Week 2 of Absolution is coming on the 20th of December, 2021

This is an estimated release date, but I'll do my best not to go beyond it, so it's more of a deadline for me. Why the 20th, you ask? I figured it would be nice for everyone involved to get something for Christmas - you get new content (finally!) and I get feedback and some time off - I obviously won't stop working, but I imagine things will calm down a bit once week 2 is released and people are letting it sink in, so to speak.

In other news, I'm currently in the process of working on the graphical overhaul - here's how it's going.

To summarize, I have one illustration and 6 sets of sprites left, I drew three new sets of sprites and two new illustrations so far.

While the graphical overhaul is happening, I'm also working on various improvements to the demo/week 2. I have a whole checklist of things I want to do before the release of Build A/the final demo update, so I'll briefly go over it here.

• Improve the main menu - this is mostly done by now, but I've modernized the main menu screen, adding the animated background loop from the click to continue screen, changing the logo's appearance and the navigation. I've also added a new "credits" screen, which contains a list of people who helped me and various disclaimers, like the content warnings, in case you ever want to look at those again.
• Expand on the character info screen with a location info screen for various areas in the hospital, lore around the area, and the like. Entries would be unlocked as you get to see more places, much like the character info screen.

• Make the empathy meter meaningful outside of the job interview - this is a tricky one, but I'm considering adding more choices to increase your empathy meter and more consequences for it - I'm thinking of minor changes in MC's internal monologue as she reacts to certain information, how she addresses her coworkers, but I'm also considering creating short events that only happen if your empathy is very high or very low - for example, a nurse the MC doesn't know might approach her and ask for help, seeing how kind she is to everyone around her - or maybe entering other people's conversations as MC often does should be harder with a low empathy and would result in a less pleasant and cheerful outcome.
• The empathy meter reminds me a lot of the sanity meter and how it's used, so maybe my plans for the sanity mechanic should carry over to the empathy one. H M M... I wonder how different combinations of the two might affect your ending... 🤔

• Fix any typos, bugs, crashes, and wonky dialogue I can find. This is pretty broad, but I'm on the lookout for anything that requires fixing.

• Look at the more triggering scenes in the game and carefully consider if the topics discussed are framed the way I intended - I've gotten good feedback on weeks 2-4, but I still think some tweaks are in order, to make sure there are no misunderstandings as to what I meant. Some very sensitive topics are discussed in this game, and the last thing I want is for someone to get the impression that I don't see a problem with a character saying something offensive - the main character should react accordingly if something like that happens so that nobody gets the impression that I don't see the issue, so I'll be on the lookout for problematic instances like that.

And that would be it. Those are my priorities for December - I hope to get it all done as soon as possible so that I can move on to weeks 5 and 6 before I'm behind my release schedule. 

If you are a content creator...

If you have a Youtube or Twitch gaming channel and would like to record the week 2 build of Absolution, I am currently on the lookout for gamers to give free copies of Build A to on launch. If you're interested, join my discord server and speak up about it or comment below with your email or other preferred method of communication. Note that contacting me about it doesn't mean you will certainly get the build for free, but the chances are high if you're a content creator.