you can ignore them if you are not. That is the magic of it.

Also, since 2021 (which is when merch discussions began), the POPGOES series has only released 2 products a year on average. Some of you guys are a little dramatic about it lol.

Thankfully, I know a lot of you guys love collecting and discussing merch. And I do have some news!

Firstly, if you haven't heard yet, the Hex plushies for Popgoes the Weasel and Candy the Cat are planned to return THIS MONTH in the form of a timed "threshold campaign". Warren James, the production company behind Hex, are not super confident in the Fanverse plushies due to their fairly niche audience (especially compared to their other products, which is fair enough) and slow sales in their original release (though they did eventually completely run out of stock), so they have allowed this Makeship-style system to happen at some point in May to determine whether enough people will actually buy a reasonable amount for them to make another big batch.

We shall see how that goes. The amount of people I've had tweet at me, ping me, DM me, asking about a Hex plushie re-release is insane. I really hope this campaign goes well and people are given their opportunity to get some of the coolest Fanverse merch I've had the privilege of making alongside Dawko and Emil.

But there is something else.

I have been talking to a completely new merchandise company since late 2023. A company I specifically reached out to, to see about potentially making much more varied products, things that I outright want to see made, and not just another plushie of Popgoes. Some really creative, cool, stylish stuff.

I have personally spoken to the president of this company a LOT since my initial reaching out, and it has been very promising. So promising, in fact, that for over a year now I have been secretly working with talented artists in the community on amazing new POPGOES artwork, in the hopes of pitching them to the company for print-related products. Completely original, cool as hell decals that POPGOES fans would be comfortable going out and wearing to represent the series!

The company and I are very close to finalising an agreement of sorts with Scottgames, but it's not quite there yet. Once it happens (and I am sure it will), I will make a proper announcement. However, I would like to show you some designs I have created with the absolutely amazing artists JennyKai31 and Queenly_Owl.

These are only 2 designs, out of a total of EIGHT that I have now completely finalised with JennyKai, Queenly, and Turntail. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE how ALL of them look. I seriously can not get over how much of an incredible job everyone has done.

I want to emphasise that these designs are not approved or confirmed at all right now. The company hasn't even seen these yet, though they will soon. It's totally possible that things will change with these shirt concepts, or not happen at all. But I am showing these two simply because of how incredible it has been to work with these artists. Just take them as examples of awesome new official POPGOES artwork.

You may notice that these examples are both based on POPGOES Arcade. The pink one, which we designed to be more feminine (but also still something I would wear the hell out of), features the POPGOES girls in what appears to be someone else's room in one of the POPGOES Arcade inns. And the black one is of, you know, the fucking King of the Dead Forest. Look at that shit, man. So cool. Please send your love to Jenny and Queenly, though be aware they can't talk about the other stuff they've worked on lol.

Now, since these products are not confirmed, and things are still up in the air with this new company, that means POPGOES currently has no new merch products planned. Not even with Youtooz! It is honestly most likely that, if we get anything new this year or next year, it'll be with this new mystery company. But we'll see.

My focus with merch is to make stuff that POPGOES fans will genuinely want to buy. Our track record has been very good with products so far. Very happy with how high quality everything has been. Thank you to all of the collectors, and I hope to have some nice updates for you later this year.

I have also spent my time on other major things. I have worked on non-POPGOES FNAF project concepts, as a bit of a hobby (though nothing significantly developed, I mean just writing short stories and directing a bit of concept art, etc). I've also been developing Team Fortress Future, my rather massive passion project about a sequel to TF2. I also made a video all about mascot horror, which released two weeks ago and netted me about -$200 in the end (shit happens). And I am constantly active in my Buy Me a Coffee server, making assets, hosting events like QnAs and Quiz Nights, and finding content from my projects to share with the awesome members.

I may eventually make a second devlog, or something like that, that talks more about the non-POPGOES things I've been working on, and I initially planned to put details about all of it here, but this is definitely way too long already and it's probably best to keep it all focused on POPGOES today.

Thanks for reading. I hope this was interesting, helpful, fun, etc. What are you most excited about?

- Kane