Hello!

It's been a while, hasn't it?
Today I uploaded the 0.45 update. This is a prelude to 0.5 and contains no *new* story.
Instead, it polishes existing story, slows down the romance scenes quite a bit and makes more sense of things that were a little too random earlier. 

Cheetah & Camazule have been working hard, to say the least.

It will break your saves, however the Quick-Start feature is now much more polished, so don't hesitate to restart and use it to pick up where you were.

However, it's still quite the massive update.

I tried writing a proper devlog, but with the sheer number of new things it turned out to be a mess.

So here's a list of changes. I'm certain I forgot a few things.

• Rewritten the code to be more compact and future proof. One line expressions and smoother transitions. As well as easier updates, writing the script for further chapters will be easier. Essentially the game script has been rewritten from the ground up and structured better, as well as formatted better.
• Animated sprites, all characters and expressions now blink.
• Added 6 new characters. These are not shown yet, but they'll all be in the next update.
• A ton of new songs by Camazule.
• Redid the Quick-Start feature to be better.
• Added a song indicator. Hover over (or press) the musical note in the top left to see the song and if it's by Camazule or sourced royalty-free.
• Redone the Snow animation and graphics to not crash your phones. Should be very smooth now.
• Added custom transitions. [Thanks Demi / Bara-Diction!]
• New animations and transforms, the game should now feel much more cinematic.
• A lot of smaller art fixes. This includes mostly outfits for characters, like having someone wear their tie *properly*, or adding a belt. Or giving Charles a coat.
• New expressions for the main cast. John now has 8 expressions (he does not get to use them all in this update.) while Charles has 11 and Mike somewhere inbetween.
• Added a Splash Screen between chapters.
• Animated the main menu with a new background (Thanks Shin!)
• Added new backgrounds, courtesy of Cheetah.
• Moved everything to composite images, meaning despite there being a ton of images (1,4k total defined images), they do not take a massive amount of storage space.
• Fixed a strange android bug (the menu positioning, some of you might remember) [THANKS DRAKES!]
• Fixed a lot of android visuals [Thanks Shin for testing!]
• Proofreading of the story thusfar, and editing.
• Added a Gallery (so far this is unused).
• All placeholder graphics have been replaced with their own graphics.
• Added a memory function which will be properly introduced in the next chapter, this is related to the main story.
• Added Names to your saves so you can keep the different routes apart.
• Added side images
• Optimized the file formats of art and music assets to make sure the game isnt massive in file size.
• Added an Android Icon
• Added a pre-splash
• A new route selection screen at the end of Chapter 2.
• Added Linux and Mac versions

All the best.
If you have any questions or encounter any bugs, please leave a comment on the itch page or on the discord server.