Pretty good! No spoilers, but dev update is coming on the end of this month, and I should have some pretty solid progress to share.
No, Substar always gets the release a month early. This has its ups and downs: you get the game earlier, but you also get the very first raw version of it, before any bug fixes, extra balancing etc. I'll let people know once it's getting close regardless though, and for some people SubStar may be the better option, as there are a LOT of payment options now, including expanded credit card options. Definitely worth checking out, even just for one month to buy the game, if you can't use Paypal here on Itch.