Definitely took longer than I'd hoped, but there are a lot of large scenes here, important to each character's development, so hopefully it's worth the wait! I'm especially fond of the Ina, Siofra, and Rosalyn scenes - I decided to try to focus on them to catch them up a bit to others and ensure they felt like full relationships, and in the first two cases, members of the camp. Changelog;

• Rosalyn gets two giant scenes, one full of reveals about her character - and your backstory - and another that's more about your growing relationship with each other. God I wish she would hug me.
• Sarah, Ashley, and Metatron get a daytime conversation, touching on Bariura lore and giant mecha.
• Siofra gets Trust 8, Affection 4, and Affection 6 scenes, significantly deepening your relationship with her and revealing more of her (mostly) likeable side.
• Ina gets Trust 8, Trust 10, and Affection 8 scenes, showcasing a lot more of our favorite princess, plenty of Atlantis lore, and hinting at the start of a relationship.
• Aspasia gets a Trust 12 scene with a moral quandary and some of her being surprisingly sweet.
• Sam gets an Affection 16, following up her date withsome character development and cute moments!
• Maya gets an Affection 12, which is equal parts her shitposting, lore about the east, and admitting you're alright, which is basically a declaration of love from her.
• Sarah gets an affection 18, very comfy and sweet. Comfort food reading and I love her for it.

Been plugging away at new stuff. Got a pretty meaty Siofra trust scene with some Gaea lore and the setup for Zephyrmancy, as well as a very chunky Rosalyn scene that finally reveals some of the secrets I've been hinting at for a while and continues to drive home mommy supremacy. I'm curious how many people guessed it from the hints along the way. As usual the latter took me longer than expected to get right, but not nearly as bad as last time lmao, maybe I am learning! Trying to get her right always feels like an uphill battle, as much as I love her Rosalyn is a lot of things and straightforward is not one of them. On a slightly less mommy-flavored note, Tolvir commissioned some AMAZING fanart of Metatron that I gotta share! The dork angel is as cute as ever, the power of gap moe. And abs, but mostly gap moe. Sort of like Saber Lion, perhaps being eaten wouldn't be all bad...

Divine Dawn 0.33 is finally out! Definitely took longer than I hoped, but it's a meaty update with more scenes than usual, and most of them are much larger than usual to boot, with several in the 4-5k+ word range.

• Rosalyn gets two new scenes, a conversation (visit her after the Astrologia setup group scene) and a second conversation followed by a paizuri CG (choose Flirt in the conversation menu).
• Aspasia gets a trust 10 scene, discussing golems, artificial intelligence, and what souls are. She loves this stuff.
• Ina gets a 6 affection scene, which includes some discussion on whether Kuril or the MC would rock a dress better, along with more discussion of what relations are.
• Sarah gets a 16 affection scene, with some MC childhood lore drops and her trying to be a supportive girlfriend. She's doing her best.
• Ashley gets a 14 affection scene, discussing succubus lore and Ashley's stellar descriptive skills when she's trying to make a point. Especially when she's horny.
• Siofra gets 2, 4, and 6 trust scenes, all of them very meaty and deeply philosophical. She has a lot more going on than 'smug goofy forest lady' and is happy to challenge the MC as well as be challenged by him. I meant that intellectually, but she would probably also be into ranked competitive sex.
• Siofra also gets a 2 affection scene with some shameless flirting and fun lore. There WAS a 4 affection scene, but I lost it, and I'm still hopping mad two weeks later. I was really happy with it man. I'll rewrite it in a future update.
• Sarah and Ashley get a massive evening affection scene, showing their growing bonds with the MC as well as a variety of conversation topics. Sarah is very cute and gets one extra bit if you have high strength, otherwise it's just a trio of goofs in a complicated relationship.

Been working away at the next update, and making good progress! Aspasia, Ina, Sarah, quite a few Siofra scenes, Ashley, Rosalyn, Sarah/Ashley, and Sarah/Metatron all come to mind as having recently gotten content since the last post, and I'm starting to work on polishing things up. I still have to do a fair bit more Rosalyn (CG/lewd scene and some more reveals) as well as a few other things I want to wrap up, but I'm gonna tentatively say around 1.5 weeks until next update. May be a day or two off if something takes an unexpectedly long time or I finish earlier than anticipated. On a somewhat goofier aside, Redshirt has been doing some really funny edits of... some meme dog character I don't know anything about, but Maya-fied. They came out really cute and funny, so I wanted to share them! Has very strong Maya energy and that's just always funny.

Been getting some good progress lately, with a wide variety of characters. Maya, Sarah, Ashley, Siofra, and Ina have all gotten at least one scene, with a wide variety of subjects - some more affectionate, some just lore, some flirty. I'm pretty happy with most, and very happy with some. Feels good man. This coming week, I'm gonna try to refocus on Rosalyn, who definitely deserves more attention and her full mini-arc. After that, probably beta, polishing + whatever else feels right for an update, and then release. Already dragged this update out too long, it's gonna be a big one but big slow updates just don't do as much for the game as smaller faster ones. Anyways, thank you all for your patience, looking forward to having more to show off soon! In the meantime, have some peak humor from Nor.

