Hello everyone!
I guess, it's finally time to publish the build I've been working on for all this time and tell you why did it take so long and what have I been doing all of this time.
 
But before that - I am sorry for the lack of updates and insights into the development. I am also sorry for publishing not a release-ready, but an in-development build of the game. I just didn't want to keep you without any content for any longer.

Here's a quite lengthy recap of what I've been doing:
 
• Reintroducing some key mechanics
At some point I came up with a saddening realisation - the project took one too many steps in the direction I've never wanted it to take.
Particularly, while it is nice to have a lot of different things to do in the game, the more stuff I added - the less "whole" the game became. I didn't want to turn YGD into an amusement park with different attractions, but no real structure to the overall adventure, and therefore I decided to try to fix the mistakes I made and remake things I didn't like.
 
Yes, a lot of things got cut. Probably not for long, though. For instance, I plan to turn some of the "Kaiju mode" mechanics into a way for the game world to react to player's actions, return the "pump" as an alternative to the growth ray and a lot more.
 

The one thing that took maybe way too much time - is the new events system. As some people may probably remember, in the previous versions there was a separate "Scenario Editor". However, it was too complicated of a mechanic, especially because of the overall drastic changes made to the events and scenarios themselves. Because of that, I decided to turn all of the events into separate packages. Long story short - you can edit events directly as text files in the game's folder. The system is still in the development and needs a lot of testing due to it's complexity, but rest assured, it's already multiple times better than what the game could offer previously. At least it doesn't forcefully pause the game anymore.
 
Speaking of the game's file system - now most of the stuff the game uses to function is fetched directly from it's folder, including scenarios, save files and some more.

• Adding new things

The one thing that may have caught some attention - is an addition of the "stomp" mechanic. I wanted to try to make the game more interactive and graphically diverse and I hope this is a step in the right direction. Even though the game is inherently simple, I do really want to make it as lively and enjoyable as I can.
 
Other than that, I've been adding more status effects, events and interactions. However, with this update I wanted to make things different, yet at the same time as similar to what everyone's been used to as possible.

By the way, the game now also checks for updates and if there's one - offers you to download it from the game's github repository!
https://github.com/tamnyam/YourGrowthDrive

• Translating stuff

I've added a localization framework and included Russian translation as a proof of concept. The localization system is fairly simple - you just take an existing localization package (which is actually just a text file) and change the text inside of it.
 
Unfortunately, this system is not suited for languages, that do not use latin or cyrillic symbols. I will do my best to introduce support for the languages, that use neither of them, however I cannot make any promises now, sorry.
 
• Updating game's artwork

The hardest part for me personally was to find artists to work with. Throughout this time I've tried to work with more than 10 different artists, from aspiring beginners to seasoned professionals, however two problems have always stayed the same - art takes time, and if I had to part with some artists along the way - that time only increased. I will not be throwing names or calling out anyone here for obvious reasons. Also, I would like not to bring up the total amount of money I spent on the art (maily because it would be very hard to count at this point) and just thank everyone who supported the game with donations - that really helped to cover some of the costs.
 
Also, due to the reasons I cannot do anything about, I cannot pay artists from outside of the country of my residence. Therefore, the overall scope of people I can work with have been severely limited. But in some way it even played out handsomely - the money I put into the assets helped some small artists to move on with their craft in these trying times.
And here I would like to state the following - NONE of the artists who worked on the assets are even remotely related to macro content. I am very grateful to them for accepting my rather specific commissions and delivering their beautiful art.
 
All of the people who created art for the current version of the game are listed in the "About" section of the game's menu. I would also like to thank KYM (https://boosty.to/kym5knifes) for helping me with a lot of the world assets and portraits, as well as Disko_Nekt (https://boosty.to/disko_nekt) for drawing current YCH character sprites in such a short amount of time.
 
•  What's next?
 

Well, I will keep polishing existing mechanics, bringing back cut features and fixing things that have to be fixed.

During all this time I've also developed a lot of peculiar things, that could be introduced into the game, including, for example, Twitch integration features.
 
I once again sincerely apologise for the lack of content and long months of silence.
And thank you very-very much for your interest in the project and your support.