(cover image is a really nice piece of fanart my sister made as a gift for me)

Thank you all for checking out I Hate You, Please Suffer! The total number of downloads of the demo is already close to the amount of downloads for my previous game which... kinda makes me sad, to be honest. But hey, the fact that this game is resonating more must mean I'm getting better at this thing, right? Besides, it's rare for somebody's first game to be the one to take off, and even then, there's probably years of drafts behind that.

I've been working on this game since the summer and I'm happy with what I have so far. Like, if I could get a rough estimate, I'd say that I'm around halfway done with what I want in the game? I will not put a definitive release date until I'm close to the end, because I don't want to stress to meet an arbitrary deadline. At the very least, it'll hopefully be done before the end of the year.

My original plan for this game with regards to a commercial release was to make a normal free version and to have the commercial version just have added stuff. However, I decided that plan is unfeasible for a few reasons:

• The normal version of the game will already have a lot of content.  As it currently stands with my playtests, the game is already as long as Slimes was.
• I'm not sure what kind of extra content to put in that would feel right with the game. My intent for the game is for it to be a weird fucked up urban fantasy in an okay town, so making extra content that takes you elsewhere feels out of place.
• Friendly reminder that I'm pretty much a solo developer with a part-time job, so making even more content is just unfeasible for me.

And so, I plan on making the next demo the "free" version. It'll have most of the content I plan on implementing before the fourth party member, with the rest of the game being relegated to an exclusively commercial version. Unlike the first demo, you will actually be able to pay off rent for a basic ending... but there will be another ending on the horizon.

FIXES AND SMALL CHANGES

Here is the change log for the small differences between the upcoming demo and the last one!

• Devon's focus will be preserved between battles so that he's more reliable as an attacker. This was a complete oversight and I'm sorry for that.
• Ramona's speed is buffed so that she's now the fastest character - this is to better facilitate her role as a support type character.
• For better readability, items will have icons.
• The Tip Hotline variable is fixed; it previously counted up by one more than it needed to, which led to players wasting money on nothing.
• Speaking of the Tip Hotline, you can now buy tips for side quests.
• Enemies will no longer drop cash. This wasn't supposed to happen originally, since I wanted making money to be an Etrian Odyssey thing of selling items.
• Granola Bar now no longer has enemies target you. It is now an alternate healing item, along with a Bag of Trail Mix to act as an alternative for the Party Size Chips. Why are there alternate healing items? Oh it's fine, nothing to worry about.
• The secret ambushes from past enemies are changed to make sure they're properly despawned immediately after a fight.
• Some of the battle backgrounds are changed. Gotta make sure I got the public domain stuff.
• Events that chase you are updated so that touching party members activates them; I forgot that without a script (thanks HimeWorks!), "Event Touch" only works on the playable character and not the following party members.

NEW CONTENT

So, without further ado, let's look at some of the new stuff I've been working on since the demo! This is a bit obvious to anyone that finished the demo, but the third party member is Kyrie Massacre, a completely normal woman. What I'm aiming to do for her is to make her a glass cannon character that spends HP to perform skills. This is to fall in line with my general idea of trying to make the whole party feel unique to play.

Some of the past areas have expanded further. The blocked off area north of the forest is home to a manor that's at the center of one of the Rank 2 quests, featuring some enemies that you may have seen in the Tower. The bar is no longer as lonely, because there's now a next-door clinic, as well as a graveyard that's also central to one of the new quests. What I aim to do for the future is to also add more to the apartments area. The graveyard was originally going to be connected to downtown, but I decided to pair it with the bar location because I thought it was ridiculous to have an area that's only dedicated to one function. Because the apartments is also stuck with that problem, I hope to expand more on that area.

Also, we have a new area! Originally planned to be a beach, it's now a harbor area. Currently, there isn't much to it besides some things for two quests. Ideally, I wanna make a fishing minigame because all real RPGs have fishing minigames.

Speaking of which, there are three new quests to take! They're somewhat more serious and in-depth than the previous set of quests, but I think it makes for a nice progression. Additionally, a past quest has been updated to have a new outcome that couldn't have been done because the harbor didn't exist yet.

We also have a new location to go to downtown. You can enter the bounty office run by Patrick, a rather cold guy that will take money in exchange for hints for fighting the game's bonus bosses. Currently, there are two "bounty" bosses, though rest assured, there's one more secret bonus boss outside of them, though there will probably be more in the final demo. There's also one more area that will be added to downtown, though I kinda want to keep that a secret for now.

Also, as you may know, most of the game's soundtrack is public domain music by Monplaisir Loyalty Freak Music. While I love their music, I still think that using the same battle themes for most of the game is a bit dull... so, you can unlock whole new sets of battle music to enjoy! Originally, I was going to give the various bosses unique battle themes, but then I started thinking, "what if a player wanted to listen to this more often?" And so, you can a talking gramophone to set up in Ramona's house which will change the game's battle themes for you!

Despite everything, 2020 was personally satisfying for me as a creator, and I hope to reach new heights in the new year. I hope that you had a good year in spite of all the suffering and I hope that everything will be better in 2021! You can follow me for posting at @scitydreamer and if you like to read ramblings on indie games, you can check out Indie Hell Zone!