I've been plugging away at the next update, mostly focused on Rosalyn, Siofra, and masteries. Still got plenty of work to do, but I'm generally vibing with how it's going. Rosalyn's layers of mystery slowly getting peeled away as she opens up, and Siofra getting to interact outside of her role. Hopefully not making either of them too uh, 'solved' or anything, they have a lo more development and reveals to go, but feel more like people than plot devices. Hasn't gone as fast as I'd like, trying to hit the right vibes is hard sometimes, but all I can do is keep working at it. And at the risk of autofellatio, I think there are good fundamentals and it's coming out alright. We'll see how people actually feel over upcoming betas/releases. Not progress related, have some really cute fanart Nor did recently! Starring Cassiel and Ashley as the upcoming train gakis from Blue Archive, both of them working way too well in their role lmfao, dude is a wellspring of twisted genius and I'm here for it. I mean, I guess it's KINDA progress related since Cassiel is only an update away, but she probably won't show up in an adorable train conductor uniform. Ashley with sunglasses is surprisingly blessed too, and Sam/Maya as fuwamoco works dangerously well.

Already got back to work last week, but wanted to wait to post until today so I could do a rough roadmap. So, based on feedback/polls, this upcoming update (0.33) is going to focus on mysterious forest ladies, especially Rosalyn and Siofra. Both have plenty to do, a CG for Butterfly Mommy, and plenty of plot attached. Like, actual plot, relevant to MC's backstory, not a funny way of saying boobs - though they have plenty of that too. I'm also going to spend some time fleshing out masteries for abilities that don't have them, and an unknown amount of time on bugfixes and just kinda going over abilities. I'll tentatively say about 3 weeks of work, but ultimately it'll come down to when I feel like "yeah this is good" 0.34 will focus more on the main plot again, introducing the final party member and Earth trainer, Alicia, as well as a cameo from an unknown observer and some businesslady Aspasia doing business things. I'm also gonna try to catch up a bit more on Amnelis there, since she's had a CG waiting for a while. Depending on how things go, Zephyrmancy with Siofra may fall into this update.

For once, I actually managed to stick to a schedule. Miracles can happen! Anyways, over the last few weeks I busted ass to fit in all the main content I had hoped to for this update, with a good mix of new stuff and content expansions for various girls. Sarah was definitely the big winner here, with a fancy new CG provided by Aragiken, but Ina, Maya, and Metatron all got some significant love too. Changelog;

• Sarah got a new lovey thighjob CG, attached to a very... ethereal sort of scene. If you needed a reminder that she's a succubus, not a normal girl, this is it.
• Sarah also got a new trust scene, with a bit of character development, bonding, and hints for the future. Not all of them are good! Her finalizing her decision to invite Celica for the upcoming library research trip is, though.
• Sarah also got an amusing new conversation, in which you and she discuss Ashley's viability as the true Demon Queen. Her answer may or may not surprise you.
• Maya got a chonky new affection scene, which has her being almost suspiciously cute when she has her guard down. It also has doggo ear rubs. This is very important.
• Ina trust 4 and 6, delving heavily into Sahuagin lore and her feelings about it. Not all are positive, but it's a good bonding experience.
• Metatron gets a new trust 18, with a lot of emotions running rampant and a reveal of something that has been bothering her for some time. Robo-angel-wife has been going through a lot, please support her.
• As always, I'll take a few days off to recuperate and fix bugs as needed, then get to work on the next update. Not sure exactly how long it will take - I don't wanna do any more giant 2 month updates, so probably more in the 2-4 week range, depends a bit on how much I want to fit in.

Actually had a really good week of progress, very happy with how things turned out! Managed to hit the main things I wanted to do, which in no particular order are; Ina gets some much needed 4 and 6 trust scenes, fleshing out her character, starting to get an actual friendship rolling, and revealing a lotof Sahuagin lore, including some info on the goddesses. Sarah gets a high trust scene of her own, showcasing why she is the therapist therapist, and a truly good girl (mostly). I love getting to write her actually be empathic, and not in a succubus magic way; it feels like it adds a lot more to her character. Metatron gets a pretty damn big trust scene of her own, much less... pleasant than the other two, but good for her character development. You'll get to see a bit more of what makes her tick and the struggles she's been trying to hide. So, for once, my 2 week plan is looking pretty viable? so far? god I hope I don't shit the bed on this. Anyways, this week I'm gonna do a Sarah CG scene and maaaaybe bring back someone who deserves some attention, and we'll see what else happens based on how those two plans go. I'm gonna keep aiming for the 22nd, but as with any attempt at a roadmap/estimate, keep in mind that it may be a few days off.

Finally got 0.31 out this past week, and aside from some typos it seems to have gone over pretty well! I'm going to aim for a minor patch on Monday to fix typos and any bugs I can find, and then move on to 0.32 development. The last 2-week update seemed to be well liked, so I'm thinking I might aim for something like that again. No giant plot scenes that take me a week to do, just content for girls that didn't get much love in 0.31, see how much I can fit in. Probably include the upcoming Sarah CG, can't make any promises about it but I want to write more Rosalyn too, maybe get through her CG? So, very tentative plan, somewhere around the 22nd I'll see how much I have done and if it's in a release-worthy state, and shoot for an update sometime that week. Also, if you read the image above in the "AKIRA" "LEAVE ME ALONE!" voices, you know what's up. Props to Nor for that amazing doodle, man is an endless font of cursed creativity and I love it.

