Hello, ladies and gents. It hasn't quite been a month since my last update, but I feel like now would be a good time for to give a brief progress report on Chapter Five. It's nearly my bedtime, so without further ado, let's get right into it.

Progress Report

As I said would be coming in my last update, I am now (temporarily) unemployed. Now, I'll admit, I was a bit concerned that I wouldn't be able to keep up with development like I used to. This has been my first time working on the game without school/work tugging on my sleeve since I first started making this game back in 2016. So, I was worried the temptation to set Forge:Re aside and treat this like a summer vacation where I can laze about all day might be overpowering.

Lord, was I wrong.

Ever since my last day of work, I've been regularly pulling 8-12 hour work days on Forge:Re. Almost every day of the week, in fact. I'm finding it harder than ever to give myself a break. Which is good... to an extent. I will say that I'm greatly looking forward to wrapping Chapter 5 and getting an opportunity to rest my weary mind, though.

So, as far as Chapter 5 is concerned, the trial is completely finished, and I'm already in the middle of writing the post-chapter scenes. Now, I did end up cutting a number of things from Chapter 5's trial, but I think that worked out in its benefit. The end of Chapter 5's trial is fast-paced, wild, and should leave a bunch of people going "what the heck just happened". I know that's how I've felt in the last few days I've writing. I look back on what I've written and go "what the heck did I just write?" Sometimes I worry Forge:Re's story is a little too out there for its own good, but I guess we'll just have to wait until it's out to see what the consensus is on that.

Anywho, the writing for Chapter 5 should be finished within the week. I expect it should only take me three or four days to polish it up and get it out to my beta testers after that, though there are a few catches to that. I kind of had to add a piece of evidence into the chapter at the last minute for things to make sense, so I'm going to have to go back and make sure that jives with everything else. Along with that, I have an animation that needs re-making (because it's kind of pathetically lazy), and I'm planning on redoing the difficulty selection screen at the beginning of the game. So, this isn't just a straightforward edit job. I've got a few things here and there to take care of on top of the usual cleanup.



With that said, I guess we'll see where we stand a month from now. In a months time, I should be fixing up Chapters 1-4 (5 will have to wait for my usual beta testers to finish it) and getting them ready for my second wave of beta testers to roll through. I'm very excited for them to play it. They'll be the first people who will get to play through the vast majority of the game without having to wait several months in-between chapters, so I'm very excited to see what they think and what improvements/suggestions they bring to the table.

That's all for this month! As always, I'll see you in about a month's time!