For anyone wondering where the update post is, it is in a separate post. This post is just so everyone can see the changelog.

I want to reiterate:

The game has restarted from Episode 1 and will not be the same.

Full Episodes 1-6 are not implemented.

Your saves will not transfer from Ren'Py.

We restarted because we felt very limited by our old game engine and that the story needed a redo now that we knew where we wanted it to go. I don't wanna go into too much detail since I've talked about it so much over the past year. You can read all about it.

Changelog

New Content

Script Refresh

9,277 words added. (37,997 total)

2 Hours 30 Minutes Gameplay Total

New Features

SFW Mode Added

Alerts people that a choice will lead to a lewd scene to either help you avoid or pursue it. (helpful for streamers or romantics)

Future hotfix will make this even more communicative, with settings for how aggressively you want it to warn you about upcoming content

Backer Guided Mode

Special Mode for $20+ Backers

Mode activates an in-game guided walkthrough that gives you context for your decisions.

Code will be given in the $20 post to activate this mode.

Pubic hair toggle: you can now set whether you want your character to have pubic hair in the character creator. This checks if hair should be applied to Isaac in an animation or CG where our artists have added it.

Delete Save Files This feature was undone by my recovery, needs to be reimplemented

Bug report button in the main menu, now you don't have to load into the game to open the feedback form

Changes

We've now moved over from Yarn 3.0 to Yarn 3.2.7

This was a long-time coming change, and was necessary to make use of the upgraded variable handling and storage, as well as opening up the use of new features we've yet to implement.

Will also let us more easily handle name tags, so we can use bespoke nameplates and text colors for speakers - if you're into that sort of thing.

This is what, unfortunately, cause the huge lag in updating.

Complete overhaul of the variable system to track player decisions throughout the game.

Old saves will not be compatible, so a fresh save file is required.

Sped up the automatic dialogue skipping even more. Twice as fast!

Complete overhaul of the save system. All data is now written to a single file, which makes data management for saves much easier for us. Will allow us to set safeguards against incompatible save files further down the line.

Save screenshots thumbnails are now much smaller, matching their size on the UI better. Won't make a huge difference on save size, but it will let the save / load menu load in much faster.

Reduced spacing between dialogue choices, and made the text slightly bigger. Should make the buttons more legible while still making it easy to click the right option.

Added new icons for dialogue choices (paired with the new SFW indicator system)

Fixes

Fixed issue with UI layering when certain other UI objects were visible on screen.

When saving the game in a Point-and-Click segment, the background wouldn’t get saved in some circumstances, meaning that the background would just be white when loading the game. This fix was undone, need to be fixed again.

Fixed the android icon. Should appear properly now when installed. Might be some variance depending on android phones.

Fixed a bug where a character yapping wouldn't stop yapping when the next dialogue line presented. That would make it look like a character was speaking even when it wasn't their line.

A host of under-the-hood fixes that doesn't impact gameplay, but helps with stability and scalability for programming

*We are still working on this build at the time of posting this, so it may change a bit.

Contents of the Build

We announced it previously, but since we are now trying to push out a build a month, not all builds will be created equal. Our goal is to bounce back and forth between big and small builds. Since we finished the bulk of Episode 1, we are using this build as a buffer to start working on Episode 2 while also adding important features that we've been too busy to add.

The biggest change in this build is the script refresh. Our new writer, Frisbee, and I went through Episode 1 and vastly improved the dialogue and word choice. We wanted to keep refining, but there needed to be a stopping point, so we hope this is the last time we mess with this episode. We added about 9k words, so this is the second-largest word update in the Unity life cycle. Many scenes have been expanded, reworked, and some rewritten entirely.

We finally have the SFW and Guided Modes back in the game. We were very proud of these during the Ren'Py era and have been meaning to find a moment to add them in. $20 backers will find the code in the $20 post.

We also redid how our variables work so we could implement the gallery and Guided/SFW modes. Because of this, a new save will be required. We were hoping to couple the gallery with this to soften the blow, but that is taking longer than expected, so that should be coming soon in a hotfix.

Hotfix Plans

We had big plans for this update, but cascading events led to this first update of the month not being as feature complete as we would like. Not to mention our dialogue tool freaking out the day before the build was gonna drop, meaning any chance we had at getting these features implemented was shot out the window as Lotus had to scramble to find the dialogue scenes since they were just... gone?

So we pivoted to prioritize the Guided Mode for the $20 backers who get the build Week 1. We are planning to get the rest of these features released in a hotfix next week for the next update.

The Gallery

A screenshot button that saves a 1080p screenshot

Improvements to the save system

Version Checking

Indicating on your save file which version it is from

Save File Naming

Lower Save Thumbnail size

Add 4 Save Pages, 24 New Save Slots

Known Bugs

(Audio) Voice doesn't play for some reason

(Spine2d Characters) Characters do not animate between moods at the moment. The calls to set mood animations were lost and now I have to manually re-add them again.

(SFW / Guided mode) The tags that signal to the script to indicate if a dialogue choice is SFW or not, or to apply a guide text needs to be fixed. Currently does not display in every option where it should.

(Background) White flash on scene load because background images by default are white when no sprite is assigned to them.

(Fonts) Need to create more separate fonts for which ones should have outlines, and which shouldn't. If you change one, it changes for all of them.

Fill out the report if you find some!

Release Schedule

$20 - August 4th, 1 PM Pacific

$10 - August 11th, 8 AM Pacific

$5 - August 18th, 8 AM Pacific

$3 - August 25th, 8 AM Pacific

Where do I report bugs and feedback?

Either in the comments of the update post, on our Discord, or in our Google Form linked in the update post.

Wrap Up

This month really flew by! Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was all the work, probably both? The gallery has been quite the ordeal, but once it is done, we just need to maintain it.

We were working on a lot of things for the future. We started development of Episode 2 in earnest, so that has been a fun ride so far. I started writing Episode 3, and I am happy to report I am 20k words in.

I was also setting up all the posts/information that will be dropping in the next few days. Plans for the future!

I want to thank you all for your amazing support! We recently hit the most active paying Patrons in our game's history, which is so overwhelming and incredible. You all are the reason we are even a studio and get to work so hard on this game. Thank you!

Important things to keep in mind!

August 12th, we have a Q&A Livestream! So be there to ask us questions about all the info dropping this next week.

Stay Rad!