Today's update is going to be a little more chill, on account of at the time of me writing this, I'm yawning and super-dee-dooper tired.

1. All implemented locations have ambience and music, both of which have been tweaked to be very low in volume so as not to get in the way of any voice lines, as well as to not deafen the player right off the bat. I've tweaked and tested their volumes for the past day or so to try and get the best out of all of it, so that's complete.
2. Also finished is the implementation of phone sounds. Your in-game Sampod phone makes a noise when you activate it, deactivate it, and whenever you hover over a location. Next I do need to tweak the Sampod's UI because the buttons are a little big, and don't act like how I want them to, aside from taking you to where you want to go.
3. Ideally, I do want to start on story routes next, because aside from getting them done, I actually don't have much of anything else to complete besides general testing for anything I may have missed and minor tweaks. I'll also be checking in with my VA's and giving them a poke.
4. After the testing phase is completed, the demo will be ready for rollout. I'd like to say that this process will take until about mid-May, just to give myself some room and padding. I do have a day job and a kid and all that, so... *insert family stuff here* haha
5. I've recently recorded and edited a video for the official dev log of Rainbow Heartbeats. I don't know when, or if, I'll release this, but I'm waiting for a good time. It's not the best dev log I could have done, and I did plan it, but I misplaced a lot of the footage and assets I was going to use, so it's a little more boring than I would have liked. Hopefully the second one is better.
   
6. Another voice actor FINALLY got back to me about my final character that requires voicing. So that's great! As a reminder, if you like voice acting, you can check out our BTVA page HERE. Currently auditions are closed because the first 6 characters have been cast, but there are 18 more characters coming with a possibility of an additional 4!
7. Post demo-release, I'll probably try and take a little break (although, let's be honest, I'm on a winning streak with this project and I'll probably have a workaholic mentality until it's done lol) and then start working on the next phase of locations/characters, basically the second build of the game. For anyone curious what plans are currently set for Rainbow Heartbeats, I manage a public Trello board that you can check out HERE to keep up to date on changes, and overall progress. I also manage public Trello boards for all my other projects, however aside from general house keeping and concept updates, there's not much happening with those ahah.
8. Simultaneous to releasing the demo, I'm also going to be capturing footage to edit to put together in a trailer for some marketing.  Excited for that too, I love editing videos and footage haha.
9. Sound effects for sleeping, and working have been added. More "work task" text options have been added, bumping up the 5 that I originally had to 10. I may increase this later. Basically this means that every time you work, there's a different bit of text that pops up, like "you did work" or "you sharpened a pencil" etc, haha.

Upcoming changes include adding sounds for the character interaction menus, adding the Sampod icon animations, redesigning a few of the icons, minor tweaks and changes to what is already implemented, really just minor stuff for a bit of polish. Obviously the big thing is getting the story routes started. I can do this with or without my voice acted lines, so I'll be starting that as well! Creeping closer to that demo being released! I'm excited~!