Hi!

It's been a while. I'm alive. I've put out some info on other media but it's about time I update some info here as well.

Now, regarding Distant Travels things are looking good at the moment. The writing for Mike's route has had it's up and downs with things going worse and better in my life, but all in all there's been some good progress. I was planning to release it during the month of October. In the end, that was a little too optimistic.
That said, I'm still working on it and the new goal is to release all of Mike's route before the end of this year - ideally in December, but I'm taking the time I need with all the things happening in my life to get it out. As much as I could probably rush it at this point, Distant Travels is and always has been a passion project - I don't want to release it until I'm happy with it.

For the other routes, Charles route has also had a bunch of writing done - I might include a large part of it in the Mike update but I'm not completely sure if that's what I'll end up doing yet.

 I've recently changed jobs, and while I technically have less time, it's much less stressful - once I get settled in a little bit more I expect to be able to spend a couple of hours per day working on the story when I have the energy (rather than the minutes it's been for far too long).

In short; Development is still going on. I'll be working on DT and I want to release Mike's route sometime this year - but I can't promise that as my life's just stabilizing properly after some interesting times.

As a side note; It's not only about time and energy. Sometimes there's just other motivation or other interests. I don't write when I'm not inspired for it, I'd just end up rewriting whatever I wrote when I didn't want to anyway.
I've for example been working on another project which will be announced when DT is released (all three routes.) - point being, sometimes it's easy to write Distant Travels, sometimes its easy to work on something else and I've been doing that. Sometimes I just get ideas that also don't fit into DT - and I still save those and work on them when they're what's stuck on my mind.
With that in mind, I'll be popping something in for the NovemBear 2024 Furry Visual Novel Jam - itch.io with a few friends, so please don't think I've abandoned DT or wasted time I should have been putting into DT for it. It's more a question of what ideas I have fit in where and what my brain wants to do at different times. 

As I think any dev of a project that's been in development for a longer time has - I've a lot of conflicted feelings about getting close to releasing or updating at all. Some good ones, some doubt. Chief being that I worry if it's the same DT as I wrote a couple of years ago when I write now, and then worrying if it'll be good enough or just disappointing to whoever reads the ending when it's out. But then I think of the fact that there are indeed people who check in who have been here since the start, and no matter how I feel about that those people deserve to see the project finished. And after all, it's still the same me writing the story and finishing it up.

Finally, a huge thanks to all of you. I read every comment and every review, and it's been overwhelmingly kind and good feedback, and I appreciate every single person who's checked the game out, truly.

/GruntSteel