This one is mostly romancey, with a big focus on a very bespoke scene for Sam's first time, and most of the other girls getting something. Hopefully something for everyone. Failing that, next update will probably be a little more laid back, definitely faster, and have stuff for the girls I didn't do much with this time. More on that in a few days after this stabilizes and I decide exactly what I'm doing. Changelog;

• Sam's actual first time (affection 14), with a massive date, relationship building, special backgrounds, and a new CG courtesy of Aragiken! Watch an unusually fancy aurora with her and realize that you are not immune to tomboy propaganda.
• Sam trust 16, which continues the events from her spar with Metatron and grants her a new Instant.
• Maya affection 8, which has some pretty funny sprite movement and Maya being abnormally honest (sometimes). She's a very good dog.
• General plot scene, which randomly occurs sometime after Ina joins. Bit of a callback to the scene when you leave on the adventure, with some character development and a fiery new arrival.
• Celica trust 10, which sets up the totally-not-a-date with her and Sarah in the coming updates, and also has our beloved gremlin being vulnerable and cute. She's always cute.
• Metatron affection 16, which starts off with her asking what it means for a woman to be demure, and kinda goes downhill from there.
• Ina affection 4, in which you and a princess decide how to handle the eventual race war you're going to start by sleeping around too much.
• As always, various bugfixes, I think I got everything people were complaining about but no doubt there will be 0.31a or b soon enough.

Things are picking up again. Metatron and Ina scenes aside, I got a bunch of plot in a sizable group scene, with a new addition to the group and the girls agreeing on a plan going forward. Lotta banter too, some of it actually wholesome. This week I'm gonna focus on trying to wrap up a number of other things I had planned (including Sam's first time) and then see where we're at for an actual release. If I had to guess, I think it'll take ~1.5 weeks of work to finish up what I consider 'necessary' for the update, and depending on how that goes, maybe release in 1.5-2 weeks? Would be nice to finally get it out so I can get started on the next chunk of plot, and the next-to-final main girl hopefully. Thank you all for your patience, I'm excited to have more to show off soon!

Holy shit I did NOT think it would take this long after Severn to get playable Ina, but at least the wait is finally worth it - ya gurl has finally joined the crew! Also Kuril and Kandros, mostly for the like 3 people who just want more bros. Changelog;

• Sarah affection 14, with entirely too much plot relevance to be in a random affection scene
• Maya trust 12, showcasing Maya being less of a gremlin than usual (barely)
• Metatron affection 14, in which Ashley is the MVP
• Metatron conversation 5, further proving that Hieroneiden did nothing wrong
• Ina joining scene (random event in camp, pass time/come back from adventure)
• Ina trust 2. Got wood? She does! I promise that will be vaguely amusing when you read it, but no refunds.
• Ina affection 2. Expect romance, get philosophical debates that get really depressing.
• Ina, Kuril, and Kandros playable. Each has unique traits, some with funky mechanics!
• Abilities are now sorted within an element by school. Martial arts are now color-coded by school as well - if people like it, I can do the same for magic schools.
• Does anyone even want to read 'assorted bugfixes?' I feel like every patch notes has them, I never know what they mean, and frankly I don't even remember what I fixed.

Been plugging away as I can on 0.30. Losing my voice for much of last week made it hard to use speech to text to write, and I've been pretty busy with IRL, but tried to work on stuff that didn't require voice. With the help of other players, I think I have a pretty solid set of ideas to update the channel system and some stats, but there's no way I can justify trying to force all of that into this update, at least not without risking A LOT of bugs. So, maybe next time. The goddess sketches have been fun, I think they all have a pretty good visual direction now, even if they won't be ingame for quite a while. Nor's followup sketches were great for helping me visualize their body language too! Writing wise, Maya and Metatron are getting some stuff. Maya trying to emulate her sifu, while Metatron... let's just say Ashley is doing her best. Not sure who else I'll get to this update, but I don't want to drag it out, so I'll probably start looking for a good stopping point soon. Tentative plans... I'm gonna try to wrap it up this weekend or the first half of next week, then move onto a larger Valentines update. More on that when we get closer.

Despite some new year family aggro, I've been getting back to work. Mostly infrastructure stuff so far - random camp events has been the biggest-name thing so far, which I 've been meaning to do forever but never actually got around to. Useful for story stuff and just fleshing out camp and showing character activity, as a reminder that they exist even when you're not in their camp section. Ina and her cadre are here as well, with more creative unique traits and their join event in progress. Maya is also getting some new unique traits and events as she gets more serious about training. Been putting some serious work into planning out and balancing the future mana/channel update. And less exciting, a *lot* of bugfixes and a few new abilities. The art side of things has been pretty cool too! Absolutely based Sarah thighjob cg finished, idk when it'll show up ingame but that lipbite is something dangerous. And the goddess sketch previews have been going well, got through Juno-Seto and Ensa-Taya so far, maybe Tiamat next? Got some music cooking, hopefully some more icons soon, and one of these millennia we'll have some much-needed new backgrounds too.

Hey guys, happy new year! I know it's long passed for some and yet to come for others, but such is the reality of timezones. It's been a helluva year for me, and by extension DD. From getting two different severe respiratory illnesses early in the year to the Steam release and the culmination of the Deepwood plot in a finale I'm still proud of, there have been no shortages of ups and downs. I kept at it though, and we're making pretty good progress with both the main plot and finally paying off on character romance arcs. Aspasia finally earned hers, Sarah starting to get her stuff together, Sam building up to her first time... and maybe most importantly, your first truly major choice at the Deepwoods finale, deciding the fate of a race. I definitely needed that holiday break week, but I'm excited to get working on DD again. It seemed like people liked that last 2 week update, so I'm gonna give it a shot again for the next update. Gonna focus on Ina and then see what else I can fit in. After that, might try for a larger valentines update? We'll see how that goes. Thanks for sticking around through 2023 fellas, here's to making 2024 a year to remember as well!

