Chapter 5 tentative release date, and other bits!

Welcome once more to: episodic releases and the fear they instill within my very soul. If you've ever had a project that ran on updates, you know what that's like — the fear of keeping people waiting. The "oh no, what if I run out of energy", "this writing sucks, what am I even doing" and who can forget the eternal "am I allowed to take so much as a break?"

To everyone's surprise, and mine's first of all... Chapter 5 is pretty nearly written by now! Far, FAR faster than I expected.

You may have realized that, perhaps, slicing the original plan for chapter 4 in half and having nearly 20k words written by your past self would help in the process. If you did, you're a bit sharper than me, and I'm proud of you.

Be that as it may, I'm now sitting on the 50k+ word count for chapter 5 (I don't know what it is about that number but this keeps happening to me somehow) and facing three incredible facts:

• There's a new casting call on the way for the remaining characters

• I'm maybe two months away from recording this script (would be one, but I'll be in Japan in April making business contacts!)

• I only have two months to save for the voice acting

That's right -- if everything goes well, I'll be recording in May, and hoping to release chapter 5, THE LAST CHAPTER at the same time as the epilogues, in September 2023.

Let me zoom in on that last bit about voice acting first, however: with a large word count comes a large voice acting expense. Since this is the last chapter, I decided to go all out and make something I would be proud of for years to come!

The way things usually go, I would spend years saving for new chapters, pinching coins wherever I can from my day job and patreon, and then build a voice acting budget from that.

This time, however, I have but two months to save close to 5k USD.

In the immediate term, I should be able to face that cost. I've been developing the game for six years, and I've had time to learn not to break the entire bank for an update. In the long run, however, that's an incredible blow to my budget and therefore my ability to make anything after this.

If you'd like to throw some extra support at The Hayseed Knight, I'm currently passing the tip jar around and trying to gather some help on patreon. I don't have a whole lot to offer in return other than my gratitude and the promise that chapter 5 will be the strongest yet.

I'll update you all again when the update to the Japanese text for chapters 1 and 2 and the new casting call for chapter 5 are ready.

Thank you so much for your time and your support every time. It really does mean the world to me to see people enjoying the game.