What better day to update your audience on game progress than on April Fool's Day, huh? You'll never know when I'm lying to you! I could even be lying right now!

However, on this day of capers and japers, I felt I'd spare you the mind games and give you just the cold hard facts. That's right; no funny business here! This is a No Funny Zone!

So, let's get down to brass tacks with a factual progress update, shall we?

THE PROGRESS - Intro Cutscene

I'm proud to announce that the sepia intro cutscene is complete! While a few of the actual panels themselves might not be fully polished, it's in a state that I think it's ready to be shown off. Here, this is another screenshot.

(SPOILER BELOW: One of the panels, whose art I'm actually quite proud of, so much so that I'm willing to show it off here, despite being a pretty massive spoiler for VT's backstory. Naturally: Spoiler Rating Extreme)

According to my statistics, there is a 90% chance that I have just "got you."

THE PROGRESS - Battle System

Likewise, I am also proud to announce that the battle system is... well, mostly complete, infrastructure-wise! All that's left for me is to program in a general sense is the actual attacking mini-QTE

However, as I anticipated might happen, I'm lagging behind on the actual battle I wanted to show off for the demonstration itself. You know the drill; classes taking up time, spending time with family over breaks, yadda yadda. But ALSO... the actual battle itself has become a bit more complex than I initially planned it to be, which is a very good thing! Though unfortunately that comes at the expense of extra programming time.

So, I'm going to stay the course and finish up this battle, though I'm uncertain of how long that will take. I'm aiming for the middle or end of April as my personal deadline to get it done, which means that the second WIP Showcase video will get pushed back slightly. But again, with classes picking up the workload, I won't make any promises. It could be even longer depending on how my academic workload pans out.

Welp, that concludes this small-ish update devlog! Not too much to show off, but I felt it would be wise to let y'all know I'm still plugging along on the game since I didn't get the Showcase video out in the timeframe I had hoped to!

I hope you all have a lovely April Fool's. Happy japing!