As promised, 0.29 is done right about when I hoped it would be. While it was a 2-week project, I put a lot of work into it, and I think it came out pretty equivalent to a normal update, if not one of the really big ones. Let me know how you feel about the content speed and quantity! Changelog;

• Sarah gets her 12 trust, pushing us towards advanced nether magic and an upcoming Celica/Sarah brainiac scene!
• Sam and Metatron get a group scene, a sparring match that goes pretty hard. As does Sam.
• Sam and Metatron each get followup trust scenes, both of them important to the character, with some fun reveals - especially in Metatron's!
• Aspasia gets a massive new evening scene, which includes a lot of characterization, development, and a new CG courtesy of Aragiken making good use of her nature as a slime!
• Two new martial arts, Tiger and Crane, available from the start. Tiger is more aggressive, focusing on damage, bleeds, and a bit of utility; you can play it as a fast predator or patient hunter. Crane is more defensive, with plenty of ways to make yourself hard to kill and disrupt enemies, but lacks Tiger's damage output.
• Both have a Form channel, which works similar to Harp channels - free, but mutually exclusive. While the Form is active, all abilities of that style gain additional effects.
• The new martial arts each have 3 unique traits, some of which are only active when the Form is active.

Made solid progress last week! A couple of new scenes for Sarah, Sam, and Memetron, including the first fight scene I've done in a while - hopefully it's fun to read. Sarah has a new CG now in progress, lookin good from the sketch, and in process on some more music. Worked out two new martial arts, Crane and Tiger, which will be available right from the start so you can be a martial artist for the full game if desired. They also introduce the Form system, which is a slightly fancier version of channels; similar to Harp songs they are free but mutually exclusive and only work if you have the required weapon equipped. Each gives some amount of a stat, and changes something about almost every ability in that martial art. In this case, Tiger adds bleed on hit and Crane has a chance to inflict stun (if possible) or strip some resilience if they can't be stunned. Existing martial arts will get more abilities/Forms over time, tho those that are still in progress (sorry Ashley) may have to wait for it until the character figures out what the form should be. Unlike Traits, you can easily switch between them in battle, but making them mutually exclusive encourages you to actually, you know, switch your fighting style when you switch between forms. We'll see how it goes over in practice. I didn't bother with a break after last update cuz I wanted to try something different this time; a shorter update window, about two weeks. So I'm gonna aim for the next update around the end of this week, around the 21st-23rd, and just kinda see what I can fit into it. I'm pretty optimistic so far, I think I can get a surprisingly good amount of stuff in if I really burn the midnight oil, and then I can take an actual break afterwards.

Definitely took longer than I hoped, but I used that time to make the knight scene a lot chunkier and more reflective of past choices, so hopefully it feels worth it! Changelog

• A massive combi-scene covering your return to the knight camp after the Deepwoods finale, with some significant plot development and some major callbacks to previous major choices. Also includes Ina being thirstier than usual, which is a feat in and of itself.
• Aspasia 12 and 14 affection scenes, pushing further into friendship and romance with the starstruck slime. Like, astronomy stars, not a metaphor for romance.
• Sarah 10 trust gets moving on her own Rocky training montage, which is unsurprisingly less violent than Ashley's. Slightly more messed up tho.
• Metatron 10 trust finally starts delving into Metatron's own martial art, as well as more trauma. That's gonna be a recurring theme.
• Ashley affection 12 is mostly really wholesome, with a side dish of PTSD. She's a good girl. Might purr if you pet her.
• Greatsword rework; 4 new traits, a few new support abilities, and several new elemental skills. It's still probably not as busted as Greataxe, but *way* safer and plays more into the unstoppable juggernaut vibe.
• Some new music; Selendis and Ina each get their own themes!
• A new knight, with art from alhazart. Same guy who did Kuril, Kandros, Svyatibor, etc.

Did pretty good this week, but I definitely underestimated how much Thanksgiving holiday shenanigans and family aggro would hold me back this week - speech to text, even for SFW stuff, doesn't work so hot when there are people tryna sleep in the next room. That said, I got in work where I could! Another Aspasia scene, starting to push her from friend into a little more. A fun lil dialogue choice to define more of your worldview as well. Good bit more of the knights/deepwood wrapup stuff as well, including an admittedly-unplanned conversation with Metatron that highlights her growing friendship/trust with the MC and delves into the idea of responsibility/power. So yeah. Holiday shenanigans pushed back release a bit, but depending on how badly this knights scene balloons out I should still be done in the near future.

Pretty good week this time around! Finished up the Aspasia stuff I mentioned last update - really starting to get good vibes of her and MC, their chemistry is improving nicely. At a reasonable pace given her personality though, not rushing anything. Also got a nice bit of Sarah done, both setting up her next development as a party member (more advanced Nether magic, nerd Sarah, interaction with Ashley/Celica) and exploring her more as a character. Gotta be something other than horny+nice, right? Got rolling on the wrapup to meeting 2 with the Knights, and some disgustingly sappy Sam romance setting up her upcoming Badon date. Neither is finished, but that's gonna be my next job. Not sure the exact ETA to release, sometime this coming week seems likely.

