Hello Lottery-teers, First off, updates: Rent is no longer astronomical. That debtor's prison was all but inevitable was not intended, but the work of an extra, unintended zero (although one might argue that leaving it as it was fits the overall negative critique of class struggles). More articles added (shortly) More images added to end game content [Note that all of the above updates were server-side, and did not trip an update of your local files.] Known issues: The game doesn't always transition well to the end game (being sent to prison when you run out of money). If you find yourself still in the apartment with a negative balance, your game was over anyway and you should restart your character. Release Date Set: I plan to release the game on the Ides of October. The game's two main points of interest, a working lottery simulation, and a dystopian newspaper, are fully implemented and have shown to be stable. While I'm not happy about having a known issue on the table (it's like I'm inviting negative reviews!), I'm not optimistic that I would redress it anytime soon. I haven't really touched the game since I got a new teaching job. I made promises to my team - a talented group of folk who did a lot for the project and helped me through the pandemic - that this game would be released in the summer, which ends this week. I'm sure they'd understand if I was holding off while I made improvements, but keeping the project in limbo without putting in such work doesn't seem fair to them. Should any of these contributors ask that I hold off, I'll change it, but, otherwise, the 15th of October it is. Should this game gain a following, I will return to it on some school break.

Hi all, The big change since the last update is not with the game client, but with content generation. We're now using an AI text generator to create newspaper articles. The writing gets cleaned up a little by human editing, but it's amazing what a trained generator can do these days (scary really - misinformation has a new tool). The quality of storytelling surprised all of us. We'll still accept writing from the general public, but the lack thereof is no longer an impediment to seeing the newspaper feature reach its potential. Besides that, the latest build may help the client respond better to the player being sent to prison. It needs more testing to determine just how effective it may be in doing so. Kudos to BuddsModernLife for uncovering just how messed up that interaction is/was. In personal news, I've accepted a new teaching job I'm excited about. It doesn't start till this fall, but these past weeks I've been frantically packing and preparing for my relocation to Upstate NY. Continued work on this game right now is far from my mind at the moment. Nuvya Dutt, on the other hand, is interested in putting her website construction skills to the test for the good of the project. Can't wait to see what she puts together. If anyone has any content, blogs or what-not, that you think might help flesh out that work, let's get that to her. Speaking of visibility, we should pass 5,000 unique views of the game store page on Steam this week.

Hi there! This update took longer than planned to release. There just hasn't been much activity right now to warrant more frequent reporting. We thought we'd be busier responding to user feedback, but there's been low turnout to the public beta. Steam has a feature where they'll make your game available to people who express interest in beta participation in general. I've avoided it to date, thinking if the people don't know us at all we're likely to be shown less of a break for a work that's in development, possibly tanking our reviews before it's really fair to do so. We should definitely try the feature at some point, but at the very least there should be a pool of newspaper articles accessible (there's currently only one). I'll write a small set if I have to, but there's more to try first to get a true crowd sourcing going. For one, posting specific writing prompts like "What would life look like if the next pandemic was for dogs?" So, plan on another month, maybe, before we're ready for the unknown crowd Steam has ready to beta the game for us. May not see another update before then, either. New: Jiwon's opus was completed and added to first position of game trailers Changed: Bugs addressed: Store Page / Marketing: Promotion of crowd-sourcing article-writing app released across dozens of forums found on discord, facebook, etc.. Notes: Looking ahead: -Adding additional newspaper content already created to game -Regularly sending out specific writing prompts for the newspaper's articles, as opposed to the open-ended call originally posted

For those of you just joining us, a couple months ago we committed to publishing updates every week or two describing game development status. This is the first time we're using Steam's tools to do so instead of email (crossing my fingers I've chosen the correct tool). New: Store page set live, visible to the public Public beta phase started Changed: Bugs addressed: while not truly fixed, a multi-threading issue is now handled with hot-restarts of a failed internal process. Seems to prevent the crashes that were occurring, and may be handling the issue fast enough that they won't even notice. Store Page / Marketing: -several graphics replaced or modified -75 preview requests sent to game reviewers -public beta announced to a handful of forums Notes: Looking ahead: -Pushing out the companion app, the one that will crowd source article content -Adding additional newspaper content already created to game -Responding to beta user feedback