Happy holidays, everyone! Here's a quick status update and a minor update to the game.

NEWS: In case you haven't seen on Twitter, the next major update will likely be the finished game and will be released sometime in the first half of next year - expect later rather than sooner. I'm setting a hard deadline for myself of the game's first anniversary, 6/21, and whatever I have by then will be the finished product. This is mostly to maintain my mental health! I wasn't prepared for this project to be anything more than a short-term experiment, and at a certain point it eats away at you more than motivates you. Setting a single deadline will keep me motivated without feeling pressured to deliver every 1-2 months. Thanks for understanding. <3

Without further ado, the contents of this patch:

CHANGES (0.3.9):

• Added the third unique scene for Luke's route, the only character missing one.
• Added a very brief (1-2k words) transition before the next chapter.
• Added 3 CGs, one for the end of each character's first day! They can also be viewed via the gallery function when unlocked, courtesy of Keo's code. (If you're in Discord, you may have seem them already. Some of them are very old drafts I couldn't bring myself to revise, but I figured it would be better than nothing.)
• I've also incorporated Wattson's Auto Highlight code to highlight characters when speaking.
• Fixed a bug where choosing not to text anyone at the end of the first day would end the game (lol). You can now pursue a "non-route" not linked to any of the three main characters.
• Images are now .webp files, not .pngs, slightly reducing overall file size.
• Minor sprite edits. Most notably Cedric no longer makes his :x face.
• Fixed some typos and edited some words.
• For anyone familiar with it, we are now pushing new builds with butler. Let me know if you encounter any issues.

I have about 13k words of the next chapter written so far. If I had to make a very conservative estimate, there are maybe 20-30k more words after that. It's difficult to make a guess because the wordcount includes branching dialogue, but it's about 30-50% of the game.

Thanks for sticking around, and see you next year!