Progress has been ongoing; Metatron, Ashley, and Aspasia are all getting their due, with some nice development that so far has been more focused on romance. Man, I try to act like I always know what I'm doing but MAN I am so glad Aspasia is finally working out, I was kinda struggling to make her work and wondering if I'd made a mistake with her, but she's finally coming out to where I hoped, which is when all the 50 thousand years of plot I DID have planned for her can start to kick in, and she might actually feel like a real character! Anyways, aside from that I have some commissions cooking, i don't really remember which/if any I've talked about publicly recently but I think the one I'm most happy with right now is the silver knight dude from the opening of the knight camp. No, he's not actually that important maybe, but FUCK his art came out cool, like now my brain is wondering "hmm how can I use him more often?" and that never goes anywhere good. I think that late November (gunning for 21st, exact ETA to be determined) should work out fine, I've had my 'dicking around with random stuff I want to do' phase, now I gotta wrap that up and get to work properly on the Selendis/Ina/plot/PLOOOT stuff for the update. Kinda nice to have that moving along again.

Got to work on 0.28 last week after a short break, so far that was mostly fixing bugs, revamping Greatsword and adding a bunch of new traits/abilities, and some new Hydromancy stuff. This week has been more writing, more on that later. Looking forward, I'm gonna aim to wrap up the Deepwoods plot in Badon in 0.28, likely including the return of Ina. Also gonna try to finally deliver on some of those Badon dates (especially Sam, maybe Sarah) and whatever else I can fit in - probably some combination of Sammance, possibly some Rosalyn, MAYBE Alicia but there always seems to be more setup needed for her lol. For now, I'm not gonna promise the full wrapup of the actual deepwoods content, cuz I have a lot I want to do (siofra, zephyrmancy, some new minor characters, svyatibor and mara if alive, etc) and I'm terrible at estimating how long that will all take. Maybe dip my toe in it and see if I can get some done in a reasonable timeframe. Will finish whatever I don't get here in 0.29. Gonna aim for mid-November this time, no more fuckin giant 2+ month updates lol. Maybe November and December 21 for the next two? We'll see how that goes as we get closer, would be nice to have a more consistent timeframe tho.

This is a minor patch, building off of 0.27a a few days ago. Fixes several bugs and typos with traits not doing what they should, Inferno Divider being messed up, Ashley nether training not progressing properly, and some similar issues.

Took longer than I had hoped, but finally got the update done. Focused mostly on the camp this time around, especially Aspasia's romance progression and a mix of romance and friendship for other characters, along with a *lot* of typo fixes and some missing expressions for older content. I hope you enjoy the new content! Changelog;

• Aspasia gets 4, 6, 8, and 10 affection scenes, as well as an 8 trust scene setting up future combat upgrades!
• Sam gets a 10 trust scene that lets you somewhat customize her playstyle, helping her synergize with various builds. There's a much smaller, separate scene in the Training tab that lets you change it at any time while in camp.
• Sarah gets a 12 affection scene that finally reveals one of her Aspects~
• Maya gets an evening hangout/lap pillow scene, unfortunately not involving her lap. She also gets a new missionary sex scene with a CG!
• Ashley got a 10-affection scene pushing her romance forward.
• Damage/heal displays *should* be less prone to displaying 10+ digits, but the move to Renpy 8 caused some more backend issues than I had hoped so it's possible I missed some. Please let me know if you run into any!
• Various other bug/typo fixes as mentioned above. Probably the most obviously notable one would be Maya's 10 trust scene having expressions now.

Aside from last week being kind of a wash due to IRL stuff, progress has been going along pretty well. Aspasia is definitely the big beneficiary of this update, going from whospasia to more content than several other girls, but Sarah is getting some love too. And other girls, but those are the two I've been working on most lately. This week I'm gonna try to wrap up them and do some CG scenes (not sure which yet - likely Ashley and Maya), aiming for a 0.27 release sometime next week. Not confident in an exact date yet, but I can't just keep working on .27 forever lol. Also got Cassiel's finished art from my man jfc, who has mastered the art of ahoge-to-ahoge communication, and I forgor if I mentioned but Aspasia's CG came out REALLY damn well so I may try to sneak it into this update too lmao. I didn't know how bad I needed smugspasia until now.

I've been making bretty good progress lately - lots of Aspasia content, actually beelining through a good chunk of her romance setup., We'll probably go from 2 aff to 10 aff by the time the update hits, alongside other stuff. Aspasia's first CG is also well under way, I'll post the latest version sometime soon but it's looking FIRE. Ridiculously hot, I might try to push it into this update. Cassiel's art is also well under way, the base art is more or less done, we're working on expressions now. Jiffic is a god as always. Her ahoge can also reflect her emotions, sometimes better than her face. Maya got some love too, chill border-line gf doggo lap pillow. You're the pillow, and no, you don't get a say in the matter. I'm gonna try for a beta this coming day, probably cutting out some unfinished scenes, and then get back to work churning stuff out for the rest of the week. I feel like I'm finally getting close to matching what I said I'd do on the roadmap for this update, so I'm gonna tentatively guess 1-2 more betas and then a release in 1-2 weeks? Definitely took longer than I had hoped, but eh, sometimes you just gotta keep plugging away until things work out.

Work on .27 continues! Made some really good progress on Sarah and Ashley romance stuff. They're both goobers, but more importantly, good girls. Commissions are also ongoing; Sam's first sex CG finished, (minor spoilers) the next angel, Cassiel, is well underway, and finalized Alicia's bopping default theme to go with the dope battle theme I got a bit back. Reallly hoping that .28 will be Alicia's intro, been waiting to do her for too long. Also working on getting Aspasia's first CG started, and some other stuff that we'll have to see how it goes before I can start jerking myself off lmao. Also included are a few sketches Nor did recently, I thought they were generally very funny or cute, or cursed, or all of them at once LOL. The second one is an alt version of Celica that is absolutely gorgeous!

