July 2026 Development Update
Hey folks,
Welcome to another development update! with chapter 7 completed, we're rolling right on to 8 and the news on that front is good. At this point in time, I've had my little start of chapter check-ins with the team, and the news is generally good.
Chapter 7 was extremely art-heavy in ways that you hopefully enjoyed if you played it and also happened to intersect with a few personal conflicts with individual contributors, which is a bit of an inevitability with a team of 12 where nobody does this for a living and is part of why I try to emphasize that these timeline predictions are best guesses and not necessarily hard commitments. In any case, chapter 8 is a bit on the lighter side art-wise and doesn't (so far) face any of those types of issues. So, at the moment I'm pretty optimistic that this one will be able to hit the 2-3 month development window and launch beta September or October or so.
Looking further ahead, Chapter 9 will be a much more art-heavy update and is also quite likely to have its development time intersect with the December holidays which has historically made the whole month a bit of a wash in terms of productivity. So, it might be a bit idealistic to hope to see chapter 9 this year.
But, in the meantime! Some of the art that chapter 8 does include is a new 'texting' UI frame that will be relevant to the story:
We have fun here.
To clarify, this isn't a new gameplay system or anything, UNDER | HEAVEN remains largely a kinetic novel- there are just some upcoming scenes where the characters, well, text each other. Note that the above is a bit of a wip and probably won't look exactly like the final for at least one or two reasons.
Since we were doing UI work anyway, we're also doing a rework of the existing text boxes! These are, again, slightly different from how they'll appear in game (Julian's design has since been edited slightly), but you can already see the improvement:
Julian's PoV in the first screenshot, Ash's in the second. Did you know that this line from Julian's inner monologue in chapter 1 is one of the longest in the game? I think I've since evolved a bit more towards the usual VN 'style' that emphasizes slightly shorter individual blocks.
The goals of this rework were twofold:
First, for PC users, we wanted to both shrink the font a bit and draw the text closer to the screen to make reading a more comfortable experience. Not to worry if you prefer the larger font size- the mobile UI will still stretch the entire length of the screen and use the old font size, and there will be an accessibility option to use those proportions on PC (which will still include the new left stripe).
Second, as a general accessibility consideration I also wanted the difference between Ash and Julian's stripes on the narrator box to be a bit more visually evident to any colorblind readers. In a rather fun example of the curb-cut effect, this also gives us the opportunity to lean a little harder into the visual characterization of each text box! I'm very happy with how they came out, but let me know what you think in the comments below.
Of course, with all that being said, what have I been up to? Well, besides going back and forth on the UI work above, as I've mentioned before the early part of an update cycle tends to be the lightest time for me as assets are worked on. Of course, the ability to not be busy now comes from having done a lot of advance writing in the past- so right now, I'm doing more! For the next couple weeks, I'm actually in a very heavy drafting push of the sort I only do once or twice a year. It's an exciting time that can be a bit intense, and it's all going to need a few passes in the future, but I'm already excited about some parts you'll be seeing in... a long, long time.
I've also got some personal vacation time coming up, and I'm planning to make at least a little time for some reading. There's not much substitute for it when it comes to working on writing, and it's been a while since I properly practiced what I preached on that front. Besides some writing-focused stuff, I want to hit some classics- I really want to see what I can do to just sharpen my moment-to-moment prose. Of course, with that being said, I should be ready to hit the ground running as chapter 8 completed assets start coming in.
And that's about what I've got this time! As always, thanks for your support, and I hope to have more for you sooner rather than later.
Until next time,
Faintly