The Use of Life News

We've received another status update from Daraneko.
Please give it a read.

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It's May! Time for another status update.

We're planning on releasing the last chapter of the Misha route sometime this month.
(We still have to decide on the exact day, though.)
Right now, I'm working on balancing and other adjustments and stuff.

It's been sooo long.
At first, I thought it would be really simple, since the final chapter doesn't have any dungeons.

And actually, the route where you choose to obtain power only has around 6,000 Japanese characters of text (compared to the 30,000~50,000 characters other chapters have).
But then I came up with too many cool ideas for the other route and got way in over my head, bringing the word count there up to around 38,000...
On top of that, I added a bunch of new game mechanics for the final boss fights as well as some post-game bonuses, so it actually took more work than any other chapter.



But the final chapter is still the one with the fewest battles, so if you play it on its own, it might feel a bit short.
(That's why I originally wanted to release it at the same time as Chapter 4...)
It's been a long while since the Chapter 4 update, so if you want it to feel more satisfying, maybe you should play again from the beginning?
Or maybe play a second time and aim for a different ending.
(The game itself is designed to require multiple playthroughs in order to experience everything it has to offer.)

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As a bonus for beating the game, I've added some character profiles and behind-the-scenes talk to the game as well.
You can even check out their full-body portraits here!



What you see here will change depending on what endings you've seen (as in, more text will be added), so if you want to know more about the characters, please try to beat the other routes too!

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And that's all for this status update.
Development is still going strong, so please continue to support us!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1483370/_/

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We've received another status update from Daraneko.
Please give it a read.

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Time for the April update.

Okay, so about the progress I made in March...
To be honest, it's not great.
I had some personal stuff to attend to and also fell sick for a while, so I didn't have a lot of time to work on the game.
(Like I said last month though, the endings have already been finished. I only have to finish some of the events that happen in between next.)

I'm doing my best to catch up and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to make something entirely playable within April, but then there wouldn't be time for localizations and debugging.
So we'll spend most of May working hard on that and see if we can maybe release it at the end of May.
Please be patient for just a little longer!

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It'd be kind of empty if I didn't add any images, so here's some in-development screenshots.
There ended up being more interactions with Misha than I originally anticipated when I first started making the game.




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And that's all for this status update.
Development is still going strong, so please continue to support us!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1483370/_/

Visit the Playism Website Follow us on Steam Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Facebook Join our Discord server

We've received another status update from Daraneko.
Please give it a read.

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Here's the monthly report for March.

I've been focusing on writing the story and creating events for it, and so the endings are now complete, apart from the battles.

If you gave up your power in the previous chapter, you'd have lost your powers as a Deathwalker... but I've included a whole series of battle-related events to make up for it.

You've already seen something similar in the Gargantua fight, but this time, you'll be the one making and setting up the traps however you want and strengthening them before the battle.











Something like this.

Do everything you can to disrupt your opponent and eventually snatch victory from under their nose, such as by knocking them into a river, or zapping them with electricity. Or both.

At first, I made it so that the traps would be already set up for the player, but then I thought that it would be lots of fun if players could do whatever they wanted with the traps, so I made it this way.

...As a result, there is a LOT of text for this. Help.
I'm currently writing all of that text and implementing it into the game.

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We're still trying to decide on a release date. It's not going to be March, that's for sure.

It depends on how long the wall of text I've imposed onto myself will take to write, but I'll be happy if we can release it by the end of April. Hopefully.

There's still localization and debugging and stuff too, so I'll be working closely with PLAYISM on that.

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And that's all for this status update.
Development is still going strong, so please continue to support us!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1483370/_/

Visit the Playism Website Follow us on Steam Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Facebook Join our Discord server

We've received another status update from Daraneko.
Please give it a read.

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Hey, it's been a while.
It's time for the February status update.

I've mostly finished one of the two endings that will be added in the next update. The one where you fight the dragon, specifically.
Next, I'll have to write the next route's events, and then code the battles in both routes... at least, that's the plan.
But the other route has around twice as much text as the one I'm almost done with, so I'll have to spend a while on that.

As for the release date, right now I can't say much other than "around spring, maybe...?"
At my current pace, I might be able to finish the game in March, but March is a month where huge releases suddenly drop out of nowhere, so I don't really want to release the update in March.
And the game needs to get localized first too!
I'll be talking with PLAYISM about the release date while I continue working on the game.

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The illustrations are also being worked on, but showing any of them would be a spoiler, so I don't wanna! I don't wanna.
Yesterday, I got an illustration of Misha from the artist, but her chest looked kinda off, so the two of us just kept staring and staring at her chest for ages.
※Turns out, the fur on her chest was the wrong color.
※No we weren't being weird about it what are you talking about... hahaha.

But I can't just not show anything, so here's a map I'm working on.



One of the routes will most likely feature a fight like Gargantua's, where you run around triggering events while fighting at the same time.
(In fact, I made Gargantua as a sort of practice round for this fight.)

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That's all for this month's update.
See you next time~

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And that's all for this status update.
Development is still going strong, so please continue to support us!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1483370/_/

Visit the Playism Website Follow us on Steam Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Facebook Join our Discord server

Hello everyone,
Are you enjoying Chapter 4 of the Misha route?
Now that the Chapter 4 update and bug fixes have settled down, we would like to share with you our upcoming schedule for the final chapter of this route!
Please take a look at the following message from Daraneko.

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■ Future Updates
At the end of last month, we released Chapter 4, and then we released a few updates to patch and polish it up.
And now, the dust has finally settled, so I think I'll stop fiddling with Chapter 4 for now and move on to make the next chapter.
Unless some horrible game-breaking bug appears, there won't be any updates for a while.
I'll leave the small bugs and tweaks to after the final chapter is released.

The next chapter will be the final chapter, and thus the ending, of this route. (Chapter 3 of the Kohaku route will come after)
It's a chapter focused on the final battle, so it won't have a dungeon section.
Get ready to go toe-to-toe with the biggest baddest final boss!

As for the update schedule, ideally it would be something like this...
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I'll work super duper hard in January and February and release it on Valentine's Day along with a Valentine's illustration of Misha!!
And then I'll fix some bugs, and then by March I'll curl up in bed and cackle evilly as I play Unicorn Overlord aaall day...
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Alas, reality is a cruel mistress.

My day job wants me to leave home for around a month or so. At the moment, I can't tell how much this will effect the development schedule.
I'll try my best to keep working on the game even while I'm staying away from home, but... it might take until the end of March or so.
But February and March are those months where gamedevs suddenly drop surprise reveals and then there's popular game series coming out too, which will bury my little game under all the other game news, so I don't wannaaaa! I don't wanna release at the end of March!! Noooooo!!

Anyway, it's really hard to tell when I can release the game until some time has passed and I fully know what my situation will be like.
So... probably sometime in the spring...? That's all I can say for now.
I'll keep writing status updates every month though, so if anything comes up, I'll let you know.

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And that's all for the message from Daraneko.
By the way, The Use of Life is participating in the Steam Winter Sale! Why not try out the game before the upcoming chapter update?

What's more, we've also updated the demo version of the game! You can carry over your save data from the demo to the full version, so feel free to try it out if you're stil on the fence, and then grab it while it's at a lower price to see the Misha route story to its end sometime next spring!

Check out the full Winter Sale lineup at our publisher page:
https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/Playism


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