I'm still plugging away at the update. Exact ETA unknown, I definitely underestimated how much effort some things would take so it'll still be a bit before launch. Making some good progress though, and nice secondary progress with commissions; some light spoilers below. Got the art for the next angel in progress, and the normal theme for the next party member, Alicia (earth trainer) is coming out AMAZING - ubercrow is doing Juno-Seto's work. Sam CG is coming along very nicely too, signed off on her expressions recently. I've also been looking into backgrounds, I really want to improve the Temple background, but it's weirdly hard to decide where to go with that. I have zero experience with background commissions and idk how detailed they should actually be lol. As for the 'modding question' part of this; Divine Dawn was built from the start to have strong modding support. It's very easy to add new abilities/traits/etc, and harder but doable to add scenes, characters, combat areas, etc. That said, it is... not documented, like at all, and some parts haven't been tested. I gotta focus on finishing this update first, but after I do, would there be much interest in me buckling down and spending some time writing guides and setting up Steam Workshop? Probably a few days-week ish. I could do some small example mods to help learn as well.

More commissions, music, monsters and waifus galore. Also got a certain someone's art started, you may catch a glimpse of her in Badon as part of its finishing plot stuff in an update or two. Writing wise, made some progress, it's looking like this update will mostly be Sam, Whospasia, and Sarah content? +Ashley and maybe Maya CGs. We'll see what all makes it into the end. Exact release date is still to be determined; I'm gonna aim for around the 15th, but let's be real here, my estimates kinda suck. So it may vary by a few days.

Last week was mostly typo fixes and bug fixes, alongside a surprising number of minor UI improvements, culminating in the release of the 0.26a mini-update. That rapidly evolved into 0.26b when I realized I did an oopsie for new players that required an immediate fix or they could get softlocked in camp LOL. I do have more fixes to go through, but 0.26b is stable so I've been moving into work on 0.27, which is still on track for early August. I've also been getting the old commission machine started back up, I was so busy with 0.26 that I fell behind on those and have to catch up - will talk about those when I have more to show for it than "yeah I threw some money at a guy to do something." Sam is also getting some love this week, scenes and new traits/abilities, and I'm gonna try to fit Metatron in as well. Thanks as always for sticking around, I'll keep plugging away at this game in hopes of eventually getting it so polished it shines!

Changelog

• Updated to Renpy 8, which is necessary for future development and will hopefully help Linux/Steam Deck compatibility
• Fixed some issues with masteries showing up/not showing up inappropriately
• Added a rest point directly after the Volos battle
• Added a couple new tools in the cheat menu
• Various minor bug and typo fixes because Crys cannot be trusted near a keyboard
• New random event in Deepwoods Heart and revamped the wounded Hob event in Arden Expanse; spare/heal/flask-heal the hob for a small chance of him temporarily joining the party temporarily in Heart. You will need to re-run Expanse and trigger him one more time for this to work.
• Various UI improvements; the initiative list at top right of battles now shows animated health bars, including temporary allies, and ally sprites show up when selecting them in the ally picker. Maya's expressions get progressively cuter the more Affection she has! This will be expanded on later, but I wanted to try a beta version of that now.

First things first; I've gotten enough bug/typo reports that I think I should do a 0.26a. Already got it mostly done, along with a few new additions, but will probably need 1-2 more days to polish and finish it. Secondly, I haven't tried to do a proper roadmap before, but I promised to give it a shot, so here we are. Going to try to cover my goals for the next few months and what I hope to get done, along with a rough idea of what, when, and where. Dates and content order may vary. General overview;

• More commissions. The secondary visual aspects of the game could be upgraded (ex. backgrounds, icons, maybe non-lewd CGs, etc) and I gotta uh figure out how to do that. Otherwise, just the usual stuff; more lewd CGs, occasionally new characters/art, new outfits/expressions for existing girls, etc.
• Wrap up the Deepwoods plot; this means actually having consequences and scenes for all the choices you made along the way, reporting to Selendis, more time with Svyatibor/Selendis/possibly Mara, etc. I also want to add some new characters sprinkled throughout the Deepwoods areas, and Zephyrmancy training, to try to show the forest healing a little.
• Push forward with the main plot, going from Metatron's church scene and its aftermath to the post-badon minor areas. No chance we're hitting Astrologia in 2 months though lol.
• Badon expansion; more dates with the cast, more Olivia, maybe more Charles since everyone seems to love him, and probably at least one scene of Sarah being a degenerate nymphomaniac.
• More camp scenes, fleshing out romances and adding some choices on ally development. I'll probably use Sam as the prototype for the second one and see how that goes over.
• More Rosalyn/Amnelis. These CGs are burning a hole in my soul.
• AI improvements; upgrading to Renpy 8 lets me use more modern Python, so I can actually do that now.
• Fleshing out less exciting schools/elements of magic. Personally I think that Pyromancy, Hydromancy, and Aeromancy are reasonably strong but could use more variety, and in Pyromancy's case, better burn interaction beyond 'just channel Smoulder and Enkindle lmao.'
• UI improvements; ideally a new commissioned UI so the game looks prettier, but also just functional stuff like enemy health bars.

• 0.26a: by Wednesday, some bugfixes, tweaking Heart difficulty a little, revisiting the wounded hob scene from Expanse, minor updates to cheat menu
• 0.27: late July/early August; probably focused on Aspasia, Sam, and Maya for camp content. Some deepwoods wrapup. Probably not Ina. Likely some Badon dates.
• 0.28: late August/early September; complete Deepwoods plot wrapup and add Ina to the party. Zephyrmancy training. Depending on how the Sam choice stuff goes, maybe another 1-2 characters of that. MAYBE the next combat area and minitaur.
• 0.29: late September/early October; definitely new combat area if I haven't gotten there yet. All deepwoods wrapup completed. New weapon training/unlock. Possibly beta version of one branch of summoning?

