Hard to believe it's been almost a year since the first version of Proverbs went live! I know it's been a while since the last update, but it's because a lot has changed with it. We'd just finished porting Proverbs to RPGMaker MZ in the last update; that left a lot of wrinkles on our end to smooth over before we could even think about adding anything else. Also, since Proverbs has a very large scope, a lot of time has been spent setting up for the next large-scale story update (two words: World Map!!) That means there's some dummied-out content in Proverbs now that probably won't end up being playable until the next anniversary, hah. More on that later.

Things new to this version include:

-Expansion of the main quest! A new sidequest in Shan's route! New enemies! New CG art! New items to craft! It probably bears mentioning that my last playtests of Proverbs have been upwards of six hours!

-Skills that interact with the overworld! In current Proverbs, those skills only open new dialogue options; soon, they'll do things like:

    -Let Lithium eat the corpses you find through the wastes

    -Have Shan's spit explode rubble blocking your path to open up new areas

    -And more!

-Difficulty Selection! Easy mode includes tutorials, reduces enemy stats, and has more chests; Normal is a balanced mode without tutorials or bonus overworld items, but with some new surprise enemy encounters; Hard mode increases enemy stats, has no chest freebies, and adds even more surprise enemies.

-Quest Journal and Text Log feature, plus a new item that lets you keep your own notes on the game! These features were suggested by a player; I really enjoyed getting to incorporate suggestions like this!

-A whole heap of bug fixes and other odds and ends I sure hope I can remember by the time I need to write actual patch notes!

Originally, the plan was to update the demo with bug fixes and occasional new content while saving most of it for a final complete release. Things have changed somewhat, to reflect what I've learned during this year of development. Here's something like a roadmap:

+By the 27th of March, to celebrate a full year of development, the game (in whatever state it's in at that point, lol) is going to get a private upload here for beta testing. Shoot me a message on discord before then if you're interested--anyone who wants in is welcome!

+Proverbs 1.0 will go public later this spring, after the beta period has ended. Because of the amount of content in this new version of Proverbs, not to mention the time Isidore and I have spent working on it, I feel like the time is right to start treating it like a complete game in its own right.

+Then, I'm going to be hard at work writing the future of Proverbs. Think about the first time you played FF7, when you left Midgar for the first time and realized how much more there was to the world... The entire first volume of Proverbs is like that compared to what I have planned for the rest of the game. I intend to have at least two more large story updates, each of which will add more to the plot than this update does. To get to the point where the new areas of the game are playable, and feel as full of things to do as the base game... that's going to take a while. I knew before I started it that Proverbs would be a multi-year commitment if I wanted to see it through to the end and do it justice. Thank you for your patience. I promise, there will be less radio silence on the Itch end of things in the future.

Until then, my tumblr @saifdevis where I'll continue to post WIPs and other things as soon as they're added to Proverbs.

Thank you for reading, and see you at the end of March!