We've been a bit quiet lately and we wanted to go into a bit of detail on what's been happening lately. Currently Part 3 is making some decent progress, but because our lead has been a bit swamped IRL lately progress hasn't been going as quickly as we'd like. So in order to make it a bit less of a drag we're currently in the process of making two new pinups and most likely even more before Part 3 is out. We're also going to be doing another patch to clean up the Mini-Update with the feedback we've gotten so far, and once it's more stable we'll add this version as a Newgrounds/public build. To go into a bit of detail for what had been added if you haven't seen the patch notes: 

What's been added:
-New wardrobe feature
-Cheat codes in game (with a nude code that's limited to Cyber Owl tier patrons until story progresses further)
-Lunar New Years! ( we know this is a bit late but we didn't want to remove the treasure hunt for red pockets, so the code will still be able to be enabled.)
-Updated minigame!
-Updated Shop with bras/panties for Everie and Fae!

This is the last NSFW scene for Part 2, it's taken a bit but we'll be adding next week into the build for Patrons!

Part 3 we've been planning on making a similar amount of content to Part 2, and we've been working pretty heavily on making sure the narrative is in a solid place. We're also aiming to add a bit more gameplay with puzzles in the Syndicate facility, but that's been a little more challenging than we were expecting. It's something we're going to be putting a lot of effort with and we're hoping it'll expand our abilities for puzzles/gameplay in the future!

Highly recommend watching Frieren as well!

For the patron pinups we decided due to how much we love the new Frieren: Beyond Journey's End anime to do two new pinups! One is of Frieren which is pretty far along and will be released for patrons very soon, and the other is of Ubel. If you guys enjoy the pinups we can always do more from the series, or even if you have a suggestion for the next one just let us know below! 

Bit of a shorter news update today but wanted to keep you guys informed! We'll have more news on Part 3 soon, but keep an eye out for our brand new pinups as well!

So we've been a bit quiet as of late but now we wanted to give a bit of detail on what we've been cooking up! This mini-update we've been focused on adding a few features that were highly requested by fans and also tried to include a few surprises as well. On top of major improvements to the Junky minigame, we've been working on adding new items for players to purchase on the shop with the money they earned from shooting junksteroids. We've also added another fun feature: Wardrobes! Coming this mini-update we've fixed up the outfit system to become interchangeable and you can now customize the Hair, Shirts, Bras, Pants and Panties for both Fae and Everie (Elsie's wardrobe will come in Part 3).

Currently we've just added three sets of lingerie as well as some brand new shorts for Everie! We plan on adding more in the future :D

The trickiest part with getting this outfit system to work was making sure it remembers the player's choices regardless of where they are in the game. We've managed to create a system that will keep the player's selected outfits, and we're going to be adding even more in the future. Currently you won't be able to make the characters fully nude, and the reason we're not making this an option just yet is because it's so early in on progression it wouldn't quite make sense for the girls to show off everything to someone they don't know super well. However we will be giving a code for Cyber Owl tier patrons that'll allow you to bypass this and have the characters fully nude despite the timing with the story (it will be available to everyone further down the line we just wanted to give a bonus for our higher tier patrons). The system is fully modular and we're going to be asking patrons soon what types of outfits they want us to add in the future, we just needed to make sure the groundwork was done for it to work perfectly every time.

Everie's looking great in her new shorts! (we also wanted to show she kept her cyber knees from the original version).

On top of this wardrobe update we wanted to include a little bonus to celebrate Lunar New Years! We'll be giving a code to all patrons to enable some new dialogue with Junky and he'll be hiding some red pockets around the ship. These red pockets will include some money which can be used in the shop. We want to make Lunar New Years a recurring event with Cyber Rift, and we're hoping to expand on this even more next year, but we hope you enjoy the treasure hunt!

Junky's minigame got a major glow up with some brand new sprites and sound effects!

Finally we've updated the minigame to have some brand new updated sprites and a whole new way to play! Rather than being stuck to a single screen you can now roam around an area to shoot the junksteroids. Each junksteroid now has a health bar before being broken up and they can spawn 3 different types of valuable junk to collect for Junky. We want a lot of feedback on this minigame and we're happy to add more based on what you guys want in the future so please let us know what you think once it's out.

And finally to cap off this news post the mini-update will be released February 18th! Hope you guys are excited for this update and if you have any ideas for new outfits or even just ideas for the game in general let us know!

