We're now up to 32 hand-drawn environments, which is up 14 from the last update! Many of them include easter eggs and other interesting details that we had fun adding, so look closely, and you won't be disappointed! And even if you don't, you'll probably find that a lot of the game looks different than it did before.

This week is the 1-year anniversary of our release into Early Access, including chapters 1-5. Originally, we aimed to have our next batch of chapters ready for release after 1 year, but we're discovering just how much of an undertaking this game is as we go, from the art to the voice acting to all the choices we're scripting. Not to mention the next batch of chapters is bigger than the first! The flow of the narrative demands that we release chapters 6 through 12 together, so that's 7 chapters instead of 5.

Considering the above, we expect to share chapters 6 through 12 with you in 2025. More updates to come as we go! And we're happy to chat about the latest on Discord[discord.gg]!

We now have 18 hand-drawn environments, 6 of which are brand new since the last update!

4 more pieces are already in the works, continuing to replace our 3D-rendered placeholder backgrounds with detailed art specific to our world and its characters.

Meanwhile, work on the next chapters continues! If you would be interested in beta testing, reach out to us on Discord[discord.gg]!

​We're working our way through all of the game's environment renderings, replacing Unreal-rendered placeholders with hand-drawn paintings. This update adds 9 more, for a total of 12!

We're also now nearly done with the beta version of Chapter 7, the second new chapter that will be included in the next batch of story content!

We're continuing to add hand-drawn background art to replace the Unreal-rendered backgrounds we initially used!

We're working mostly chronologically through the game, so you can see updated intro dream visuals for Farkas, and updated visuals for Althea's home.

On the development side, we just completed the beta version of Chapter 6 and are moving forward with getting the rest of the next episodic release into beta as well.

A few updates, including:

Autosaves!
- The game will automatically save at each story choice and at the beginning of each chapter.
- There is a page on the Save and Load menus dedicated to autosaves.

New background art!
- We are gradually replacing our 3D-rendered environment art with hand-drawn art.
- The first background image replaced is your bedroom when playing as Althea. It's now much more specific to her as a character.

A collection of updates and fixes, including:

• The ability to set custom names for save files, making it easier to explore story branches
  
• Greater sound effect diversity (footstep sounds depend on terrain type)
  
• Typo fixes

As always, if you run into any issues, we love to receive feedback via:
Discord: https://discord.gg/cWRmscgemr

Twitter: https://twitter.com/godsoftwilight

email: info@volutian.com

We rooted out the remaining causes of a rare bug where unexpected character portraits would flash in the lower left corner of the screen during the transitions between lines of dialog or narration.

As mentioned in the previous hotfix, this bug became more and more rare as we took more precautions, but it was hard to be sure if it was gone because it was inconsistent, rare, and difficult to reproduce. But now, thanks to a save file that a player sent us where the bug had appeared, we were able to do extensive troubleshooting and come up with a fix that should eliminate the bug from existing bugged saves as well as prevent it from appearing again.

As a heads up, if you load a save file and find that it rolls you back to the beginning of the current chapter, this is a known issue with a recent update that had a (hopefully mild) effect on save compatibility if you open a save from before the update. Hopefully using Skip will quickly fast-forward you back to where you were, but apologies for the inconvenience! Updates going forward shouldn't cause this.

As always, if you run into any issues, we love to receive feedback via:
Discord: https://discord.gg/cWRmscgemr

Twitter: https://twitter.com/godsoftwilight

email: info@volutian.com

The glitch we mentioned in this previous announcement appears to be very rare but may still occur! It appears to be a long-standing issue with the game engine we use, which happens so rarely that it's been difficult to root out since we can't reliably reproduce it. We have an issue open[github.com] with the engine's devs to resolve it, so all bug reports from users will help with that!

In the meantime, we've found that the glitch is gone if you start a new game and fast-forward using Skip back to where you left off. Apologies for the inconvenience--We'll update with announcements here as we continue to troubleshoot.

There was another bug reported where loading a save file would roll the game back to the beginning of the chapter. This can happen after Chapter 0 with saves made before a recent update to the game, when they are opened after that update. This shouldn't happen with saves made from now on.

If anyone runs into issues, we love to receive feedback via:
Discord[discord.gg]
Twitter
email: info@volutian.com

There was a bug causing the wrong character portraits to briefly appear next to the textbox on rare occasions.

The way we had been using character portraits during some choice menus was causing this to happen, and we've removed all instances of this.

NOTE: If you have a save file where you were experiencing this issue, that particular file may still have the bugged character portrait saved as part of its game state, because that save still has in its history that it was exposed to the bugged menu portrait setting before the fix. Saves that never experienced this bug, as well as new saves, should remain unaffected by it. The fastest way to get back to where an affected save left off would be to use the Skip button to fast-forward up to that point. Apologies for the inconvenience!