One thing I'll clear is that the update seems to be genuinely almost finished. This is taken from the other sites, but by his own chart it's about ~98% finished, with 0.2 having roughly 350 images in it while the new update alone has 1276 currently, and will likely reach around 1300, plus over 100 more animations. This update is MASSIVE, and it seems that Mecha underestimated the amount of work they needed to do each time, or incidentally continually broadening the scope which caused a longer workflow.
He's promised that the future updates will be smaller to not have such a huge wait time again.
Also heed that it will be roughly three weeks after the official release for it to become free, so you should check back in July.
I appreciate your kind words very much!
While what you say is true and I definitely underestimated the amount of work, like said in the replies below, it's still my fault to convince myself that these ambitious release dates are something that I can meet.
But it is also true that, at the very start of making this update, I had a lot of worry thinking that it wasn't going to be enough content to really make an update. And now, it has only proven to be way too much at once for myself.
Like the others, thank you for your comment!
I remember you saying some time back that you were considering staggering future updates into more frequent, smaller releases and I think for your own sake that's a great idea.
I prefer long waits with big updates because I get to forget what I've done and it feels less like a chore going through things I've already done. But I personally find if I'm creating something it's nice to have frequent checkpoints where I can think "Yeah this is working". I don't want to make assumptions about you but I think that would be a healthier approach for you.
Also, 350 images to 1300? You almost quadrupled the game size. That's an insane undertaking, and hats off to you for putting so much work in but that seems like an easy way to burn yourself out.
The update will come out when it comes out, just look after yourself 👍