If you want to skip the life and game dev struggle stuff, I'll post the actual new content in a seperate post.

Outside of the my apology for taking so long, I figured... I might as well give you an update to what actually *has* changed with the game since it's been so long. As well as a bit more in depth explanation of why what I've been struggling with for awhile too.

So first off, outside of the mental health stuff, I've been struggling with a few other aspects with the game too, as well as wanting to create another game. So I'm going to take this one step at a time.

First off... the other game, mental health updates, and when I started working on Fragile Hearts again.

Xeodius

Before working on Fragile Hearts, there were, of course, many other failed RPG Maker projects I had worked on in the past. But even before that, I had a project in mind that I have held onto... and even to this day still hold on to wanting to make. Every developer has a "dream game." And mine I call "Xeodius." I have had this idea since I was a kid, and before I even started messing around with game development tools.

Sometime after starting Fragile Hearts though, I wanted to work on Xeodius as well as Fragile Hearts and... Well surely you don't need me to tell you why that was a bad idea. Hindsight is 20/20, best laid plans of mice and men, all those things.

Ultimately one of the driving forces behind me working on Fragile Hearts now is not just to finally finish it, but use it as experience to build Xeodius from. Will likely end up reusing a lot o stuff I code for Fragile Hearts for Xeodius at the start to make it a bit easier to get started.

Ultimately, trying to work on both of them... caused me to burn out extremely quickly. And with my mental health problems as they are, which my past posts have made you no stranger to, should be no surprise that was bad concoction.

Health

Good news is though my living situation has changed for the better. With me living with someone I care very deeply for, my mental health has improved drastically over the past year. Which has lead to me since the beginning of the year to pick back up the work on Fragile Hearts. And now that I have started taking an anti-depressant and mood stabilizer again, my mood over the past few weeks have been better than it has in years despite current events.

I have also even managed to get a small workflow working for myself too this time around. I want to set small, achievable goals for myself each day. They don't have to be anything big. Could just be edit a sprite, clean something up, maybe even take a small break. the important part is I just want to make sure I try my best and not let myself get flustered.

I have also been making sure to try to take better care of myself, so overall, I think I have just been living a healthier life style thanks to everything.

Current timeline so far

So, while I haven't been updating much at all the past few years, I have been toying with different ideas around Fragile Hearts and different sprite stuff as you have seen.

But as it is now? I have decided to keep it fairly simple. I don't need to needlessly change what I was doing for the sake of it, just change it where it needs changes and add to it where it needs adding to satisfy my own modern design sensibilities. In it's current form, I have been slowly chipping away at it since around December 2024.

So are you still using RPG Maker or not?

Short answer: Likely no.

Long Answer: The original intent was to use RPG Maker as you can likely tell from my bluesky posts, however as I stated, upon starting work on the battle system past the most box standard attack, I quickly found working with it for anything outside it's basic functions extremely tedious. And since I was starting to get into funky coding territory anyways for a lot of it, I figured I might as well give Game Maker Studio 2 one last shot before trying to figure something out with the battle system.

Once I get the basic attacks down in GMS2, I am going to try and make a few basic enemies just simply to test out if I can actually do it. And then I will report back to you afterwards.

However, due to my experimenting in RPG Maker MZ's coding stuff and just letting my past experiences set... I have come to realize I actually may have internalized a lot of that information. (at least I think)

The Future

Being honest? It's likely I going to go dark again relatively soon. But that doesn't mean I won't be working on the game in the back ground. I may post every now and again. I just felt the need to say something. You know, after a long time of saying nothing.

And I know everything I make a post like this I say something like this, but seriously. Thank you to everyone who's kept tabs on the project even if I don't post. It means the world to me that you guys keep eyes on this silly little fan game I started on not even a year after Undertale's release.

I just hope one day I can finish it and the final version can be released.