Progress with Cyber Rift has been going pretty steady but it's definitely been a bit of a hectic time as of late! One of our team members ended up having a baby last month so that's been taking a lot of their time, but lately things are going back to a steady speed and we're happy to give a proper update on happenings now. We're really trying to make sure the wait is a lot smaller compared to the massive gap between Part 1 and 2, so we're aiming to make smaller updates in between each Part. This coming update will be the wardrobe and minigame update, which will be adding a newly improved asteroids minigame as well as the first iteration of the wardrobe for characters. There will be a few bras/panties to buy on the shop for the girls, and we're hoping it'll be a fun addition for people to check out!

Writing and Story:

Elsie definitely has an interesting relationship with the player!

So far Part 3 has been progressing steadily and we've been working on adding a lot more smaller talking scenes with the characters to help develop the story. Part 2 was already a fairly big improvement on building relationships between the characters, but we want to have a lot more of that as we delve deeper into Cyberia. We've also been looking into potentially making skits with the characters as a way to make the wait for more content a little less annoying, and we'll try posting smaller stuff on our Discord and social pages fairly soon.

Coding:

Still rough looking UI but the health bars are properly working!

Because of the work done earlier for fixing Parts 1 + 2 the games actually in a fairly not buggy state in terms of progression, so the focus lately has been on adding new opportunities for more gameplay. One big change in that regard was based on feedback given for the minigame, where we wanted to change up how it's played to make it a bit more dynamic and interesting. So now the minigame will have a longer timer and have a wider and open area to fly around in. This also means it's not stuck to a single screen and players will be able to roam around an area shooting asteroids instead of squashed in a smaller space. Another big change is adding health bars to both the player and asteroids. These are based on the asteroids size and your damage will affect how fast they get destroyed. Since this is a major change we'll be giving out a build to Cyber Owl tier patrons earlier for testing in the next two weeks.

Lately arts been steadily progressing and we're just about finished the last NSFW scene for Part 2. This got delayed a bit during the holidays (and what we mentioned in the first paragraph) but it'll be in a patron build very soon. We also recently released our first parody poster a few days ago! This was something our artist had been wanting to do for a while and we think the results were really good! We haven't fully decided on all the art for Part 3 but we're going to have at least one new background at a minimum for interior syndicate facility, but we're still still figuring out which NSFW scenes we want to include with the characters (feel free to suggest some!). We also have another small surprise for patrons that we'll be posting in the next few days and you'll see that very soon!

That's it for today's news update! Things are definitely still cooking on our end and we're working really hard to deliver some good content for you guys, and we hope you guys are excited for more to come!

So to start off this news update with a bang: Newgrounds will finally be getting the updated version of Part 1 on December 10th! This has been a bit of a long time coming, and we initially wanted to wait until all the NSFW scenes were finished for Part 2 but we're fairly confident we can at least get 2 of the 3 done before then, with the final scene coming a bit later. All the improvements we've made over the past few months will be included (excluding the content for Cyberia) and Part 2 will be kept for paid patrons only. Our goal is to provide brand new content on our pages consistently, and once we've fully finished Part 3 we'll be updating our public versions as well as the Newgrounds version to Part 2. We'll keep to a staggered release at least until the end of Chapter 2 (that's 8 content updates worth of stuff!). We have an enormous amount planned for future content with Cyber Rift, and we wanted to go into a bit of detail on what's coming.

Mini Wardrobe Update!

With our brand new sprite system we're happy to announce that we'll be adding the ability to customize the crew's outfits. The biggest hurdle with getting this feature working was redoing all the sprites in the new system. Our new system allows for each changing for each of the character's outfits and we're aiming to include a few new outfits for each of our characters in this update. This won't be considered a full content update and it's mainly aimed at creating the foundation for future outfits. We're aiming to let patrons to eventually vote on brand new outfits for us to include and even give ideas for future ones we could add to the game! No ETA with this update just yet, but it will definitely happen a lot faster than previous updates.

Chapter 1 Part 3

This will be our next major content update for Cyber Rift. It'll continue right after the events of Part 2 and you'll be venturing into the Syndicate facility to find out what the hell they've been hiding in this frozen wasteland. We're aiming for it to be very similar content size wise to Part 2. We're planning on this update to be a bit more involved puzzle wise, and aiming to try for some more varied interesting gameplay elements. Since we don't want to spoil too much we'll leave it at that, but you can expect it out in a few months. We're also going to be very active on our Discord and have a few fun surprises in store so definitely check us out there!

