Quick note: We've been doing updates on our Indiegogo campaign for a couple of months now but just realized we can push updates here since we somehow have a decent following (thanks for that lol!) Here are the previous updates in case you want to be completely caught up!

• October progress report
• December progress report
• January progress report

And now, the February progress report!

Another month gone by and geez, February sure is the shortest month of the year :V

But a silly thing like that won't stop us from making strides in development! Here's a summary of what's happened since last month's update:

• In the gacha's department we still haven't started with the process of actually drawing their designs out, but we have completed their designs in text for both the backer gachas AND the rest of our own collection. Some are pretty out there and I can't wait to see Rocc's reaction to them lol. We were going to design at least some of these during the month but last minute we decided it'd be better to...
• Go for the backer bosses! This was the last thing we had to take care of when it came to backer in-game rewards. We had already been in contact with these 3 giga chads but near the end of the month we finally got their ideas for their characters's attacks and ooowie! They are all super cool and unique ideas and we honestly can't wait to implement them and see them in action. Unlike the backer NPCs though, we are most likely not going to show their designs publicly, being that they are suposed to secret bosses and all! Still, right now we're keeping them in the concept stage and will probably implement them near the end of development.
• Memories! I had promised to show off at least 2 effects this month. We ended up implementing a bit more than that but for the sake of keeping surprises we're just going to showcase two of them. The preview and some elaboration at the end of the post!
• Xirec went ahead and did a HUGE rework meant to fix stuttering on screens with refresh rates that were not multiples of 60. Gotta make sure the game runs as clean as possible in as much hardware as possible!
• Vega's fight is complete! Well, more accurately, all of her attacks have been implemented and have at the very least temp animations and VFX. We still have to actually design and program her behaviour and of course tweak and balance the attacks as we become more intimate with them. We'll be picking the next fight we implement soon enough so we should have a sneak peek ready for you next month!
• Not a lot of progress in the implementation of the story, mostly because I went back and refined what was already done rather than adding new stuff. It's always hard to decide what to do in these cases since the point of this phase is to just put the entire story in a playable state but it's almost impossible to stay put and not make changes when improvements are so obvious. Even if progress is progress I'd rather I was able to stick to the plan a bit more strictly FeelsBadMan.

In general some things are moving faster than anticipated and others a bit slower, which I would guess is to be expected but as always we're excited to keep working on Bittersweet Birthday, the release can't come soon enough!

Now for the memories we're going to preview today, take a look at this very quick preview! You can stop reading now if you don't want to spoil yourself from the effects!

I did say it was a quick preview lol. Almost everyone will notice a new visual particle when the player dodges the first time. This is a new mechanic that a few memories share. If you dodge an attack in a very tight window you'll activate a perfect dodge! By it's own it does nothing, but different memories will make it trigger different effects. This one in particular heals the player a bit when they do a perfect dodge.

The other memory effect is a bit harder to notice, but those observant will catch that the stamina is not getting depleted when the player dodges, this is because of the active effect, which makes rolling cost HP rather than stamina! Now that sounds pretty harsh, and it is supposed to be harsh; it is after all, a memory with a negative effect. But even these can be taken advantage of! By combining both, it means that dodging is effectively free as as long as you perform perfect dodges. In fact you get more HP back than the cost of the roll so overall you'll get healed past the cost!