Hoowee, here I am, back again with a (very lengthy, very in-depth) status update! Buckle in, buckle you pants, and hunker on down because I got a LOT to go over!

First thing's first!

Yeah the post-jam ain't done yet :(

I was hoping to get it done by the end of last month... and now it's the end of This month.
(It's also been renamed to Act 1, as it's, y'know, Act 1 of the game, which rolls off the tongue better than 'post-jam improved demo' dont'cha think? Agree with me. Agree with me now.)

There's a few reasons for that; general creative burnout due to the fact I've been juggling not only this but a few other unrelated projects with other folks, a pretty substantial ankle injury (that I sustained at FWA! I call it my FWAnkle) that is... not healing as it should, and my job over-scheduling me to the point that the aforementioned ankle injury is getting aggravated to hell and back and my free time has been comically limited.

However..!

CurtainCall is pretty steadily chuggin' along, as while I've been dealing with burnout and the other mentioned issues, I've been actually actively pre-planning and scoping the rest of the VN in advance, to make sure everything is, y'know, possible.

• The script for Act 1 is now, as of writing, 85% longer than the prior demo, and it's absolutely gonna be at minimum double in length by the time I'm done with it! There's a LOT of new stuff to read through here, lots of new choices, loads of new scenes, actual purdy pictures to look at, the likes!
• Speaking of purdy pictures, metric shit-tons of new poses and emotions have been drawn for the trio and disseminated both through pre-existing scenes and used in the new ones. A couple of particular poses were redrawn, mostly regarding Amarillo Alamo (the Armadillo), as she was both too-comically-short and also accidentally off-screen most of the time due to an error I didn't catch with her sprite, leading to literally everyone thinking she was tiny instead of just having horrific Gamer(tm) Posture.
• She is not tiny. She just has tiny energy. She does not enjoy this fact.
• Do you see? Her confusion? Witness it, for all humanity's sake.
• Some of the new features haven't really been implemented yet as a result of everything else taking a hell of a lot more time than expected as well. The major one is lore documents that you'll be able to get in-game; I won't tell you how you can get them, but the method should be pretty easy to guess, and these documents will shed some light on the trio's past... from a new perspective.
• And speaking of perspectives...
• ...
• ...no, no I won't speak about perspectives, actually.
• Instead, I'll show off some more art, including the game's first two CGs! Yippee!

Once again, all these wonderful Graficks are drawn by the ever-illustrious Moppit! Give them a like and a retweet and a follow and a blood snackrifice or ten or something I don't know, they deserve all that and more for being assailed by my Story Concepts.

Familiar scenes, ain't they?

Now for a few new peeks behind the curtain (hee hee)!

And now, a few little things before I leave y'all off.

"When is Act 1 coming out?"

\o/ I don't know!

It, like the subsequent rest of CC, will be done when it's done and not a moment sooner. I ONLY managed to slapdash the initial demo together by the absolute skin of my teeth and that was WITH a ton of last-minute cuts, tweaks, and some outside help. Now with the scale expanding, I wouldn't be surprised if the full VN slips into 2026 at this rate... but you can't rush these sorts of things, lord knows I've tried. This story is very important to me, and all that's been available so far has grown from 33% of the story to more like... 25%? God, maybe even 20 at best estimate?

"Can we have a release window at least?"

To be entirely realistic, late August at MINIMUM, and I doubt it'll be done by there. One of the biggest issues slowing things down CURRENTLY are art assets for a particular section (which actually falls upon me, not Moppit) and music. Once those are finished up, things should smoothly finish up. The script for Act 1 is like, 75% done and partially-edited as is, but playtesting could change that up too. 

If you know a composer (or are a composer who is willing to work with someone who earns minimum wage!! god help me) who can do music in a similar vein to what's available in the NaNoRenO demo or, for example, takes inspiration from the soundtracks of the LISA series or that funny series about the non-binary folks with heart problems (Under those Tales and Delta those Runes I guess), get in touch! My twiddler is linked here!

"How much longer is Act 1 going to be than the demo? How long will the final VN be?"

Act 1 is easily going to be double the length. If the jam demo takes on average 15-20 minutes to get through, the hope is for Act 1 to be at minimum half an hour, maybe closer to 40 minutes once finalized. Of course, everyone reads at different speeds!

As for the final VN, well, originally the goal was 'okay maybe hit an hour and a half, two hours at most' with a word-count of about... 20k words as a minimum, with a maximum of 25k.

Well, again, 85% longer script, it's about 13.5k words as of writing this, it's probably gonna be close to 16k by the time I'm done by my estimate, and Act 1 is absolutely gonna be shorter than Act 2 or anything After so... we'll see! We're aiming for a three hour long experience, a good afternoon read that will hopefully make you perturbed and heartbroken amongst many other things!

"Who are you, and why are you in my house?"

spread the word.

>)

And that's about it! I'm off to my job, then I'm off on a mini-vacation next week that will hopefully recharge my mental faculties a bit, and then it's back to it.

I'll post another status update once we're substantially closer to release.

Oh and, one last thing.

It seems there's a message here, for you.

A bit fuzzy around the edges, though.

Like it's... not quite there, yet.

See you on the flipside.