Hello, sprouts!

I've made a choice about the game, which I didn't want to wait for the next update to change. However, a mere publishing decision wouldn't warrant its own update, so I've added an itty bit to the game. For you, it'll just appear as three pages, but there's more than what meets the eye!

In this mini update:

• A custom scrollbar to fit with the colour scheme of the game

•  The very small aforementioned update to the game itself in which you meet Sharla and try to introduce yourself. (First letter for both personal name and surname will automatically be changed to uppercase if you don't do it)

•  A few under the hood tweaks to the tired/rested system ready for future updates, when the game opens up for free roaming.

•  A few under the hood tweaks to the right sidebar.

•  A fix to the pronoun variables.

•  A little more text variation in the previous passages if you're a gigant. Nothing important, just a bit of flavour text.

You will also need to start a new game for these tweaks to work; sorry, but it's better to fix things like this early!

The next update will:

• finish the prologue 

• finish character setup

• return the title page image. (do you want to see a snippet? Look at the image attached to the devlog! Bow to your Krongr and your Captain! ...to those who saw the draft I'd posted in the original release, I can only apologise for making you want to gouge out your eyeballs. But you can see that this is an improvement, eh? Ehh?) 

• unlock character and POV pages

• finish the POVs (although if anyone has a “what if” or POV they'd like to see, feel free to mention it. Not saying I'll do it, but I will consider it, if it's worthwhile.)

• You'll have a scene where you can change your pronouns to they/them and have a NB indication on your profile. Having this will stop your allies using gendered terms towards you.

• Will finish the battle scenes.

• Hopefully I'll complete and tidy up some more codex pages. (but this isn't 100% yet)

•  MORE BAD ENDS. (hopefully. If I can figure out how to fit them in. This is my greatest aspiration. I want nothing more than to kill your protagonist for reasons I haven't understood myself, as of yet. Oh, I can dream though, can't I?)

Regarding the NSFW rating removal

Having the game as NSFW was an accident, of sorts. I had been concerned about about certain content (in this instance, euthanasia and suicide found in the dead ends) reaching minors or vulnerable people and had the game tagged as containing sensitive content. It had not occurred to me that it would be tagged as NSFW and be placed amongst the more sexual focused games. Clearly an oversight on my part.

In the future I may consider optional sexual content for mission purposes, such as a honeypot situation. I intend for the missions to be completed in multiple ways, and had told myself that I wouldn't rule anything out if I can think of why it would work. This remains true and so, logically, sexual methods are possible, but I'd have to think about how to implement it: how graphic would the text be; what situations am I refusing to include; if it's included in missions, do I then include it as a possible activity in the protagonist's free time for more immersion?

Out of curiosity, I tried looking up other IFs with mature content (which included self-harm, sex, murder, gore, etc.) on a browser that wasn't signed in to my account to see the results. My game, although indexed, was not visible to the wider community, whereas the others are. When I signed in and allowed seeing NSFW content, my game was visible. Researching more IFs, not just on itch.io but also on Choice of Games, I found that all they have are content warnings within the game page, which I also have. So if they can do this, why not me? I don't want my game to be isolated from the wider IF reader community on itch.io, who I feel can give me valuable feedback. To gain their attention, this means I have to reach out, hence the reasoning behind the NSFW removal.

So to those who followed my game and added to their collections while it was tagged as NSFW, I can only assume that you were looking for something to have a special fun time with and somehow decided that, although this didn't fulfil that need, you still enjoyed what I'd posted. For which I can only say, sorry to ruin your day/night but thanks a bunch for liking the game! I hope you'll continue to enjoy it with each new update.

UPDATE:  Well, heck, I can be an absentminded fool. I only went and put the index file in the wrong place.  It is now where it should be, and the game should run now!