Ugh... 117 days. That's how long it's been since my last devlog. A lot has happened since then, so I have a bit of explaining to do.

I'll preface this by saying that I always knew the next update would take a while to come out, this is 'the big one'. Or at least, the first big one. Hopefully the biggest. Still... I would have hoped it would be out by now. So why isn't it? Probably 4 things (the 4th is the most important).

1. Motivation. I've talked about this one before, so I won't linger on it. I found myself in a strange position where I had plenty of free time, but for some reason job hunting for full time work really sapped my motivation to work on it. I can't really describe why, but I found it was either one or the other. Still, that isn't to say I've made no progress - I've actually made a lot of progress! I think I'm 40-50% of the way through the first dungeon, and it's final boss just needs a bit more polish. I've worked on brand new tools to help me out (specifically, I've added in the ability to brush in grass and other foliage, as well as more advanced water tech), new mechanics for puzzles, a polished dialogue system (I talked about this before in the last devlog), and of course, the boss which I will not spoil.
   Working on those things did burn me out a little, so I've been focusing on smaller quality updates lately, such as better sound management and decorations. I've also reworked how the game's internal logic works, which should make it easier to give things complex behaviours.
   
2. I've bitten off more than I can chew. This update is a massive increase in size from the last few ones, mainly because I want the whole thing to ship at once - it will be update 0.2.0 afterall, which I have been thinking about for years now. The boss in particular ended up being quite a pain to work on, for multiple reasons that I will likely share when he's released. It's not unmanagable, but it makes me uncomfortable how little I'm pushing things out here. I know I shouldn't compare the frequencies of big studios to little old me who is basically building his own engine, but its hard not to. I just hope that it'll be worth the wait.
   
3. Perfectionism. I will say I'm not a total perfectionist, but if something feels off, I'll do everything I can to fix it. I actually recently found what I hope is a solution to a long term problem with decorating the levels (distant background islands), but it is distracting me from working on the important things for 0.2.0. I probably need more focus if I want to get it out in a timely matter.
   
4. I said in reason 1 that I was job hunting... well, I found one! I now have a full time job at a fairly well-known game studio that I'll be starting very soon. This is... many things. It's exciting, it's the first proper prospects I've had in a long time. It's scary, as I've moved to a place I've never been before, and I have no idea how I'll cope with the workload. It's sad, as I'm leaving behind my childhood home, and will probably never live there again.

So... yeah. It'll take a little while for me to be truly settled in here, and until then, I can't really know how much time or energy I'll have to work on In the Heavens... which is... bittersweet. I was asked a lot of questions about it during my interview, so there is a good chance it played a significant role in landing this job, which is incredible to know that my work over the last few years hasn't been wasted.

I'm going to be honest though... my time at uni taught me that for some reason, the time when I'm most busy is also the time where I want to work on this game the most, so there is a good chance it's not going to be left in the dust (if anything, now I'm not job hunting I might spent MORE time on it). But in short... please be understanding if things are going more slowly now.

I'm considering releasing a stripped down version of 0.2.0 that won't spoil any of the new stuff, just releasing the smaller improvements, but I feel that there'll not be enough new things to justify it. Then again, I may have forgotten a lot of the newer stuff, so maybe it'll be worth it - let me know if you'll want it now, or would rather see it with the next big update.

Just to finish off, thank you for your patience with me, and onward to new adventures!