Heelloo, everyone!

Welcome to our February Devlog! I know, I promised to start posting the Devlogs in January—and I tried to—but things were a bit complicated. Fear not! We’ll just start a little late. ;)

In general, these past months since my last devlog have been all about learning. 

I’ve learned A LOT about programming, about writing, and about myself. The first thing I realized is that I wanted to keep being open about my struggles during the development process + about who I am. We’re all artists in one way or another; we all have stories and creativity inside us, so my hope is that this openness will help you see that you, like me, can also use my stories + your art to explore yourself and find refuge! ♥

Let’s start slow, though. Here are some things I’ve worked on:

• We reached 100k words in the game, yay!
• Released a new short story on ko-fi for Valentine’s Day (1900 words) (https://ko-fi.com/post/Valentines-day-short-story-Year-845-Does-it-t-O5O3UHB8B)
• I fixed a lot of small bugs that stopped some scenes from being triggered + a few problems with choice flags in the previous chapters. I tried to code things so that you wouldn’t need to replay any of the previous chapters, but I still have to test it some more.
• I’m about to finish one of my favorite scenes in the game, where the Royal Family plays a Storyteller game that might show you glimpses of all DCs’ story arcs.

- Scheduling: the next supporters build will be released on March 31st, and the next public build will be released on April 30th.

Art:

• Worked on a new CG
• You can watch me working on that CG on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/authorligianunes)
• I’m remaking some of Matt’s sprites, focusing on the old one I made for the Blooming ceremony. It definitely needs an upgrade.
• I sketched the ceremonial garments for the Queen and Melike.

And some struggles:

- I had two main struggles this month. The first one was all about growth. Since I’m so much better at programming, I realized that I made several not-so-sound choices in the past when it comes to the game’s programming. This is natural, of course. It happens during long projects.

Still, it would take me a VERY long time to fix those problems, which would then take time away from getting the game closer to completion. So I decided to keep working on the new chapters, and once the game is completed and released to you all, I’ll fully rewrite my code, all at once.

- The second struggle was all about my mental health. I’m (still) in a weird place when it comes to my day job, and there’s a lot of uncertainty everywhere. That + the news, mainly about Palestine and Brazil, hit me hard. Sadness and uncertainty walk hand in hand with anxiety, so I had a really intense and pretty long anxiety attack in early February.

When things reached the cant-leave-my-bed-in-the-morning level of bad, I made a logical, extremely organized plan for myself (that’s the only way my brain works, I’m very boring XDDD) that included a new morning routine + exercises + daily 30min of reading while I drink my coffee. This new plan + my therapist + a whole bunch of patience + your support on itch/tumblr/ig/ko-fi are DEFINITELY helping me a lot, and while I’m still taking baby steps, I’m managing to finish things again, as you all can see in the list above! ;DDD

This is it for this month, then. 

I hope you’re all healthy and safe wherever you are, and if you’re also affected by the world’s events, I hope you’re being patient and kind to yourself. Talking about it definitely helps. ♥♥♥

As always, a massive thank you to my supporters on ko-fi, who are helping me bring Love the Guard, Be the King to you all:

♥ AJendryke IF ♥ Aliann232 ♥ Ash ♥ Cath ♥ Corvid ♥ Dry Cappuccino Games ♥ Ida ♥ Katie ♥ Kit ♥ LazyDreamer ♥ Loren ♥ Lucerni ♥ Megan ♥ Mersailia ♥ Raiana Towne ♥ Ried ♥ rottingskin ♥ Samantha ♥ SlyFire ♥ svf ♥ Tifftastically ♥ and all the anonymous supporters on kofi. ♥

Much love, beijões, 

Ligia

(And it's been a while since I worked on a self-portrait, so here's one i made this week. It's all about feeling dead inside, but still wearing that jeans jacket dfgjhguisdjkfr)