Hello everyone! It's been a while since I last wrote one of these, huh. There's been no problems with development. I just really didn't want to write the Development Update for March on April Fools, and after that I had a break. By the time I got back to work, I locked in hard onto developing the game that at one point I realized: "OOPS, we're more than halfway through April! Gotta write a Dev Update before it's too late!"

So for this time, I'm bundling March and April together and talk about them both. I've known since the month started what I wanted to work on for April.

What have I been doing? (March)

I sure have been busy these last couple of months. As I mentioned last devlog, I dedicated March for the development of Night 5, and I'm happy to announce that I did manage to finalize its development right as April began!

Night 5 introduces the sixth enemy to the game, and it truly heats up the night! ...I'm sorry. But that's what it literally does. It particularly interacts a lot with Shiverburn, and is also a more dangerous threat, sealing some of its weaknesses and thus needing you to know its status at all times. In tandem with the other enemies, it makes Night 5 MIN (All enemies at their easiest) decently tough, but not harder than Night 4 MAX.

Now, Night 5 MAX... That's probably a really difficult challenge. Similar to Night 4 MAX, the Night 5 enemy isn't the biggest threat; it's the other Manaspawn that carry the difficulty. In particular, Manalith proves to be the greatest menace as its Growth Level in Night 5 MAX is 20. Yes, that's the highest level. Yes, Manalith is incredibly dangerous. Just like with Night 4 MAX, I had to go with another round of balance changes to reach a state that I'm happy with. From Aerous now having a sound effect indicating how it's in a whirlwind to Magestar being far slower, but compensates by consuming more of the Book Supply. In Night 5 MAX, it's legitimately possible for Magestar to leave the Library, but it's just as possible to get it back to reading.

Alongside the development of Night 5, I also did some improvements to other menus, in particular the Research Menu. Entries will now take their entire tab instead of a list, but now there will be a visual accompanying the entry. My hope is that the visuals help the player in conveying hints to them about what new abilities the enemies get as they evolve.

What have I been doing? (April)

With Night 5's development ending right at the start of April, once it was Monday again, I immediately got back to work, this time on the Main Game's final night, Night 6. It's pretty different to the other nights in the sense that the dynamic is changed.

I won't talk too much about it since I want to keep it a surprise, but it introduces a new enemy and the last Familiar in the game, exclusive to this night. I got ambitious with some of the ideas I wanted it to have, and it's slowly approaching the vision I have for it, involving things like reorganizing code just to allow certain features of the night to occur without breaking the other nights. Yes, that sort of ambition.

Good news is that in my latest build, you could technically play and beat the entire main game, reaching the main menu and showing that you've cleared it too! The main game is coming together nicely, but I still got plenty of work to do, so my job here isn't done, and the game's release is still not imminent.

The rest of April will probably be dedicated into the development of Night 6, and that development period will probably extend to May, though I hope it won't be extended to its entirety.

Before wrapping this Development Update entry, I would like to show off a piece of artwork for the game. Specifically, the game's main protagonist, Tellany Magica!

Now with that art piece, that's all for this development update. I'm having a blast developing this part of the game mainly because I've been daydreaming about it for years, and it makes me glad to finally make it a reality. I'm not stopping until this game's finished!