TL;DR: I made a lot of progress in the past two months. Character rebalances are happening. More characters are being given better-defined playstyles such as with Gold Third. One out of three dungeons for Chapter 6 have been finished. Still undecided if I should release early to get players accustomed to the rebalanced skillsets, or to wait until the entire chapter is finished, like usual.

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Four years ago I finished my college degree, only to immediately get invited to work on a project for my school. When that project concluded, I expected to finally be able to devote more time into this fangame. What I was not expecting was to get hired into my first job relatively quickly after that, and how it would leave me mentally incapable of focusing on developing a game, even outside of my shift or during weekends. My inability to juggle multiple obligations and responsibilities has affected how much work has been done on this fangame.

That's not to say absolutely zero work has happened, though. Over the past 3 years, I've slowly worked on Exadimension Neptunia, for maybe 20/30-minute sessions each day that I could. Following my resignation to my first job a few months ago (and therefore, the reclamation of my free-time), I got an unusual burst of inspiration that somehow solved a lot of the mental blocks I listed in a Devlog about 4 years ago, and got to work ASAP. Suddenly, I was able to:

1. resolve my doubts regarding the story of Chapter 6
2. figure out what I want to do (and even do proof of concepts) for the remaining dungeon puzzles
3. work on character rebalances which have been on my to-do-list for a long time

And just like that, I was making more progress these past two months than that entire 3 year span I mentioned. Currently, one out of the three "dungeons" of Chapter 6 are complete. I'm now working on the second one.

In addition, all of the immediate concerns I've had about character skillset balance have been worked on. Examples (some of these you can see in the screenshots) of these include, but are not limited to the ff:

• Allowing K-Sha's dance skills to activate even if you get the button presses wrong. However, you will now receive a reward IF you do press them correctly. (Notice that "FC 3" buff in the 3rd picture? . I will not explain what this does yet, just in case I still end up changing my mind.)

• Committing to Noire's debuffer/hexer kit. I gave her the ability to inflict a debuff exclusive to her that interacts with a selection of status effects. (Those symbols in the 4th and 5th screenshot seem familiar... wonder what they could be...)

• Adding extra effects to Blanc's taunt skill to improve survivability.

That's all for now. I'm not really sure what else to put in the screenshots. Once again I'd like to emphasize that I have no idea when we can expect the next update to come out.

I also would like to apologize to those who have been enthusiastic and vocal about awaiting for when Exadimension Neptunia will finally become a finished game. Currently, my internal goal is to finish before May 2026. Any further than that and I would hit the embarassing 1-decade mark of shame.