We'll be the first to admit the development of Cyber Rift has been a little all over the place, but for the past 3 years we've learned an enormous amount game development wise. From RenPy to Unity, and rebooting the game twice just to make sure we're doing it right, we are now confident that we've found our voice for the game and we're fully sure on how we're gonna progress forward in the future. Our final goal will be a grand total of 7 Chapters with 4 Parts per chapter. This doesn't mean all content is set in stone, so we may have smaller surprises in between parts so keep an eye out for those! That's it for this news update, and we hope you're excited for the future of Cyber Rift!

So last month we released the alpha version of Cyber Rift Chapter 1 Part 2 and the feedback has been incredibly helpful and supportive! So far we've squashed tons of bugs, and lately have been extra focused on improving based on the feedback we've received so far. Because there were so many changes compared to 0.1.9.6, we've been taking the extra time to make sure everything has been working perfectly before we release an updated Part 1 to the public. There's still a fair amount of work needed to fully finish Part 2, and today we wanted to give a bit of info on what we're working towards right now with the current build.

New and improved Player Sprite!

New and improved Everie Sprite!


One of the biggest changes compared to the older versions besides the new dialogue system was the change in character sprites. Right now we have Everie, the player, and Elsie's sprites fully finished in the new system. One issue however is that due to the sprites having so much more ability for expression, this also meant that each piece of the expressions during dialogue has to be adjusted accordingly. The sprites are broken down into these parts: Mouth, Eyes, Eyebrows and Arms. For every single line of dialogue that involves a character on the screen we'll have to be changing these parts of the character to match the words. This process is quite tedious, but in order to really perfect the build completely we're currently going through the entirety of the game and matching each piece accordingly. We're honestly super happy with the progress, but in the meantime our artist has been cooking up the last character sprite before he gets started on the last pieces of needed art for Part 2.

Fae's sprite has been taking a bit more time than expected, but she's had quite the glow up with the new sprite system!

Two other things we're working on adding to the build right now are sounds for the UI, and different camera angles to match dialogue. These are features we've been wanting to add for a long time but didn't have a realistic method of doing them until very recently. Luckily compared to the sprites their implementation has been pretty straightforward, but for camera angles it has to be decided on a per scene basis to make sure they look correct for the dialogue. UI sound wise currently the main menu has sound effects along with the pause menu, and the phone UI. The goal is to eventually have them everywhere across the game to make everything feel much more responsive for players. We're aiming for this specific improvement to also be in the Part 1 build which we want to talk about today.

Close-ups! Along with moving the camera during key dialogue moments we want to have fun zoom ins and character close-ups during conversations.

The last things that are currently needed for Part 2 are the Fae sprite, 3 NSFW scenes and hopefully a final background. The Fae sprite in particular is very important right now since we need it to fully finish off Chapter Part 1 along with Part 2. The 3 NSFW scenes will be included along with some new dialogue sections to accompany them, and finally a last dialogue section to fully cap off the update that'll lead into Part 3. The aim for the final background is a picture of where Part 3 is going to be headed, and we're hoping to be able to include that pretty soon. We're expecting the Fae sprite to be done in the next 1-2 weeks, and ideally if things go smoothly we'll have an ETA on the NSFW scenes very soon as well.

Everie's jacket is now properly in the game along with player's one for their journey to Cyberia!

Cyber Rift Chapter 1 Part 1 will be the new and improved demo version going forward. This build will have the same story progression as the previous demo, but we'll be adding every single improvement that has been made in the latest build. This includes all the new sprites, the dialogue system, the new responsive UI, and all the various improvements that we've been making for the past few months. It'll be released on Newgrounds, Itch, and our Patreon pages as a new free version. Our new release strategy from now on will be to update in a staggered fashion. What this means is when Part 3 is released we'll be making Part 2 the new public version. Our plan is to do this at least until the end of Chapter 1, but depending on people's reception we may extend this to the end of Chapter 2.

Updated Roadmap! The Cyberia updated ballooned quite a bit and it's now going to be Parts 2 through 4 as separate and equally sized updates.

We just want to make it very clear that with all these new improvements future development on updates will be a lot smoother compared to before. Pretty much every major issue that was slowing down development has been addressed in some way and we're really aiming to get content out a lot more consistently and at a higher quality bar than before. We're extremely excited for the future of Cyber Rift and hope you guys will tag along for the ride!