Divine Dawn 0.26 is finally out! Before we get to the changelog, I would like to thank you all for being so patient, and I hope that the sheer volume of new stuff will be well worth the wait! I'd also like to thank everyone who helped beta test the update; there are probably still some typos and bugs, but the vast majority have been found despite many major backend changes. Too many people contributed for my senile old brain to keep track, but special shoutouts to Dunnask, Kronos, Grim, and Nobody for each sending in dozens or even hundreds of reports and suggestions over the last two months. Now, the changelog;

• A new area, the Deepwoods Heart. Chock full of plot, new art, and music, it will be a true test of your your abilities and your beliefs, with heavily divergent endings depending on your final choices.
• Sarah gets a wholesome new CG and sex scene (night) as well as another talk (evening), both requiring high affection.
• Celica gets a new Affection 12 scene pushing the relationship forward, as well as a shared hangout with Sam (evening).
• Metatron gets a new conversation that starts off focused on abs and eventually segues into massive spoilers about exactly how thicc or bricc various angels are. Trust me, it's relevant to the plot.
• Aspasia gets a new 6 Trust scene as your bond with her begins to grow and she gets a little bit snarkier.
• Ashley gets a new conversation with Maya as oil and water mix into a big fucking problem. She also gets a followup conversation discussing her worldview.
• Trait and now Ability dictionaries exist in the right-click menus, with better use of icons and separation to make 'em a bit easier to peruse. Hopefully helps for making new builds.
• Chesed completely revamped into 7 new spells, while Malkuth got quite a few spellsword-oriented spells as well. Binah and Geburah got a few new spells apiece.
• For some godawful reason a lot of active Charisma abilities didn't actually let you master them, which is now fixed.
• A metric assload of new traits; Charisma gets a bunch that let you buff your allies passively, while healing magic (mostly Aether and Water) get a variety of specialized as well as generalized traits. Pyromancy got some love as well.
• The Athame weapon gained several new elemental skills and traits, hopefully making it a strong option for a more dexterity-focused spellsword rather than a stat stick. Oh, and you can bleed yourself horribly for a short magic buff.
• New stat icons! Also rearranged the display a bit. No functional changes.
• Several existing characters now have new music; Maya's default, Sarah during her lewd scene, etc.
• Several new themes for the Heart; there's a lot of new boss music to say the least!
• Light channel balancing; each active channel increases the activation cost of the next. More thorough work will be done with them another time, this is somewhat experimental.
• I know everyone hates the 'assorted bugfixes' thing every damn changelog has but bruh I'm not even going to try to type them out, there are hundreds. Shoutout to everyone who reported them!

Actually a pretty decent week this time around! Metatron got a pretty sizable lore dump conversation about angel fitness that somehow segued into angel body types and her rating their hugging abilities. It's just the right mix of dangerous implications and Metatron being a dork, I had too much fun with that. Aspasia also got a major trust scene that got more in-depth than I had anticipated, but did a good job of showing off her personality I think? If nothing else, I'm feeling more confident that I'm finally 'getting' her and will be able to do a lot more with her in the near future. Sarah finally got her next CG and lewd scene. As I joked earlier, I don't know if it was the best I've ever done, but it's definitely the most sickeningly lovey and grabby, with an adoring succubus gf. And some of her mental problems. trying to polish things up there with the help of others - special thanks to Dunnask, Kronos, Grim, Musicfruit, Nobody, and others I can't remember right now for helping over beta 1 and 2! This is gonna be a colossal update, but hopefully not too buggy thanks to their hard work. With everything else 'necessary' done, I'm pivoting back to the half-finished deepwoods over the next few days to try to actually finish it. Can't promise release will be by the 29th but I'm gonna do my best to hit it. Thank you all for your patience, I hope I can make this update worth the wait! Also, while this is unfortunately just fanart for now, have an incredibly sweet mommy Aspasia! Courtesy of Nor, a very talented artist who has already done a few of the CGs.

Had a lot come up over the last week or two, but I've been plugging away at the next update! Deepwoods finale is well under way, though I definitely underestimated the amount of work it would take to turn it into a proper finale to the first arc. Also got more music, monsters, and other comms/free use content sorted for this update and some of the stuff I want to d post-finale to encourage revisiting the deepwoods as it heals. More scenes, atm focusing on Sarah/Aspasia. Almost forgot how much Aspasia actually needed, honestly, and Sarah is in dire need of more meaningful affection scenes as well. Thankfully, both are actually going quite well, which I confess feels pretty damn good after not having much luck with Aspasia previously. I *could* pull an update together in a few days and release, but frankly I don't think it would live up to the hype, or really respect the decisions people made along the way (how you handled hobs in Expanse, what you told Selendis, how you handled Svyatibor, and what you do with Mara). Already kinda ran into that with the Ina meeting scene, ended up dropping some of my original ideas. Aaaaand I kinda don't want to pull a ME3 here. So. Since I kinda wanted to do the next update around the end of the month anyways, I'm considering pushing this update's release date back to around then - let's say the 28th-29th - to focus on polishing the forest and expanding Aspasia. Maybe see if I can fit in an extra CG or two; Ashley, Amnelis, and Rosalyn are all in the running. Open to feedback tho.

