Hey everyone, I come with tons of great news this month!

At long last, a new route of Artificial Selection has been completed. Our lucky Sinner this time around is Loye!

I put a lot of care into crafting his story, and now Ko-fi supporters get to experience it from start to finish. Initial reactions have been excellent, and I hope those who have yet to play it will also enjoy it!

Seriously, thank you so much for supporting me and following me along this journey. Watching this grumpy young man turn into a slightly less grumpy young man would not have been possible without you!

In a devlog from a year ago (after finishing Effera's route), I said that the Loye would be a trial run to see how quickly I can put out individual routes. Now, since then, exactly 13 months have passed, and even after removing the months that weren't explicitly spent on creating new story content, we still end up with a development time of 10 months.  10 months for a 90,000+ word story isn't terrible, but it also isn't good, so I want to do better moving forward. This brings us to...

What's Next?

After completing a route, I always like to take a break by polishing what I have so far and properly preparing for the next route. This means there won't be any new story content the next two months,  but in return the Demo will receive some love again (more on that below). 

Though Insiders won't be neglected, either: Namely, this time, you get to decide what the next route will be! I'll open a poll towards the end of May, and I can already tell you the options will be Maesol, Foris, Tiss, and Kydan. So make sure to campaign properly for the route you want to see most!

Then, in June, I'll be carefully outlining the winning route so I have a rock-solid foundation to work with (while drawing some of your most requested CG ideas). 

After that, it's new story content time, and my goal is to finish this next route within 8 updates! This will be a challenge, but I know I need to up the pace to be able to release Artificial Selection within a reasonable amount of time. Wish me luck!

First things first, though...

Demo Update

The long-awaited Demo update is coming real soon, and it's gonna look better than ever, AND contain some great quality-of-life improvements in various escape rooms. These changes will become available for free for everyone, so I hope you look forward to them!

New Promo Art

You may have also noticed the Artificial Selection store page(s) got a new title graphic! This was done in part because I felt like it, and also because I got my first-ever convention booth and needed something that was high-res enough to print a huge poster for.

That being said, I'll be at the Fantasy Basel from May 29-31. If you happen to visit, come say hello!

Patch Notes

To wrap it all up, here's everything that's new, summarized neatly:

• The conclusion to Loye's route!
• New promo art!
• 12k new words. (240,000+ in total)
• 1 new CG!
• A new variant for an existing CG!
• 2 additional music tracks were fully mastered by Zaxcess!
• 3 new CTC Icons in the bonus shop!
• Improved the look of the quick menu when using a gamepad.
• Added a "Leave" button to the Code Solver in the electronics escape room.
• Added more pages for save slots.
• Increased the size of save file screenshots.
• Pixel icons now always show on save files.
• Fixed line widths in the history screen.
• Fixed crashes.

With that out of the way, I hope you like all the new stuff, and I'll talk to you again very soon regarding the Demo update.

Thank you so much for your support!