Hello, everyone! For my American friends, I'm hope you're enjoying the new dystopian lifestyle as much as I am. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), my place of work is considered an essential business, so I've still got money coming in, and school has completely switched to being online, so I still get to complete my spring classes. In other words, not a whole lot's changed for me, meaning not a whole lot's changed regarding Forge:Re's development. I'm not putting it on hiatus or anything. I'm still plowing ahead as much as I'm able.

There are a few things I'd like to address in this update. Firstly, to give you a general idea of where I'm at progress-wise, I should (ideally) have Chapter Four's daily life edited within a week's time. I gotta be honest, this chapter's been kicking my butt. While some scenes are okay, some of them are really poorly written, and it's just been melting my brain lately. Thankfully, I'm not the only one doing QA work here, so hopefully my QA people can pick up the slack for me. Speaking of which...

Unfortunately, I was not (or am not) able to get Chapter Three out to those in early access by the end of March. Long story short, only the daily life of Chapter Three has been looked over by my QA person so far. I was really not happy about this and briefly considered replacing them, but I think we've come to a manner of compromise. As you may recall from my last progress report, I was planning on bringing a good friend of mine on to help with the QA work. Well, he's now on board, and he's very fast at what he does. Initially, I had him get a head start on looking over Chapter Four's daily life, but I've since transferred him to Chapter Three. In other words, I now have two people looking at Chapter Three. On top of that, I've issued a deadline of April 20th or thereabouts to them. Assuming the deadlines are met, I'll be able to put the finishing touches on Chapter Three and get it out to those in early access by the end of April.

Beyond that, I feel there's a correction I need to make regarding something I've said multiple times in the past. Previously, I said the Prologue and Chapter One will release the day Chapter Five is made available to those in early access, and this may not be the case. Just today, I asked my QA people if they would give the entire script a quick read-through once every chapter is edited. Unlike the in-depth editing we're doing now, this would be a final, cursory pass meant to identify and deal with any lingering issues in the game's script. As such, it shouldn't take long. Whereas the editing work we've been doing now will have taken over a year by the time it's done, a cursory pass of each chapter should take no longer than few days apiece. Once I've made the final adjustments to the Prologue and Chapter One, they will be publicly released.

To put it in simpler terms, the Prologue and Chapter One will most likely release a few days after Chapter Five is made available to those in early access. This is something I want to clear up sooner than later, because I know it'll bite me in the butt if I don't do it now.

Regardless of how 'good' or 'polished' Forge:Re's script is when it comes time to release, I hope those who read it appreciate all the time, blood, sweat, and tears I've poured into this project. I've said time and again that I'll finish making this game even if it kills me, and some days it really does feel like it's killing me. In fact, I'd say it feels that way more often than not nowadays. I'm putting everything I have into this, and I just hope it shows. Because at the end of the day, I don't want this to be just another fangan. I want this to be one of the best ones out there.

I feel like I'm going to just keep ranting and raving if I don't end this there, so I will see you all next month with yet another progress report! I should be into Chapter Four's trial by that time, so wish me luck, and I'll see you then!

Hello again, everyone!

Hope ya'll are doing well. It's the middle of winter here on the east coast of the US... supposedly. But, we haven't seen so much as a millimeter of snow since early January. It's a strangely dry winter. The last few have been awful, so I'm glad for the change. Less time shoveling snow means more time to work on Forge:Re! Speaking of which...

As of a few days ago, I finished editing Chapter Three, meaning I just have to wait for my QA person to check through everything and give it a test before I can ship it out. Now, one thing which bears mentioning is that I'm bringing someone else on to do some supplementary QA work. Said person is a good friend of mine who helped me out a bit with the prologue and chapter one. I wasn't planning to get his help beyond that, but it's since dawned on me that there are certain lines that neither myself nor my right-hand QA person are capable of editing. Some lines just stump us, even though we know they're in desperate need of tweaking. So, hiring a second person on should help with that.

Not really much more to say beyond that, I'm afraid. Things are proceeding apace. As you may remember from the last progress report, I aimed to finish (editing) Chapter Three by the end of March, so we're ahead of schedule, as I'd hoped. I'll begin editing Chapter Four as soon as I finish making a few adjustments to Chapter Three (i.e. within a few days time), so expect to hear about that in the next update.

With that said, I guess I'll see you all next month!

Hello, Hello! Long time no see!

Hope everyone had a good year and is looking forward to the next. I know I sure am, because we are on track to release Forge:Re (episodically) next year. As of several days ago, all of Chapter Two has been edited by yours truly. It's been a bit of a bumpy ride, but overall, editing Chapter Two has been a joy compared to Chapter One. With that, I'm greatly looking forward to editing the rest of the game.

