Hi guys! Hope you’re all doing well!

We’re just about at the halfway point, and almost at the end of Act II. For those of you who were disappointed at the lack of an event for Tatsuki or Shun on August 12, worry no more! This update, aside from adding in August 13 and August 14, adds the event for Tatsuki and Shun (it’s actually a shared event). I would like to apologize for the delay. I was in charge of writing the base script for the event, but didn’t quite make the deadline for Dzahn to be able to code it into Version 7. (I swear, I’m starting to become more like a certain tanuki…)

I’m settling into my new job okay, but my family are preparing to move house, and we’re at the stressful part of trying to get approved for a new place. Still, I’m committed to Homecoming, and intend to continue working as hard as I can to get content done. At the moment, since everything is completed writing-wise for pre-Act III, I will be working primarily on getting a specific character’s story finalized, and I’m sure that when the time comes for you to see it, you’ll enjoy what we have in store. Additionally, I may look at coding in some additional gallery features, but I will need to speak with Dzahn about what and when, as writing takes priority.

For now though, I hope you enjoy this latest update!

~Frostclaw

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Hello everyone!

This month we finally arrive at the camping trip, which means the big route split isn’t far off at all! This also marks the end of the big grand “choose how you’re spending your day” events in the game as we transition into the more focused half. This has been a long time coming and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for sticking with us through to this point!

On the art side of things, we have updated sprites for two more main cast members along with a fresh new sprite for a Homecoming original side character.

After Torahiko, our most contentious old sprite had to be Kouya’s. When we first began the transition into Homecoming after Revisited, a major goal I had was to redesign the characters so they looked more appropriate for their age. Some characters were aged up, like we see with Shun and Soutarou...and others had to be aged down, like Torahiko and Kouya. When I made the concept for Kouya’s old Homecoming look, I was aiming for what a J-Rock star would look like at age 18. I had in my mind something that I felt was attractive to me, but I suppose in my hubris I lost sight of what made the character appealing to everyone else. Cutting back to today and three iterations of HC Kouya later, I think Dev and I have arrived at a really strong compromise between my vision and the original team’s. I’m really proud of how far Dev has come as an artist over the years and I think it shows in the quality of the reworked main cast sprites.

Besides the updated Kouya, we also updated Kounosuke’s sprite with the idea of recapturing the charm of the original game’s rendition of the character. I think Dev did a fantastic job mixing his own style with the style of the original artist here. I hope you guys enjoy Kouno’s new look, too!

Lastly, we have the addition of one of Homecoming’s original characters, Mr. Aichi. The bull is Kyouji’s boss at the newspaper company. For Mr. Aichi, we were looking to establish a stern, somewhat more worldly father figure for our ol’ Labrador to contrast his laid back demeanor. (I also low key wanted to see a bull character added to the cast since they’re on the short list of species I noticed weren’t represented in the original game hehe...)

That about covers what I want to say for this update. There’s a good chance that by the next update, we’ll be finished with the camping trip and well on our way through the route content of Kounosuke, so stay tuned!

Cheers!

~Dzahn

Build 8 Notes:

+ August 13 and 14 added

+ Shun and Tatsuki event added to August 12

+ New sprite set for Kounosuke

+ New sprite set for Kouya

+ New sprite for Kyouji's boss Mr. Aichi

+ Fixed an issue where the disabled textbox faces were still displaying