Happy New Year!  We have an exciting development update for you this month, so let's get to it!

Welcome, Meissa and Gui

Meet the new sprites for Meissa and Gui!

I absolutely adore the updates to Meissa's outfit. Check out their sleeves - you can tell that the cloth is silky and diaphanous. This is one of Meissa's neutral expressions, and emphasizes their anxious and troubled nature. You only get hints of it in the common route, but it's a major theme in their story. Rest assured that other expressions will show their kind and flirty sides as well!

That background is Meissa's woodland cottage, which they inherited from an old lady who had no relatives. They were a comfort to her in her dying days and she thought it was a shame that they had to live in an inn.

Gui's new sprite boasts a more direct stance and a gorgeous rapier hilt. His neutral expression is the one that most people see - an elegant but slightly forbidding look that keeps folk from getting too close. He's taken a special interest in Marion, so she sees his more personable side as well.

First Look at Combat Animations

Our combat animator Ze of Square Weasel Studios has finished up our first two combat animations, and here's a quick preview of how combat will look!  This is a less dynamic scene (I need our sword spark animation for the more complex ones - plus those are more spoilery), where Marion is simply showing John her forms and he is defending with his quarterstaff, but it gives you an idea of the basic layout of our combat.

I recommend watching it on Youtube in HD if possible. The animations are a bit smoother in-game, as there's some lag in the video capture.  I'm excited to get to add some motion and splash to our combat scenes!

We've done our best to make them migraine-friendly (we have a migraine-sufferer on our team), but if they bug you, you can turn off combat animations only in our Options menu!

The Writing Department

Currently I'm working on a series of connected scenes that appear in Robin, John, and Will's routes.  It's a tax money heist by the Sherwood gang. While I was outlining last year, I asked our Discord community if they'd prefer to see three completely different heist stories, or one story in which the three Sherwood love interests had a different role to play in the heist. There was a major preference for the second scenario, so it's been fun to come up with the details!

I'm not exactly an Ocean's Eleven type of writer so don't expect anything incredibly complex, but I think it's going to be fun. Along the way, you'll encounter three Nottingham guards who have their largest role to play in John's route but show up in many other routes when I need a guard (or three). I've named them Ser Laurence, Ser Charles, and Ser Morris. These lesser noblemen have a Geoffrey-approved uniform (who would have guessed?) and a bad reputation. It seems they've been assigned to guard this month's tax shipment as it's been loaded into transport wagons and is ready to ship out to Londonne the next morning...

That's our January update, hope you enjoyed it!