Weary travelers...

Arch Magus Ze here, of the Square Weasels.

It seems we've all collectively survived yet another circling of this little blue rock around a fireball hanging in the endless void. Well done us, let's give ourselves a pat on the back.

If you're wondering what we've been up to, and haven't the time to read me wax poetic, here is the long and short:

-Progress was relatively little compared to months prior mostly due to us taking some time off (also we caught a wild covid, it was somewhat effective)

-Sanguine Sage voice acting stretch-goal unlocked

-Made a few hundred more sound effects and integrate some of them

-Continued with some editing, moving on to finer tweaks rather than big changes.

-We're most likely going to release the Expanded Edition as a digital update on Steam and Itch.io first. The physical rewards and funny post-true-ending side-story will come soon after.

-Latest estimate of the digital release is end of June 2024.

-Due to the significantly increased file sizes from the audio stuff, the Physical CD may be switched up to a double disc package. The cost may go up, we may have to charge a little extra for it. Details to be determined.

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If you want to know more in-depths about the events of the last 2 months, feel free to read on.

We took the new year break to have a little gathering with friends whom we met from the game's discord. It's one of those unexpected-little-thing-that-turned-out-to-be-a-bigger-deal-than-you-thought type situations. Something, the game, the way we did, whatever it is, made it so that our discord is full of people who are some of the best we've known. We quickly became not just creators and fans but friends and comrades who can totally spend a day together without even trying, hence the trip.

We caught Covid on this trip and everyone was sick in the house. We had fun despite the 39+ degree fever I had. It wasn't any worse than the bouts of self-induced alcohol-poisoning we euphemistically call "partying" from my young and foolish days, so I'm not complaining. 

Soon after we came back, I took around 3 weeks on a yearly pilgrimage to Canada to visit my aging parents. No rest for the unenlightened. I say it's a pilgrimage because the whole thing exists in my mind as a kind of (un(?))holy ritual that culminates at the end of a thousand mile journey. A questionable mix of fulfillment of filial obligation,  the return of the prodigal child, and a sinner bargaining their very self away for atonement. There are some big words in there, some two-dollar words, as a learned person might say, but what it looks like, in reality, is me, jet-lagged, sitting in a flat all day with my parents while they watch Chinese TV dramas. Am I going to unpack any of that? No. And you're welcome. Trust me on this.

A very generous backer surprised us with a pledge, and unlocked the voice acting for Sanguine Sage stretch goal. We already fooled around with some tests last year, and found the result quite compelling—lilting, mysterious, and baffling. So we're very much looking forward to doing this. I hope we'll have a sample for your perusal for the next update.

The sound effects are numbering in the hundreds now, and we still have plans to create more. We are not professionals. We get an idea that something might be fun, and we pick up pieces and bang them together. The craft gets refined as we go along out of sheer inevitability. 

The entire process calls to mind an image of adventurers setting out to sea with nothing but a loose collection of logs, inventing fresh ways of cobbling together the craft before it sinks, motivated by the best motivator of all, the need to forge forward into an unknown. 

It may sound dangerous, daft, even, but it's the same way we made this entire thing. So if you found any sort of merit in what we've created,  then just imagine what we can do when we start to actually know what we're doing! Minds shall be boggled irreparably.  Consider yourselves warned.

It is a good sign in our editing that we no longer cringe painfully at every other paragraph, and find only small irksome things to tweak. We have been reading voraciously, and absorbing writing and story-telling practices we adore, a process which hopefully elevates one's taste and eye for quality. When we run out of things to tweak, the expansion can be called complete, and the result released to the world, to you. There is a sense of impending-ness now. It is closer than it is far. 

On a more serious/boring note:

When we started, the game and sound track already had trouble fitting onto one CD. Now with the addition of several hundred million bytes of sound effects, it is simply impossible, even with re-optimized files all-around. We will either have to truncate the number of soundtracks on the physical CD to a meager few, or to grab another disc and shove it on there. We will look into the cost of this, and see if we can absorb it ourselves. It makes us feel somewhat slimy to ask people who have already been ridiculously generous to us even more money. But if the cost is such that it might really disrupt our continued livelihood and operation, then we might thicken our facial skins and request backers who want the CDs to extend their generosity. If you have thoughts on this, we're very much open to hearing them.

Regarding the post-true-ending side-story. We figured since it does not impact the actual plot in any way, and is pretty much a cameo of other characters we love from other another game of ours, delaying it to a further patch is a rather minimal loss compared to the gain of releasing the game earlier to all backers. You can let us know your opinions about this too. 

Phew, we did it. 

Take care of yourselves, see you in the next update.

Ze