Hey, all! You're gonna notice the progress graphic looks a little different.  

What is this "First Half" sorcery? Well, as I said in the last post, this episode is absolutely massive. Probably triple the size of any of the other S2 episodes, and that's without manually counting. We've gotten a ton done, and a lot of people have been expressing regret that they have to wait so long for a release. So we made an executive decision.

We're going to be releasing a little over the first half of Season 2 Episode 5 first, and then the second half later, in a split release. We're 4 scenes away from finishing this First Half build, which is very close. I'm working something special out right now with someone who knows a bit of Timeline animation for a very special scene that you all have been waiting years for. Beyond that, 2 scenes need shooting and bugtesting, and only 1 scene needs writing, shooting, scoring, and bugtesting. Then we do our final test, and if that's solid, we ship it.

While the first half is making its way through the release cycle, we'll be hard at work on the second half. We have quite a bit done for these scenes, so we're hoping that we can push it into the release cycle within a month of the first half going public.

Also, I've done something a little different with this episode. Previously, we've been alternating Side Story and Main Story releases, making them mutually exclusive. This time, I decided to ship each build with at least 1 new Side Story scene per Free Time opportunity. The first half of S2E5 has 6 Free Time opportunities, so it'll ship with 6 new Side Story scenes. That way you have something new to play in each Free Time event, even if you've played all of the previous Side Story scenes.

Lastly, and slightly off-topic, I'm not gonna pretend I'm the first dev you're hearing about the whole Itch deindexing thing due to the payment processors thing. You know what's going on. Best thing you can do for all the creators you love, not just us, is be sure to follow them directly on Itch or sign up for free on their Patreon or SubscribeStar accounts so you don't miss updates.

A kind user on Patreon sent me this collection, where they're adding all the AVNs they could find links to. This might serve as a good collection to browse until this all gets figured out:

https://itch.io/c/6089350/find-all-the-avns-i-could-save-links-to 

 You might be able to use this to find more of your favorite creators and follow them directly.  Anyways, thanks for reading! We hope you're excited to play Season 2 Episode 5 soon! 

 -Vic