Hey everyone!

Kept you waiting, huh? It’s been more than a year and a half since the last update for Homecoming. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it; it flew by so fast, and a lot has happened since.

It’s funny how life goes: I first met Dzahn and everyone on the team seven years ago when I became the artist for then Morenatsu ~Revisited~, and now, here I am, seven years later, having gotten my green card and living in the United States with Dzahn. All thanks to Homecoming. You never know where life is going to take you, huh?

Anyway, enough chit-chat, let’s get to the meat of it: this is our biggest update in the history of the project yet. I know that’s a crazy claim but believe me: we all worked our asses off to make this update happen. This update includes the entirety of Kyouji’s route, all the way to the end(s). It’s a big deal for us, as this is the first time we’ve delved into a route that did not exist in the original at all, so we had no framework for reference. I think every fan of the original game has their own vision of Kyouji and how his route would have gone but I hope you’ll find ours did justice to the character. However, after seeing the very positive reception to Kounosuke’s entire route rewrite, I believe you’ll find something of the same quality here.

I really want to thank Lesli and Frostclaw in particular, this build would not have been possible without them. Thank you from the bottom of my heart guys, you’ve been with us since the start and this project would not be what it is without your help. Dzahn’s been overseeing the whole thing and thanks to his supervision, outlines, corrections and numerous additions, I think Kyouji’s route came out beautifully. I couldn’t be prouder of the whole team!

Speaking of Lesli! His wife and him are about to have a child! It should be any day now, and we’re so happy and excited for the both of them. Send them all your well wishes, they truly deserve them. Lesli has been one of my closest and best friends ever since we met working on Homecoming, and having had the chance of working with him on Santa Lucia and Homecoming both was a privilege. As you can imagine, he’ll be taking a step back to focus on raising his baby.

Of course, I wasn’t lounging around while the others were hard at work. In fact, and this is something I wanted to keep as a surprise… Every character from the original game that had a sprite, now has a sprite and a set of expressions to match! And that’s not counting new characters as well. In total, I drew more than 20 wholly new sprites, and that doesn’t include the alterations I did to some of the already existing sprites. This was a massive undertaking and took me two entire months to complete, basically working day in, day out. I was exhausted by the end. Honestly, I won’t lie, I’m still a bit burnt out by it, heh.

Unfortunately, such a massive undertaking did mean I had to make some sacrifices or else this update would have been further delayed. There are, as of yet, no CGs to be found in the routes. I believe the writing is strong enough to stand on its own, but I can understand the disappointment some will feel. However, with the vast majority of the sprites finished, I’m now free to work on the CGs! So, you guys can expect the next updates to bring new and missing CGs to Homecoming. I’m really looking forward to that myself. I wasn’t quite ready seven years ago, but after working on Santa Lucia and working on my art for this entire time… I think I might be able to cook up things people will enjoy a lot, hehe.

Anyway, this has gone on long enough. I really hope you guys will enjoy this; we’ve put our hearts into it. Please let us know what you think!

Take care everyone, and until I see you again, stay safe!

Devilizer

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Hey, everyone!

Phew, it's been a long time. I'm so old now, I feel like I'm decaying.

lol okay, I'll stop being melodramatic and instead say that I'm sorry this has taken so long. It's been approximately 16 months since our last update, and we have had a lot happen during that time.

I have been working full time in a job that I have been enjoying, but I've still been putting a lot of work into Homecoming when I can. A lot of updates to the UI have been made and I have been working on other back-end updates. One example is that the music room has been completely redesigned, appearing more like a soundboard application on a phone.

The amount of work that has been put into this build is absolutely gargantuan. Devilizer has really shown his artistic prowess by making sprites for all of the side characters who were previously using silhouettes of their original Morenatsu sprites. Not only that, there were additional outfits to consider for some of the characters, and even some of the characters we created specifically for Homecoming have received their own sprites. When considering the amount of characters that is, it's a colossal undertaking.

On top of this, Kyouji's route was massive. Even with all the work Lesli put in, there was more that needed to be added or adjusted to allow it to conform to Homecoming's quality standards. So much so, that poor Dzahn ended up burning himself out partway during the coding process. To assist, I took over coding the rest of Kyouji's route with Dzahn doing quality assurance upon completion. I have to say, I'm quite proud of all of us for what we've managed to accomplish.

Finally, I have some great news for our growing Japanese fanbase. In celebration of the release of Build 13, we will be officially recruiting a Japanese translator to join us and allow Homecoming to be viewable in Japanese. For more information, a video has been posted on my YouTube channel.
Link to video (opens in a new tab)

In closing, I'd like to thank you for your continued support and patience while we work on this project. I can confirm we are still invested in Homecoming, and will continue to be working on it.

All the best.
~ Frostclaw

Build 13 Notes:

+ Completion of Kyouji's Route
- August 16th - August 31st
- There are two possible endings. Which one will you get?

+ Further expansion of Kyouji and Soutarou's Route
- August 15th event

+ New sprite elements for Kyouji

+ New sprites for all original supporting characters

+ New sprites for some of the characters introduced in Homecoming

+ Adjusted UI design
- Redesigned gallery menu (still a work in progress)
- Redesigned music room
- Music pop-up feature now includes currently playing track instead of just when a track is unlocked
- Accessing the menu when viewing an event is no longer possible - thus the quick menu has been adjusted
- Save backup/restore feature has been added

+ Various bug fixes