Hail to all you draconic kings (and queens, and other assorted monarchs)! This month’s State Of The Realm is a little later than usual - after the massive release of v5.0.5, I took a much-needed week off to go outside and touch some grass. And a very pleasant week it was. I figured that maybe this month would see a nice little tidying-up build, but no, everyone in the team has been extremely industrious and I am doing all I can to catch up. You should see the results this weekend, assuming playtesting goes smoothly.

A lot of my other efforts this month have been focused around sound. It has always been my ambition to have a fully and professionally voice-acted game, and our means are slowly catching up with that goal. Thanks to you! Our newest VA Demi Goggles will be stepping up to voice Enid, and Commander Hector will soon have a voice also. We’ve got new studio recordings from Catkit (Maelys) and Marina Montague (Adeline/Chia/Marie-Anne/Mina/Naho), including replacements for old voice acting done in far humbler times. Our range of ambient sounds is getting properly populated with Michael Ghelfi’s work, as well as an effects suite mastered by GreyScale (Ravager/Rhyll) - who has also been working on getting a full soundtrack ready for you all. And I can’t go this far without giving a shout out to our amazing sound team (HereToHelp, GerdGenus, Mokkel, and Stuke), whose fierce work behind the scenes has kept pace with the avalanche of new recordings.

Sound hasn't been our only area of focus, however. Amon Ra and Irrelevant Art have been spending a lot of time this month with Live2D! The results aren't quite ready to share - not just yet - but their work is very promising, and if their experiments yield fruit then we'll see the benefits for the rest of Ravager's development. And beyond.

Speaking of development, I had best get back to it. I'll leave you with this parting message, drawn and animated by BeeFeeBoyo on our Discord server, and voiced by Catkit herself.

This weekend saw the very hefty release of version 5.0.5 (available on Discord for subscribers, and Itch or Steam for everyone else). We are now firmly outside the shadow of the Act V transition - and into the territory of all the exciting things we want to do with it. These next few months will feature more faction catchups, more appearances from minor characters, more Dreamweaver scenes, more new and revamped art, more voice acting, and ultimately our glorious close for Act V Chapter 1.

But before we do all that, I'm going to go outside and touch some grass. Thank you everyone, you're the best players and team a dev could ever ask for. See you in a week!

(art by Irrelevant Art)