Surprise! Just a fun render (more at the bottom) to lead things off, but I wanted to make a brief post on the status of the game and to assuage any rumors that the production has stopped. Well, there was one post and I responded to it directly, but I realize I haven't posted a single thing here in months and that's just not right! But just in case I go MIA and you're worried, I usually post a monthly update on the game's F95 thread here: https://f95zone.to/threads/erisas-summer-v0-5-0-im6.11135/
I also figured out that the Discord link I launched with the game was DOA. This will be fixed in the next release, but if you want to follow me on Discord, you can check out the channel here: https://discord.gg/kBFecKEU5C 

Anyway, yep, you guessed it, I'm still working on the game! The past many months have run the gamut of the development process: writing, staging, rendering, animating, remastering, and revising. I spent a month on developing some new skills (AfterEffects, coding save names, a little Blender) and implementing the results, another month or two remastering some existing scenes (including a few animations) to better expressions and results. I'm not saying I'll never go back and touch things up, but... I think I'm happier with what I have now than what used to be there.

I think this was time well-spent because it'll improve quality of renders or quality of life in the game moving forward. The remasters will also make a better first impression and re-visit for established players.

I hit the ground running with writing and finished that process around September. Rendering, meanwhile, has taken a considerably longer time, mostly due to my day job running wild and limiting the time I have available to dedicate to working on the game. ...And because I put in a fairly large number of scenes for this update. ...And because I've come to the conclusion that, for whatever reason, my rendering process just seems to be longer than that of other developers. On my list of process improvements is figuring out what I can do to speed that up, but I'm also unwilling to compromise on what I feel has become pretty dang good quality.

But the point is, after a bunch of long nights with limited time to stage and render scenes, I'm finally reaching the end of the rendering process for Day 3. There are a number of images and animations supporting 4 dinner dates, 1 group event, 6 possible evening events, and 1 final sequence. It's been a long road, but I'm happy to almost be at the end of it! I expect to be able to launch version 0.6.0 no later than March. If I'm lucky it may be even sooner.

Because of the necessarily wide nature of the update, it may not feel substantive to everyone - especially after almost a year. I totally get that. It's the nature of the game. But I would ask that you consider multiple playthroughs in evaluating this latest update once it launches. ...And maybe keep in mind that I do this all for free in my limited spare time!

Thank you all for following... You're all wonderful people and I will try to be more regular with the updates here as well as other channels.
My thinking was essentially "why keep posting when it's just I'm still working on rendering", but sometimes it's good just to check-in.

Stay Safe and look forward to 0.6.0 soon!
-IM6

PS - Oh, and here are some other bonus images I made and shared on Twitter, etc... Enjoy!