Hey everyone!

As we get to the end of another hot Summer, we're excited to close out several of our tasks! But, before we get to the progress we've made in these last few months, we wanted to announce that we're launching our very own SWDTech Games Discord server!
Over the last few months we've built a little home for our dev team on Discord and we are ready to open it up backers/fans/cactuars to provide a space for our community to grow. Over at our Discord server, you'll be able to communicate directly with the development team, get granular development updates, stay in the know when we're streaming development of Pixel Noir, catch the latest screenshots & gifs teasing the game until launch, connect with other backers *cough RPG nerds cough*, and more! So join our Discord server, claim your role, & post as many detective/RPG memes as you want! Important note for backers: please follow the directions in the #choose-your-role channel so that we can add you as a Kickstarter backer! Once you're added, you'll have access to #backer-lounge where we'll drop specific announcements and answer generic backer inquiries!
If David Tennant can't convince you to join, probably nobody can

Progress

While we are keeping a lid on an estimated release date until development is finished, we wanted to give you an update on the short list of tasks we laid out in the beginning of the year. Since our last update, we've finished:

• Collectible Placement - Treasure boxes, bundles of cash and items found through using Investigation Mode are now all in the game!
• Shops, Traders, Grifters, & Black Markets - Yes, that's right folks you can buy, sell, and get ripped off now in the streets of Pinnacle City!
• Battle Encounter Placement - Now you'll find patrolling baddies that might jump you around town! We've also added mimic type enemies!

This is what we have left before we can ramp up on porting & localization!

• Bugs, bugs and more bugs - Yes, these still are popping up, but we are tracking less with every play test! This will be an ongoing task, even through patching but we want to make sure game play is as tight as possible.
• Battle / Skill / Stat Balancing - This is the longest, most tedious task in testing. We closed out our first (and longest) pass of balancing and are working through our second pass.
• Polish - We are continuing to fine-tune audio, cinematics, dialogue, and flesh out extra features such as CRDTech encounters. This will be an ongoing task until we launch.

Along with the many features we've been polishing and testing from the last update, we're working our way through implementing the visual effects for skills & items in battle. It's a much-neglected area that hasn't been updated since the Early Access release. Here's a sneak peek at some of the changes!
Woof swinging that chain so fast that it creates wind shear!
Is it fair to say that this thug has officially been mooned?
Slowing down is sometimes the best way to speed up. #showerthoughts
A little randomness never hurt anyone....maybe.
Who's ready for a cocktail party?
Here's what items now look like when used in battle!

Audio

Here's a sample of the Fish Market BGM which will play in (you guessed it) the Fish Market! Here you'll be assailed by a number of colorful union teamsters and other fishy characters! https://soundcloud.com/discover/sets/track-stations:1121178766

That's It For Now

Before we sign off, there's a small issue we wanted to address. In recent weeks, our development progress tracker (the Roadmap) has been on the fritz. It's fixed now, but if you've noticed a slowdown in code pushes, know that we were chugging away--it's just that the code pushes weren't updating publicly. It should all be fixed with the correct data now. As it turns out several Google API's were updated causing the issue on our end. Our next update will be out on Dec. 9th (exactly 3 months from this update). As always, follow our official Roadmap / Twitter bot. Also, don't forget to check in on Leo's Pixel Noir development streams on Twitch Monday and Thursday nights and now Len's NEW Development streams on Fridays to see the game's progression in real time! //Team SWDTech