Hi. I'm turning 22 today. I suppose I'm entering an old enough age now that I'm getting a little sentimental, so I wanted to reflect on the time I spent developing Absolution and give some insight into what the near future might hold for the game.

A bit of a rant

It's been almost seven years since I began working on this game, and almost two since I've decided to cancel it. Growing up very sheltered and isolated, it was absolutely life-changing, perhaps even life-saving, for me to be able to connect with people through my work and to meet so many new friends thanks to it. Throughout middle and high school, I had almost no friends in real life and spent basically all my free time working on my projects, mainly Absolution, and talking to people I met through it. So even when I felt like I was burning out on the game, I felt like I couldn't let go of it, because it was basically my whole life - both socially and, if you can call it that, professionally. Everything was tied up with Absolution, which, looking back at it, wasn't the healthiest. That said, it was still much better than having no social or creative outlet and no sense of being needed or appreciated by other people.

Suffice it to say that I wouldn't be the person I am today if it weren't for Absolution. I probably wouldn't even be making anything, certainly not publicly like I am now, I wouldn't be thinking of pursuing anything creative as a career. So all things considered, I'm glad I put myself out there as early as I did, because I really needed the encouragement I got at that stage. That said, of course there were drawbacks to being a socially maladjusted minor and a semi-professional online creative at the same time. I wasn't good at dealing with negative feedback, harassment, the pressure to finish the project in a reasonable time frame despite working on my own without any prior experience, etc.

Half a year ago, I released the first update to Absolution in a long time, Patch C.1. I kept it under wraps until the announcement trailer, because I was scared of disappointing people if I announced it ahead of its launch and wouldn't be able to deliver it on time. But it all worked out, and I'm glad I managed to get some new content into the game and fix a ton of bugs along the way.

New official character art

Now, in the spirit of making peace with Absolution as a project and as a formative period of my life, I have a special treat for you today. For the longest time, I've been bothered by the character sprites in the game looking "old", anatomically inaccurate and in general not as good as I would like them to. While replacing all the sprites doesn't seem like a particularly enjoyable or productive endeavor, I wanted to see how I would draw these characters now, as accurately to how I've imagined them. So I did. Enjoy these new, "canon" depictions of the cast.

(I had to compress them for Itch.io a bit, sadly. Also, if you don't like how your fave looks in this, feel free to ignore it, I won't judge)

The future

With all that out of the way, let's get to the part that you're probably interested in the most, which is the future. As you probably already know, since cancelling Absolution I've been working on a TTRPG campaign book I'm writing and illustrating, which is a much less ambitious project than a visual novel. So I'm actually finishing it now, which is great. It also means that I'll be ready to move on to something else. But in that period between finishing my book and starting something else, whichever it may be, I might update Absolution again. I'm not sure if I have enough content ready for another patch like C.1, but I've been thinking of writing a few days for Michael's week 5, adding one more day for William, Charlie and Tom, and another day of the investigation, which I already have but would need to thoroughly playtest. Either way, there might be another update, Patch C.2 if you will, coming sometime in the late summer/early fall of this year.

To those of you who are still here in 2024, thank you, and I hope to see you in another devlog sometime in the next few months.

~ Viktor "Navypink"
(@navypink_dev)