Hello everyone! This is a bit awkward timing, as our next development report will be out by next Friday and so I don't want to do a big news post and then repeat myself a ton next week. ^^" This will be a pretty short update on things!

First and foremost, about the next game build/version release!

It'll be coming in December, actually two releases in the month. The first will be the rest of episode 5's content as we're finishing that up and ran into some issues with that, which I'll explain in a moment below. The second will be our first QoL release, which should contain Ep 1 & 2's new additions, covering some new gameplay features, new scenes, new cg art & variants, along with the female protagonist being playable, amongst other things being updated!

We had things moving along smoothly for November with the release that would've covered the rest of episode 5. Up until about 2 weeks ago, as payments were being sorted out for the team, I nearly had everyone paid for the month besides our cg artists and programmer. I went to go pay them not even a day later as we were still sorting out some details prior to payment, and that's when I noticed something wrong.

My bank was hit by fraud, more so.. One of my personal accounts was hacked into and it was an account I haven't used in 2-3+ years, but surprisingly.. My card or Paypal must've been linked to said account and so, someone went on a spending spree.. Not only with remaining funds from November that was attached to my bank account, but also my personal savings, leaving me with $0 in both checking and savings.

Rest assured, I typically don't keep payment options saved or attached to many accounts, besides ones that I actively use and those are always protected with two-step authorization, besides a number of other security measures taken often to avoid such issues. I've never had this sort of issue before in all of my history, knock on wood.. But this old personal account as detailed above was long forgotten about, hence why it happened.

Even then, I was alerted with email alerts from the website attached to said account. But by the time I had seen those within less than a hour, the damage was done.

The good news... Once this all took place, I instantly contacted my bank, card issuer and the website that personal account is attached to. I've been able to get the money returned to my bank account that was used during the fraud, but that did take sometime to process. I have a new bank card that's only attached to active account/websites I use often and in regards to the personal account that was hacked in the first place. I went ahead and once everything was fully sorted out, I deleted that personal account as I wasn't using it in the first place to be extra safe.

I've done a lot of other security measures besides those to ensure that nothing happens to any of my other personal accounts and mainly, that nothing happens to any project related accounts, etc.

In summary, everything is secure and safe, protected like a watchdog. Everything is back to normal.

Now, how's this related to the delay of the game content being released?

As mentioned, it happened prior to me paying our cg artists and programmer. As of right now, they're taken care of as if everything is normal. But during the process of the past 2 weeks, development was halted as the programmer was waiting on their pay and in general, I needed to ensure everything else was secured from any possible fraud attempts to avoid those completely moving forward.

The good news, is that we're actively moving along on development again with the upcoming content. It's just that we had about a 2 week period of progress completely halted until everything was sorted out, everyone was paid, etc.

Hence the delay for why the rest of episode 5's build/version release is moving into December.

[~In Closing~]

Overall, I want to ensure everyone that everything is secure and once again, no accounts attached to the project were affected. The only attachment is that the project funds come into my personal bank account, which has also been adjusted when I called the bank to setup another account that's purely business. That one is now attached to the project to also help avoid this from happening ever again. 

In order to make up for this delay, those who have supported in October, November or December will receive access to two test builds free of charge. ($5+ supporters and just supporting once during this period gives access.)

One test build for episode 5, one for the QoL content!

We know this isn't entirely fair for our higher tier supporters, so we want to provide them with a bonus for their support during those months as well. This bonus might not be ready until January, but regardless, you'll receive something that's well worth it!

I'd like to offer more to all our fans in general, regardless if supporting or not, but with how busy the holiday season is ahead of us and promises to deliver what we're doing now. I'll be working overtime to ensure everything highlighted above is delivered upon. I'd like to possibly do something special for all fans as a whole, but it'll have to be some time into the start of 2025.

Regardless, that's just he bonus stuff. The main thing is, supporters will receive two build/versions released in December as mentioned. For public fans, you'll also receive two build/versions released alongside the support build/versions that should feel pretty fair and equal! 

I apologize for the inconvenience, but I hope what we end up delivering upon will make up for it to end this year with a bang! Then 2025 has much ahead for what we have planned to kick off the new year! <3