Part 1 is Out!

Hey, everyone! It's been a long time since I've given a progress update regarding Refulgent – Feather Dust!

I’d like to apologise for my lack of updates, especially seeing as I was confident that I would have parts 1-3 done by the end of 2023... (I’m sorry! But I swear that I have an explanation, which I will get to in a quick minute.)

First of all, my mental health as of late – has quite frankly been awful. I’d rather not go into much, but it has impacted my work – as well as made my perfectionism get a whole lot worse.

Rest assured, I have been working on and off with RFD, and trying my best to refine some of the clunkier story elements... although, seeing as the narrative is rather huge – and I tend to try to set up a lot of things very quickly, that’s been difficult. I am much happier with basically everything now, and a LOT has been edited and changed!

I have completed both Refulgent 1, and Feather Dust 1. Refulgent 2 is also complete, and I am around halfway done with Feather Dust 2. (I did a major rewrite, and I’m working on both part 3’s whilst I let the story ruminate in my brain better...)

I am pleased to announce, that I will be releasing part 1 as a standalone for now. I’ll be real, I did want to wait for all three of these first parts to be complete until I posted; however, having the original demo be the only thing I have out there right now, has been heavily weighing on me. I’ve gotten a hell of a lot better at basically everything in the past two years since I released that thing...

Although there will no doubt be a lot of changes I make once everything is COMPLETELY done (whew, that’s a very long time away...), I feel the need to release something fresh: something which builds on everything in the demo and makes it much better.

Because both parts set up a lot of things, I am aware that in this state, it’s not exactly how I’d like people to go into RFD – however, I am trying to challenge my inner critic – and I believe that simply releasing both part 1’s is the best way for me to do that.

Major changes over the demo include:

-Sprite work has been heavily changed.

-A few character designs have been updated.

-I tried to tighten up the writing as best I could. (Although, later parts do a better job with their themes in my opinion. Refulgent 2, and Feather Dust 3 are personal highlights for me :) )

-Some music has been changed/mixed differently (Some of it is still kinda bad, but I think it sounds better than it originally did for the most part.)

-Some art updates.

-Map changes.

-A battle skip mode, and an auto-scan feature.

Overall, everything looks and functions a lot better than it did. And I’m glad that I get to share this with you all!

It’s mostly because of these edits, that everything has taken so long. I would like to apologise for being bad with updates/snippets/deleting a lot of stuff. It’s about time that I stopped overthinking my creativity, and just... created and shared.

I’d also like to address some stuff regarding the demo + saves. I said that the demo saves would be compatible with everything once I released the full thing, but in all honesty, I don’t think they will anymore – due to the amount of scripts added and edited since then.

Thankfully, I feel as though there’s been enough of a change to the story of both parts, that this shouldn’t be a problem.

I also will not be setting anymore deadlines, as I cannot guarantee that I’ll meet them. This is kinda (well, more than kinda) a passion project more than anything else.

I also have made up my mind for the time being about monetization. Currently, I’ve no plans to charge for anything here. I also will not be making a Patreon or anything like that, as... A) I hate their business practices and censorship when it comes to NSFW (even though that doesn’t affect me), and B) I can’t really promise monthly content, and it feels scummy to ask people to pay monthly for stuff that I simply do not have the energy for.

Anyway, mini-rant over...

Oh yeah! Also, I’d like to take some time to share some of the music that inspired me throughout working on RFD 1!

REFULGENT 1 PLAYLIST

FEATHER DUST 1 PLAYLIST

Music is a very big part of my inspiration, and even though some of these may not relate all that much to the actual part – I feel the need to give back by sharing some of my favourite obscure (and not so obscure) artists with y’all! I have more playlists for the other parts planned, although for obvious reasons, I’m not sharing those yet.

I can’t wait for the rest of these parts to be completed, and I hope that you have a good time playing Refulgent – Feather Dust: Part 1!

I’m actually done now. Thank you for taking the time to read all of this, and this is me out!