This week was mostly development for the deepwoods finale - finalizing the various assets and getting going on the writing/final planning. Pretty happy with how it's going, though as with every other project I assumed I could do quickly, it's going a bit slower than I optimistically assumed. Also did a fair number of new traits during downtime; mostly healing-focused, with a mix of more generic traits and some that I'm more proud of - adding special effects to certain schools of healing magic for example. Comcast being Comcast so the 30th was never actually an option apparently lmao, haven't had internet much today, but I think update is safely sometime next week! Depending on how this one goes. And I can at least work offline even without internet, I'll just be perma-salty about lack of Youtube music.

More of a mechanics-heavy week this time around. Aether spells got a massive update, particularly completely reworking Chesed (1->7 spells) and updating Malkuth quite a bit as well. Some fancy new stuff for spellsword builds and the like too! Metatron is also getting the first installment of her martial arts; much like Ashley it'll be doled out in pieces. Got going on the Deepwoods finale content as well, mostly planning and setting up art music etc so far but I thiiiink I have things set up better now. Not sure exactly when the next update will hit, in a best-case scenario I'd say may 30th, worst-case scenario somewhere around june 6th. Should have a better idea next post.

Pretty decent progress this time around. About 7k words, split across a weird variety of Ashley, Celica, Aspasia, Metatron, and Sam. Some romance, some friendship, and some shenanigans. Also added a fair number of traits (and some abilities) to several weapons, especially Athame and other daggers. Some characters now have better builds/make better use of armor and trait options, and you can request some of the tankier characters draw heat for you - so Aspasia can actually make use of her ridiculous bulk. Think we finally got the last few stat icons done too, so that should be in next update. Summer heat kicking in BAD though, hope it aint as hot for you guys as it is here. Anyways, back to work!

Got back to work this week! Actually went pretty well, despite being a tad rusty and having a lot going on IRL. Around 8000 words of content written, with a few group scenes (Ashley/Maya, Sam/Celica) and one solo with Sarah. They all came out pretty well, though lowkey I'm super proud of the Sarah one, it's so nice to see her in comfy therapist mode. Rosalyn and Ashley CGs got delivered as well; idk exactly when they'll make it into the game, but both artists (Nor and InCloud respectively) did a phenomenal job with the art! Lotta good expressions, and of course very lewd. Both are surprisingly affectionate too! I forget if I even mentioned this one, but we also got a very cool giant birb art (non-waifu, sorry) that will likely be used in the post-deepwoods area. Great progress on new stat icons, thanks to TheWiseHedgehog's amazing work. I think we have everything except for the Charisma icon nailed down and looking great! I also went back and fixed almost all of the bugs/typos reported since 0.25 launch, though I confess some will take a little more work than I had hoped. My thanks to everyone who reported those, it's incredibly helpful for improving the game! Gonna try to get some of the CG backlog implemented this week, there's actually more than I had realized floating around. Not the worst fate to have though. 'Oh no, a bunch of super high-quality lewd art, how terrible!' said no one ever. Lastly, have a wide variety of sketches from Nor! Some are unbearably cute, some are goofy as hell, and some are dangerously good waifuizations of existing bosses/monsters. SvyatiMOMMY, god damn. It's honestly kinda crazy how good his art is, these were all sketches during a patron call that he just went super saiyan in like a god.

Thank you all for showing interest in the game! It's been really cool seeing so many people enjoy Divine Dawn; I just like making people happy. I'm taking a few days off to recuperate, but later this week I'll get back to work on the next update. Not sure exactly what will be in it yet - probably the Deepwoods finale, some adult scenes/CGs, and some mix of bugfixes, non-sexy character development stuff, and new features. With that said, I have two questions for all of you;

• How often do you want me to post progress updates?
• How often would you like to see game updates?

Divine Dawn is finally entering Early Access! I've been working on this for about two years now, learning to code and practicing writing along the way, so it's incredibly cool to finally hit a milestone of this size! Grew up wanting to be a writer or a game developer, and uh, we're somewhere in that vicinity! Not quite how I expected to get there, but such is life. As an Early Access title, there will be some scuff - I probably missed some bugs and typos, and Juno-Seto knows I'm not an expert in user interface design. I tried to catch everything possible, but I'm just an amateur dev rather than a triple-A company. So please bear with me, and report issues for me to fix! As the Early Access description states, I intend to keep updating this game for a few years, and relying on feedback from you guys. I intend to stick to my overall vision for the game, but I've learned that constructive criticism is an incredibly powerful tool, and I will regularly update yall on my progress (weekly?) as well as solicit feedback on various things. I suspect the first few days will involve a lot of bugfixing, but once I get an idea of how stable things are I'll post again to see what kind of news, update, and feedback cycles you guys would prefer. In the meantime, enjoy the game! This has been my life for a few years now, and I truly hope it can bring joy to at least a few people out there.

First off, I would like to thank everyone that participated in February's NEXT fest. I got some really helpful feedback about what was working and what aspects of the game, and UI, could use a bit of tuning. This will be an ongoing process - I am learning as I go - but I will continue to work at it! Looking forward, the April 20th release date I had been aiming for still looks valid! I'll keep working on adding content and polishing stuff; there will be around another 30-40k words over what was in the NEXT fest by launch. So, you know, a short novel. And of course, the 20th is just the start; I will continue updating the game long into the future. A few more years anyways, I'm not sure exactly how long it'll take to finish the planned content and what else will show up in the meantime. I intend to solicit opinions on release cadence and update progress reports after release, to find out what you guys want to see and what I can commit to. Gotta take this seriously, and that means a minimum of tomfoolery on my end.