Now, that's not to say Chapter Two is in the hands of those who were accepted into the early access program yet. Right now, I'm waiting on my right-hand editor to give the okay on my edits and make adjustments/suggestions as needed. Once that's complete, I need to go back into Chapter Two, adjust sound effects and other miscellaneous things as needed, and give the chapter a quick play to make sure everything's peachy. I've given my editor a deadline for when I'd like her pass to be completed, so I'm hoping to get chapter two out to the early access peeps sometime next week.

After that, it's right into Chapter Three, as I don't feel like I especially need a break at the moment. Heck, I'm getting enough of a break right now as I wait for my editor. I've been spending my free time in these past few days catching up on some games. Devil May Cry 3, Final Fantasy 6... Stuff that I've been meaning to get around to for years but just haven't found the time for. It's nice being able to enjoy my free time without feeling guilty about it for a change. Before, I would sit down to play something and feel like I should be working on Forge:Re instead. Not a pleasant feeling. But, I'm happy with what I've accomplished with Chapter Two, and hopefully you'll all feel satisfied with it as well.

I don't have much more to add than that, so I'd like to close this post out by wishing each and every one of you a happy new year and thanking you for sticking with me thus far. Forge:Re's had a tumultuous development cycle, but the light at the end of the tunnel that is 2020 is finally upon us. So, let's make this a year to remember!

This is going to be a brief update, because I'm inexplicably exhausted for some reason today. (Really, I don't know why.) So, rather than beat around the bush, let's get right into it.

As of right now, I'm approximately halfway through editing Chapter Two's daily life. I would be further along with it, but school and work have been taking their toll on me, so I've been taking it day-by-day. Some days I'm just not feeling up to it. Others, I feel ready to take on the world. All depends on my work schedule and how much work I have to do for school each day/week.

I'm trying something new in regards to this whole editing process. I've "hired" (more like coerced) one of my friends into editing Chapter Two's investigation for me. It remains to be seen if his edits will be satisfactory and will save me the time and energy needed to edit the investigation myself. But if all goes well, I'll get him to help out with the rest of the chapters as well.

So, I've been thinking things through, and I have a road map in mind for Forge:Re's future development and release schedule. Here it is:

• I'm going to try to get Chapter Two finished and out to my early access people by the end of the year. I know things are a little choppy right now with school and work, but Christmas break should provide me with the free time to hammer out whatever still needs to be done by the end of the year.
• In a similar vein, I'm going to try to get Chapter Three edited and out to the early access peeps by summer of next year (i.e. the end of May).
  
  
• I have a feeling Chapters Four and Five aren't in nearly as dire need of editing as Chapters One through Three are. The editing passes for those should be relatively quick and painless (at least, compared to Chapters One through Three), so I'd like to shoot to get both of those edited and out to the early access people by the end of summer.

As mentioned previously, the game will begin to official release once Chapters One through Five have been wholly edited. So, in accordance with the road map above, I hope to begin releasing chapters of Forge:Re sometime around August of next year. That's the current game plan, and while there's still plenty of editing work ahead, I think it's both realistic and attainable.

Now, don't hold me to this, but I've also been thinking lately that it's about time for me to get around to outlining Chapter Six and getting the specifics of how the finale will play out down on paper. Whether or not that will actually happen anytime soon... we'll have to wait and see. That might be something I'll do in-between editing Chapters Two and Three. But, it really is something that's been on my mind for a while, and it's something I'd like to get squared away sooner rather than later.

That's all for this month's update. By this time next month, I should be neck deep in editing the trial. Talk to you then!

Howdy, ya'll.

I've been thinking over the past few days, "Hasn't it been about a month since I last posted an update?" And wouldn't you know it, it has. So let's dig right into what's going on.

For starters, Chapter One has now been completely edited. It's actually been done for two weeks or so at least. That was a doozy to edit. We ended up touching up/rephrasing/rewriting nearly every line in the chapter. That's now reflected in Chapter One's word count. Originally, Chapter One was 71,827 words long. Now it is 69,782 words long. That'll probably be a running theme throughout this ginormous editing pass. In quite a few scenes we 'trimmed the fat', so to speak. And there were some lines that got outright cut altogether. It's really for the best, though. I re-read the prologue and a good chunk of Chapter One, and it's night and day. It reads so much better than before. So, we'll definitely be making sure each chapter gets the same level of treatment to make them as good as they can possibly be.

