Spooky season has come and gone! October was a very, very busy month for me so there wasn't much progress on Canvas Menagerie, but definitely some. So, let's look at the progress for Canvas Menagerie in October.

I had a main goal to hit by the end of October—finish the first draft of Act 2, the 2nd portion of the game. And I hit it!

It came out much shorter than I anticipated. I originally estimated it would be around 60k but the first draft came out to be 44k. For reference, I estimated Act 1 would be around 50k—the first draft ended up around 55k and is currently just shy of 58k after further editing.

For Act 2 I ended up removing several "filler" scenes I had outlined and I pushed a couple of scenes at the end to Act 3. Once I write more of Act 3 I'll be able to tell if I like these changes or not, as I won't start scripting these parts into Ren'Py for quite a while. Act 2 also still needs quite a bit of editing for some of the scenes, so while the first draft is done, it's not completely ready.

I'm still unsure on how I want to go about distributing CM. I've been back and forth on ideas, ranging from releasing it episodically to releasing it all at once to releasing Act 1 as a standalone game and Acts 2 & 3 as DLC. I do want Act 1 to serve as a standalone experience, as Act 3 will be more ~ drama ~ than slice of life. If you have a preference, let me know!

Now, onto art!

I realized there wasn't an (updated) key art featuring the cast, only ones for Niko and Ren, so that was my second goal for October.

Fun fact, I did actually draw most of the characters' parts that are hidden by the others... They're all on separate layers so I could easily readjust them.

Last but not least... happy (late) Halloween!!

(Niko is a bunny ghost and Ren is a lazy vampire. maybe next year he won't dress so lazily...)

Until next time, stay safe.

— Arimia

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