Progress Update #3 - May 2026

I think we’re nearing the completion of the demo finally. I’m not going to make any promises of “the demo WILL drop tomorrow or I’m a rotten egg,” but I’m starting to have a really good feeling about this! I’ve gotten a lot of art done, scripted a lot of chunks I haven’t been looking forward to, and I’ve even had some time to write more of the post-demo bits as well!

• Finally finished Draconic Mania’s sprite!! It was a lot easier and a lot more difficult than I expected (which sounds weird, but detailing him was the easy part, and just getting him to fit on the screen some of the time was a nightmare). I’m actually really pleased with how he came out - I like being able to open and close his jaw on a per-expression basis, and his “body” poses, the tail positions, are really easy to make more of. If I ever need to expand on DM’s pose amount, I imagine it’d be a lot easier than, say, Perdita or The One in the Lotus.

• By that same token, I’ve also finally sat down and scripted out Draconic Mania’s Act 1 branch! I wasn’t really looking forward to it due to the camera trickery I was going to deal with, thanks to DM’s sprite being so big compared to Perdita’s, but I figured out a happy medium! I’m really pleased with how it came out; it feels super dynamic thanks to my little camera effects, and I think you’ll all enjoy it!

• Got the Chapter 2 prologue for Wisteria’s Heavenly Knight finished! That’s everything – art, writing, sound effects, scripting, the whole shebang! I knew it was going to take a while because of how much more effort would go into its artstyle, but sheesh, digitally painting multiple full-scale watercolor illustrations takes a lot out of a fella. That said, I’m unbelievably proud of how they all turned out! I’d show them all off if I could, but I think it’s best to leave at least one of them a surprise!

• Been making a lot more assets for Act 2’ s Human interaction! I was struggling a little bit with how I wanted to handle the “style” for the corpses you leave behind in different branches, but I think I have it figured out! It's nothing graphic, don't worry; it's all just PNGs put through a filter and painted red digitally!

• Made a cool little call-to-action card for the end of the demo!

I’ve always considered A Case of Missing Identity to have a mixed-media art style, you know? That’s why there’s hand-drawn sprites, photographic backgrounds after going through filters, etc. all in the same project. It can look a bit confusing at first, but I think I’ve finally figured out how to make it all feel cohesive, despite how different all my pieces look next to one-another. The artstyle changes for the opening segments in Act 2+ are all intentional, as well, as it’s meant to be more of a look into the mind of the Distortion in question.

I think I’m almost ready to consider the demo close to done! I’m not going to come right out and say “yeah, it’ll definitely happen in June” but I’m feeling pretty confident that most of my assets are in place and I’ve gotten the entire script for the demo written out! I think I’ll be going to the massive bug-testing period pretty soon!

Thanks for tuning in! Hopefully, by the June devlog, I'll have some real meat to show off!

See you soon! Trinket