Hellloo and welcome new followers, It doesn't feel like it's been a whole month but it has so here's how things are going! :]

This update might be a little short this time because I want to avoid as much spoilers as I possibly can but I've been balancing out the game routing and redrawing some outdated/new CG's. So far I've been focused on the "Afternoon" as of late.

Choice progress:

I decided to make a progress bar chart to kind of give an estimate on how far I've gotten with the choices that can be made in the game! This includes dialog, fixed CG's, testing, choices, grammar checks, etc. The "Continue to wait." choice isn't up there for right now.

Update to the Afternoon route:

I've been warming up to the new content and I feel a lot more positive about how it's turning out compared to a few weeks ago.

I am being super careful with the pacing and my play testers have been very helpful through all of this so they deserve some credit! It took way more time than expected for me to get used to the new changes that fixes some if not most of the issues I came across when the [Talk to Noah], [Look around.], [Go to sleep.] and [Continue to wait.] choices were outdated and not complete. There was a chunk of a dialog scene that was cut however, I turned a part of it into a choice instead! I like this a lot more and it makes it easier for the story to flow correctly! :]

Here are some sneak peaks from the new content! >:3

New CG's:

I talked about this here and there but I do plan on updating some of the very old/outdated CG's in the game. At first, it was starting to look as if doing this would drag [Extended Demo] update out later into the year but I noticed I've gotten a bit faster with drawing CG's. Even though my art style fluctuates a lot I am happy seeing how far I've come with my overall drawing skills! :,]

For this scene I wanted to go for a foreboding atmosphere:

When it comes to updating these I try to look at the "bigger picture" :P and think about what all could be improved.

I don't want to spoil where this takes place but I've been wanting to fix this for a very long while. Around the time I originally drew the old version I was still getting used to drawing and I didn't have an official reference sheet for Noah yet ((still don't buttt I still want to improve my art skills a little more :P)). I thought the outcome of the old one was good back then but now I feel very different about it.

I had to go and search for the old file because I actually liked the old background itself, just not the way I colored it. For some odd reason it took longer to fix the old version of the background because I originally colored the door frames brown?? I have no idea why I did that as the area where his bedroom door etc is are varying shades of a cream/tan white color. Once I finally got it to look correctly, I went on to fix Noah's overall look in the frame. I wanted to have Noah's pose facing more towards the front and take up more of the shot versus him leaning on the door frame.

My play testers really helped me out when it came to advice so for the tense atmosphere of the situation, I added some animation too and more depth to the shading. Once everything was settled they did a couple of tests and gave it a thumbs up! One thing that also made me happy is being able to convey this part using only 4* CG's instead of the old version having 7! :,] I have no plans on updating these CG's again unless it's for minimal stuff otherwise it'll just lead to burnout. :[]

Speaking of CG's I'm really happy going through and cleaning so much of this up. I never knew just how much space these drawings were taking up until I compared them to the old drawings. Hopefully when all of this is fixed up I'll have enough space to keep it under 1GB by the time Day 4-7 are added in the full game! :D

Right now I'm still replacing a lot of the old CG's but once I'm done with that, testing, etc, I'll go forward with the Morning route which is going to need some TLC. :,] I think this game development post is long enough so I'll stop here!

If you like what I create, please consider supporting what I do on kofi [Here]! All donations and tips help tremendously while I continue to work on the game!

Q&A / Ask box is open:

To know and understand Noah through Asks and random posts about lore, they'll be under #Get to know: Noah ! :]

**Some asks won't be answered if it contains spoilers but I do appreciate what I receive. :]

If you have any questions about Trembling Essence/Noah feel free to ask here or on itch.io please. This makes it easier for me to see and answer accordingly! I enjoy hearing from you guys!

Thank you to everyone's continued support, I really appreciate it!! :,]