25/12/2025, 10PM
Hello again, and Yuletide greetings!
Scarred By Heaven Development
The game's Early Access release is looking far closer than I expected, and I'm estimating it to be ready sometime in January!
Over the past few weeks, I've spent most of my time going through a large checklist of all the little things I want to get done before release. This has been stuff ranging from replacing placeholder sprites, to adding more accessories, to adding an animation for getting hit by a car. It's mostly stuff that's unfortunately hard to document in any interesting way, though, so here's a few screenshots and clips...
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The dungeon adventure minigame in it's finished state.
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A new minigame at the beach.
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A new unlockable ability for combat, 'Laminar Weaponry', which allows you to pick up weapons from the environment while performing unarmed attacks and immediately attack with them to continue your combos!
You can actually see a bug at about 0:27, though, where the startup animation for the pole's thrust plays twice. It's a problem unique to Laminar Weaponry where mashing the button immediately after picking up the weapon sometimes causes attacks to cancel themselves and restart. I don't really know what's causing it at the moment, but I actually kind of like it, since it can sometimes briefly let you perform a lot of light attacks in very quick succession, which feels very cool. I might look into a way to make it work that way intentionally, lol.
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And a movie theater to visit.
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...And as a bonus, some old code I unearthed after wondering why a menu wasn't working correctly...
Personal Notes
I hope the holidays have been treating you well, if you celebrate any. They've unfortunately been pretty stressful for me because of work... but I should finally be getting a two week break starting new years day. My first non-sick time off in 16 months...!
2025 has been an objectively pretty good year for me. My two resolutions were to finally get my driver's licence, and move to a new apartment, which I both did by June. I've actually felt quite listless and strange since then, though. Maybe because I've been missing the sense of adventure that comes from challenging those out-of-the-norm life goals? I tend to be too much of a homebody, and sometimes it feels like this apartment is going to eat me. I think my goal for 2026 will be to try and visit more new places.
...It's late and I have work tomorrow, though, so I should probably wrap this up. Have a nice new year, and please be remorseful if you go shopping on Boxing Day!
Thank you! - HSTopaz
4/12/2025, 9AM
Hello, again, and happy December! Unfortunately, I've come to dread the holiday season in recent years, because I work in a mall and don't really do anything otherwise, so it mostly just makes my job harder. Oh well.
Scarred By Heaven Development
With Chapter 3 done, I've been working on getting a satisfactory amount of side content together for the Early Access release. The biggest thing I want to make, and probably one of the largest minigames in general, is the 'dungeoneering' game, which is a dramatized representation of Saki being forced into playing 'Knights' with a young child who has a very strong imagination.
...Honestly, I think I got a little carried away with it. It's not quite finished yet, but I'm trying to give it a rogue-like-ish format of randomization and 'runs', where you rush through a collection of pre-created but randomly shuffled rooms on a time limit, trying to gather as much loot as you can. I wanted to keep the mechanics and enemies very simple, so the challenge can come more from trying to play perfectly and optimize every room.
I've been pretty set on the concept of a sidestory in which the stoic Sakiko is overwhelmed by babysitting since I started making the game, so this has been a fun way to realize that. Making maps with the simple tilesets is kind of taking me back to my RPG Maker days, though...
Personal Notes
I went to the aquarium the other week. I've never actually been to one in person but always wanted to... and I guess playing a horror game about one finally put me in the mood to go through with it.
I saw a lot of animals I never knew about, took a lot of notes for SBH, and took a lot of photos that all came out pretty bad. It was a great time!
The weedy seadragon was my favorite. - HSTopaz