Hope everyone had a very merry christmas, and a happy new year as we approach 2026. Once again, I'd like to confirm things are going very well.

First off so nobody has to read my yapping to get to the update part, the third area now has a very vast swath of playable content. Since the last dev log there is already a lot more to run around and do, alongside a bunch of new mechanics, both overworld and combat, with certain ones being very... core. I suppose you'll know what I'm talking about when you reach that part. There are a lot of fully playable fights implemented (nearly doubling the count) and, contrasting to the mines where you saw the same thing for a while, there's now a LOT more visual variety in the areas. It's been a recent strive to ensure places have varied visual flair to them, most recently the parallax department absolutely thriving right now. While the Ashen Forest is technically one massive area, the various sub-areas ideally feel distinct from one another, so you may never grow tired of the same sights and sounds.

In short, there is already a lot of playable content in Phase III, and further designing is being made for some of the key "dungeons" you'll come across in the later half. Things are still exceeding the pace I first imagined when this game was first conceptualized.

Here's what I promised to talk about last devlog, that being how the journey has felt: I think developing this game has been such an amazing experience. I don't regret it for a second. It is sometimes awkward to tell people outside of the Lisa sphere that I work on a fangame instead of an original project (which I do plan to do after Heartless), but I feel like it's paved the way for great things to come. It's helped me sharpen my skills, meet incredibly talented people, and finally understand what it is like to actually have a game out there where people are actively playing and (I think!) enjoying it! The sight is still ever-so-surreal -- I can't be thankful enough to everyone who has played and shared their thoughts, made art, theorized, and all of those lovely things. I have learned so much and I hope the full game meets people's expectations, after using what we've learned from the two year development span of this game so far. Yet, still - to not get ahead of myself, the goal at the forefront of my mind is to ensure the ever-so-dreadful concepts of 'dev hell' and 'scope creep' never come to shine. From the very start, the way development has been structured has been to ensure that it will, at some point, actually release. I hope we can deliver in terms of the full game.

Heartless was kind of a game born a little bit out of frustration. I've been on many projects, many of them my own, that I put effort in, yet it never saw the light of day. From step minus-one, I already knew what I wanted to happen, and I'm sticking to that goal.

One last thing. A song for Phase III, by Beasuce. Take a listen!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RMmVzGrNt4

(Picture by Shroom)