Hello again, it's been a while. I want to keep this part of the update short, so in essence, the first half of this year really hit me hard and I had to step back from all of my project work. I had a few moments where I thought I could come back to this, but it didn't really pan out until now. Apologies for my absence, but I didn't feel right posting again until I actually knew I would be able to commit to this project.

That aside, I first want to say thanks so much to everyone who is following the project! I have been paying attention to my notifications here and it is honestly incredibly uplifting to see all the follows and even tips while I've been away. It has been extremely frustrating not being able to work on this, and I'm really happy to get back to work.

In my time away I did spend a lot of time thinking about the scope and intent of this game, as well as what I want to do for the next update, and there are some changes to my plans as a result. Everything I mentioned would be in the next build will still be included, however, after some thought I realized there was a major feature that should really be present in the next build.  Casting Styles are a core mechanic of the game, and it doesn't make sense not to get the first two into a build that is meant to represent the core of the game. So in total, here's what will be in the next build:

-2 New rooms/Arenas

-Wave based spawning system

- Four (Technically Five) New Enemies with new attacks and behavior

-Four new spell elements

-"Shifting": The ability to switch between different sets of equipped spell elements in combat

-"Casting Styles": Augmentations to spell elements that make them behave differently in combat

-Prototype Enemy and Player HUDs with damage and status indicators

-Two new animations for the Interactive Scene, plus an intro animation

-Sprite refinements (especially that awful run cycle!)

-Physics/Spell refinements (Electri in particular, more consistent knockback, platform collision fixes)

Most of this is already complete, however I will be spending a bit more time on the enemy sprites to animate some actions that were either still frames or of very few frames in length. Some new splash and key art will also be released along with the build, as well as some new screenshots to better represent the game.

After this build I plan on moving into a cycle of smaller, iterative builds that will focus on very specific aspects of the game. Other features such as new enemies or spells will be added sporadically to each update, but in general they will be much more concise in terms of their additions. This order may change, but currently planned are:

-Menu Update: Adds customization menus so you can set spells, casting styles, and passive effects.

-Feedback Update: Focused on improving the feedback from hitting enemies, taking damage, etc. etc.

-Grappling Update: Adds grapple mechanics! This is a big one, and may come further down the line as I'm still not 100% sure how I want to implement this.

-Status and Buffs Update: What it says on the tin. Lots of functional effects to augment direct combat.

-Optimization Pass: The last update of the cycle, focused on making the game run nicely, fixing bugs, compressing files, etc.

The goal by the end of this cycle is to have a fully functioning Debug/Trial Mode so that all the mechanics are in place for me to actually start on the scenario. Various graphical improvements, new enemies, and new spells/effects will be added with each update as well, just not with any kind of specific commitment; some may have a lot, some not so much.

In any case, I just wanted to give you all a broad idea of what was coming in this comeback post, a more specific update will come in a week or so as I figure out how much time I'll need to wrap this build up.

Thanks again to everyone who is following this project, I really appreciate it!