Hey, Steam! It's your new favorite douchebag game developer, Nickolai Filipanov writing again. I hope everyone is doing well, staying safe and wearing their masks while all this crazy stuff is going down. 2020 has been quite a challenge so far for almost literally everyone around the globe with all the personal stuff, protests, delays, changes and the pandemic still going on. I know how you all must feel, I had a fair amount of challenges for myself, and as much as I hope for everything and everyone to finally get a satisfying conclusion they deserve, I have only a few more personal stuff to deal with that may or may not slow down the further development of Stramedia. I will elaborate on that later after I share the development progress and some info on the Survival gamemode that is in the pre-production.

1. Done with writing and I am almost done with the new needed art assets!

That's right! Writing is done, I only have a few dozens more rooms to finish drawing, make some more new art assets for the puzzles, mini-games, cutscenes, character sprites and several necessary UI elements! I am definitely excited to finish that part before coding all stuff in, including some of the updated sprites, just like MNP's. (can you see that tiny little scarf? That's a new thing!) So, like, I only have 80% of the needed environmental art done.
I am really looking forward for you to see how the rest of the stuff looks once Stramedia launches in Early Access!

2. Speaking of updates...

2.1. Expected fixes and minor additions

I cannot entirely promise this, but the next build is gonna have a fair amount of fixes and additions of the features that were originally missing in the current 0.3 build, such as:

• Left Handed Gamepad Controls (where you'll get to control the characters, the cursor and hover UI stuff with the Right Stick and Face Buttons, Shoulder Button Prompts are swapped with D-Pad input and Inverted Shoulder Button Prompts... I hope I am making sense when I am saying this);
• UI Flashing Toggle;
• A map system (probably);
• Saving System;
• Properly Working Status Effects;
• Locked Door Interaction Prompts and Audio Cues;
• In-Game HUD not displaying properly;
• Some... audio fixes;
• Some updated sprites;
• A tiny little Russian localization string fix;
• And so on.

2.2. Survival Mode

"GOOD MORNING, AND TODAY IS THE START OF YOUR NEW LIFE AS AN EMPLOYEE OF STRAMEDIA SAFEHOUSE FACILITY! YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN THREE TASKS TO TAKE CARE OF, AND YOU MAY CHOOSE ONE TO ACCOMPLISH FOR THE DAY. THOUGH WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO PREPARE A SCHEDULE OF WHICH TASKS YOU'LL BE DOING IN WHAT DAY, BUT WE HONESTLY DON'T REALLY CARE HOW YOU EARN YOUR OWN MONEY HERE. WE ONLY CARE THAT YOU DON'T SLACK OFF OR MESS UP AT WORK. IF YOU DO SO, YOU WILL BE GIVEN A STERN WARNING. YOU MAY NOT WANNA GET THREE OF THESE. WE ARE JUST SAYING. GOOD LUCK, AND HAVE FUN AT YOUR NEW WORKPLACE! (but don't have too much fun though. That counts as slacking off, too.)" ...Yeah, in this one you'll be playing as an adult. You may consider it to be a first separate "campaign" mode where you get to test out how attentive and careful you are when you will be a part-time janitor, a part-time guard and technical maintainer and a part-time... uh... trash... guy. At the end of each shift you will receive your payment based on it's completion, how well you do through it (heck, they may consider giving you a bonus) and penalties will be made if you slack off or make any more messes. At the end of each week you'll get to choose whenever you'd want to rest or go to the shop where you'll be able to buy more supplies, temporary upgrades and probably "gamble" them away in case if you're feeling like doing something quite risky. If you end up failing shifts three times in a row or end up dying, your progress will get nullified. Regularly you'll get to do it for four entire in-game weeks, but if you'll be done with them and want to see how long will you get far, Endless mode will be available for you to try! But remember though, if you play on Endless, you won't be able to save your progress and the ongoing difficulty might have an interesting pacing. I absolutely can't wait to work on it and let you try your luck! Perhaps your score will make it to the top of the Steam Leaderboards, but who knows?~ And now... I feel like that should wrap up the development progress report.
Well, there it is. I am getting closer and closer to what I've been preparing for and might tear apart, or let it tear ME apart? Due to the COVID-19 still going strong in Russia, some educational guidelines temporarily changed for the sake of others' safety:

• Students who have finished all two semesters of the 11th grade well enough, they are now considered to be graduated from highschool without having to attend selected areas to do the Unified State Exams;
• However, if some graduated students want to apply for a university, they will still have to do the required Unified State Exams;
• ...but they have been moved from late May/the beginning of June to the beginning of July.

If I want to apply for the Linguistic (and I.T.) University and if I actually want to continue working on the game while staying free from the military service that may still happen, I will have to do the exams. And I think I am prepared well enough for them. Until these exams are not done nor passed, I will have to temporarily step away from working on Stramedia in order to focus to prepare for them, and it's likely that they will be done for in about a month... Or maybe some selected July days will have to be cut from the production schedule, leaving a few to take my mind off for a bit and add some stuff up for fun. So, the days I will likely be absent are on: 3rd of July - to do the Computer Science exam 6th/7th of July - to do the Russian Language exam 10th of July - to do the Advanced Mathematics exam 16th of July - to do the Arts and Social Studies exam 20th, 22nd/23rd of July - to do the English Language exam that was split in two parts... again. (for writing and vocabulary non-sense) If all goes well, of course I will be celebrating the success... with you guys! Hell, the first thing if Stramedia ever comes out in Early Access, I will be doing a launch sale on as many PC marketplaces (Steam and Game Jolt included), hell, I will even be hosting a key giveaway for the said PC marketplaces Stramedia will be available on! I will keep you guys updated in case on how things will go. But for now, it is time for me to step down for a while. I hope to see you fellas once again in the future. For now, stay tuned, stay safe, and wear your goddamn masks. <3