Hi everyone! Here for another update for you. Episode 2 continues on in production, of course.
On the character art side, we've mostly finished a few sprites (Peach, Eloise [Sebastien's/Emma's Mother], Henri [Sebastien's/Emma's Father], and Willow, another student at Pinecrest High School. We've also got yet another new character coming in episode 2 - Gabe the beaver, Nico's crush. Originally I was going to wait until episode 3 to introduce him, but after thinking about it further, it's best to introduce him now along with Peach, so we get some symmetry between Nico and Jo on the relationship front - and also because I want more time for readers to connect with those characters.
On the background art front, Reo is humming along quite nicely. But before I get to the VN backgrounds he's finished, let me first show you a side project he and I are collaborating on. The terrifying part is that I have to write and sing an ukulele song to attempt to measure up to how this looks:
Yeah, no pressure or anything.
Despite how painfully difficult it is for me to write a song right now, I know I'll eventually bash something out of my skull. This project was good to undertake because I'll get more practice for something that's going in the VN directly - Colson singing a song to his ex-wife that's essentially a "life update" about him and Toby. It's going to be a very bittersweet song with very tender and emotional lyrics, and that's going to make it the most important song I've ever written, so... again, haha, no pressure Mr. Hasn't Written a Song in Three Years.
Another cool thing this taught us is that we can do scenes with lighting changes - though we need to figure out how to do that well in-engine, since there's some limitations around looping overlays.
ANYWAY! More work from Reo:
I hope you're in the mood for some SAD, because I think the scene that takes place here is probably the saddest thing I've ever written. I love how complicated this situation is and how I know there will be a wide spectrum of how readers feel about what happens here. I'm looking forward to hearing why, if people will tell me after they read it.
This background is a storage unit where Eloise placed what she kept of their things from their house. For fans of the comic, you might notice something that was very formative for Sebastien in his childhood - and it'll expand on what you saw in the comic a lot more. Doing callbacks to the shorts is something I'm trying to do a lot, both because it's already established character history I don't have to come up with, and because I want to give long time readers a nod of thanks for sticking around so long.
😏
And finally, I want to show off the pièce de résistance, the drive from Minnesota to Montana, a long scene between Sebastien and Emma:
I put the music (a new track from AJMW titled "Remember When") and some placeholder foley over this, and our handy dandy UI checker. The theme I gave AJMW in the composer instructions was something that would have a fair amount of emotional variance in it but retain an underlying warmth and coziness to it. I think he nailed it, and it fits the conversation Seb and Emma have in this scene quite well!
Final foley will have car noise timed with the video as well, so that'll be another notch on immersion's bedpost.
As far as writing goes, I've got first drafts done on about 3/5 of the scenes in the episode (which is already laid out from end to end).
I've got second drafts done on the first 4 scenes, which are snappy in pace but still retain a lot of nice character moments. Some criticism that I agree with on episode 1 is that some scenes dragged a little, so this is addressing that. There's definitely still scenes that are longer, such as the one above, but I've set soft limits on how long a scene can be and will trim to get things there.
Recently a few new scenes had to be added, and some drastically changed, so mid 2026 release date is looking towards the tail end of mid. I also have stupid business (and not stupid personal) travel, so I'm expecting August at this point - though I am still aiming for July. This episode is double the length of episode 1 and a lot of story happens to the majority of characters in the cast, so if there's a longer wait time until it's done (and done right), I hope that'll be okay. I promise I am working hard on this thing most days of the week! Thanks for your patience.
That's all for this month, see you next month for another update.
TanukiDad