27/10/2025, 12 PM

Hello again! The days really are passing by too quickly. I'd wanted to make more posts this month, but it's all slipped away from me.

It's 11PM, and I'm waiting for my washing machine to finish so I can set it out to dry before I sleep, so I'm writing this post to help pass the time.

Scarred By Heaven Development

I've been a little slower than usual this month, but I've managed to make some good progress. I finished a new enemy, the "batter thug", and made a handful of new maps.

Most of the work I've done over the last month has been making cutscenes, still... but I'm finally getting close to finishing Chapter 3, at least.

Once it's done, I think it leaves the story at a good cutoff point, so I'm thinking of trying to finally make a public, "early access" release of the game that contains all the content up to Chapter 3. Admittedly, it's partially because I'm getting a little impatient after all this time, but I think it'd also be helpful to get some feedback on a truly representative version of the game as soon as possible. It'll be helpful for my morale, at least... (^^;)

The next major step will be fully implementing the third boss, Iris, whose moveset and AI is all finished on the coding side of things, but still has a lot of spritework that needs to be done. I also finished composing the battle theme for it today.

It's probably the most ambitious track I've tried to make so far. I wanted it to sound grindy and malevolent, but combine it with some more sensitive piano bits to convey the sense of a confused identity. There's probably a lot of room for refinement, but I like how it came out. FL Studio was crashing frequently trying to make it.

Personal Notes

Things have been pretty laid back, as ever, thankfully.

I attended my first convention this month — PAX in Melbourne, Australia! I spent most of the day walking around the show floor with a friend looking at the indie showcases. A few upcoming games that were interesting to me in particular were Key Fairy, Your Holy & Virtuous Heretic, Apothecary of City X and Angel.

It might have also spurred an interest in cosplay for me — seeing all the wonderful costumes people put together was probably my highlight. I've wanted to learn some basic tailoring skills for a while, and it seems like a fun goal-oriented way to do it, but my current living space might be a little cramped for extravagant cosplay projects... I don't even own a table.

...But thanks for reading!

Here's some bonus art of 'Cross', a character from a non-SBH project of mine.

- HSTopaz