As far as Chapter Two is concerned, editing has not begun yet. I'm waiting for my editing partner to finish it up (they're on the trial right now). They've actually been deliberately postponing finishing it to give me a break, and for good reason. I've had several mini-meltdowns in the wake of finishing Chapter Five for several different reasons. Suffice to say, making this game has taken more out of me than you could ever know. Forge:Re has had a very stressful and demanding development cycle—one in which I've refused to take a significant vacation (my beta testers tell me every so often that I really deserve/need to take one). So, the forcible break is much appreciated (especially since I just started a new job). Still, I'm feeling fairly refreshed, so it's my hope to start editing Chapter Two soon.

Speaking of taking breaks, there are several things I've been thinking long and hard about, and I've finally come to a decision. I mentioned in the comments section a week or two ago that I was considering releasing Chapters 1-5 all at once as soon as they're edited and finished. I've since scrapped that idea, and here's why. Once Chapter 5 is completely edited, I'm going to take a several month long vacation. It's been nearly two years since I started seriously working on Forge:Re. It's consumed much of my life since then. I need a serious vacation not only to refresh myself, but to think about how I'm going to handle Chapter Six. I believe I've said this in the past, but while I know the answers to every mystery Forge:Re presents, I don't know how I want to present those answers. Figuring out how I want the investigation and the ensuing trial to go is going to take a lot of thought. So, I'd like to have ample time to think it through such that I get it right. The last thing anyone wants is an unsatisfying ending that's rushed out the door.

To that end, I'll be releasing Chapters 1-5 episodically. If I released them all at once, you'd have to wait both for my vacation to end as well as several months for me to make Chapter Six and get it all prettied up and ready for public consumption. In releasing the chapters episodically, you guys can get a new chapter to play through while I'm kicking back and taking a well-deserved rest. This way, you get some time to digest each chapter, too. As much as I'd love to release all five chapters at once, it just doesn't make any sense to do that when you take all of these things into account.

On a different note, my beta testers have all finished playing through Chapter Five. I got some very interesting and very different responses about it. The general consensus is that the majority of it was great (barring some easy to fix issues). It's the ending that seems to be a little polarizing. I won't get into how or why it's polarizing for obvious reasons, but one of my beta testers likened it to Danganronpa V3 or Zero Time Dilemma (if any of you have played those). They think it will be polarizing in the same sort of way those were. I'm not really sure how to take that, but that's what they said! Hopefully you'll like it once Chapter Five is out, but I can definitely understand where people wouldn't be too into it. Forge:Re is a game that's pretty out there in general, so...

There are two other quick things I'd like to mention before closing this blog post out. I've mentioned before how there's now a jukebox you can pull up at almost any time to listen to any songs you've already heard. Trust me, it'll be useful. I have a beta tester who dug around in the game's music folder to find a single song. With the jukebox, you'll be able to see the song's original title, composer, where it came from, etc. Everything you need to know to look any song that strikes your fancy up with ease. As a part of that jukebox, I originally planned to include commentary on certain tracks, which would discuss why I chose a certain song, contain some fun facts, and so forth. That's since been axed. Towards the end of Chapter One, I was really struggling to come up with words for the commentary. Let's face it, talking about music is difficult. It's hard to put words to feelings, especially those invoked by music. So, I'm just going to let the music speak for itself. If you have any questions about song choice or anything of the sort, you can ask me when you play.

Now, this will probably come out of left field, but I have something fun to talk about. Somehow or another weeks back, I came across some commissioned plushies that looked really good, and I got to thinking... "What if I commissioned a plushie of one of Forge:Re's characters?" So, I did! Choosing which character to commission was a tough choice, which was ultimately influenced by several factors (there are some characters I already have merchandise of, and complexity of outfits was something I had to take into serious consideration). Ultimately, I decided on a character with a relatively straightforward design: Yukari. Below, you'll see a picture of her.



Much as I'd love to commission plushies of the rest, these things are not cheap. Still, I'm very satisfied with the end product, so maybe after Forge:Re is finished, I'll consider commissioning another few. For now, I'll link to the Etsy shop I commissioned it from in case any of you have an interest in commissioning one yourself (not of Yukari. Of whatever character/creature you like). Here's the link if anyone is interested.

That's all for this month. Things are going to get real interesting real soon, as I'll be going back to school at the end of the month in addition to working. Throw working on Forge:Re into the mix and who knows how this is going to go! Rest assured, I'll continue working on Forge:Re as I'm able. So, we'll see where things stand in mid-September. See you then!