Episode 4 release dates!

Laaaaaaaaadies and gentlemen! Finally. We are finally at the end of the journey (misery).

I am extremely happy to finally announce the release of the long awaited Episode 4.Honestly it's been so long that I forgot how to even write such announcements so uhh bear with me 🤣

Realistic jokes aside, I am so excited to finally show you what I've been working the last year. I am still finishing things up, still got a few animations to go, but I am confident I can reach the dates I posted with this last stretch of work.

Now to those that either are new, maybe weren't fully up-to-date or just forgot during this time (who can blame them, I'd be happy if people remember character names 😂), there are multiple reasons why it took this long to wrap this episode up.
First and foremost, as many are aware, I was (or still am) a student and I've been attending it this year. I've been fully transparent and openly said it's was my main focus for this year, hence why development suffered. I don't live in the same city as the uni, so besides just the crushing amount of work I needed to put into passing all exams and projects (ptsd word), I also had to waste 3-4 hours daily on just transport. As you can see here , I made a clear Public post in December that I won't be able to work for a month and a half on the game. And I didn't.
I also made a post for Patrons and regarding billing and if they wanted me to pause, and openly offered refunds if anyone wanted to (post here). I finally finished the vast majority of Uni related things at the middle of June, and only since then was I actually free. I didn't graduate (need to write a thesis which takes time), but I managed to ace every single exam and project and pass everything on first try. Kat the Nerd, I know.

All that is fine, but weren't the last 4 months since then supposed to be faster?
And the answer is yes. I honestly thought back then in late June that I had made roughly 50-60% of the game and that it would be breezy till the end, but I vastly underestimated the time required to actually learn a few things. In retrospect, even if I was fully free, I don't see this update being able to be done in less than 7-8 months with all that I learnt and worked on for it. I've had some great help with coding stuff thanks to Gary, without whom I'd probably not release till Xmas with how bad my coding was. There are multiple new features that simply took time to make work, and in a good polished way, without breaking anything. And there is also animations and renders.
I really really thought here that 1180 renders was 60% of the game, and I also thought that completely learning animations from scratch and making them would only take 2 weeks total 🤣

Yeah. That was incorrect.
In total (I'll make proper changelog when beta/releases are up) we reached 2 700 total renders (60% my ass) and 20+ animations. So while I know there are some who might be disappointed in last 4 months, I can assure you that I worked my butt off with those extra 1500 renders since then, animations, coding, more dialogue and so on. I also had a family tragedy of which I bounced off back to work after minimal break.

Honestly, not sure what else to write, as I said in beginning, I was just winging it. Maybe I'll be more prepared for future faster (wink wink) releases. Once again, huge thank you for all the dedicated fans that have been patiently waiting, and especially to all that supported me on patreon as without them, I wouldn't have had the chance to work on this.

TLDR Thanks and I ain't writing a tldr 😁🏃‍♀️

Love you, Kat <3