Excellent. The demo launch has gone fairly smoothly. Of the several people who did happen to download it, I haven't heard anything back yet, so silence is golden! Moving forward~

1. At the time of writing this, I'm working on secret character hints. These are slated to be implemented in the second phase of the "after demo" development continuation. The first phase is planned to be another round of 6 characters, events, and more UI additions, but depending on how long the work for the first phase takes will determine whether or not I can move anything from phase 2/3 to phase 1.
2. I'm actually struggling with writing the hints. The first 4 secret characters are fairly standard. You need their secret item before you can find them. The additional 5 secret characters I decided to implement late into the demo development I wanted to make much harder to find. The hardest of all will have a requirement to have added every single character to your FriendPulse and then can be unlocked pretty easily after that. But making elaborate hoops for the player to jump through subtly is difficult! I honestly thought making the requirements simple like in HuniePop but I want you to have to actually work for it hahaha. I think I'll be toiling away at this for the next few days, along with writing the next story routes for the next characters, so right now is writing heavy.
3. I think I'm going to write all the remaining story-lines this month so I can get that out of the way. After writing Brooks story-line and it being a total cry-fest, I realized that this process takes me the longest compared to everything else, and it just needs to be hammered out. So while I'm inspired and while the weather is nice where I am (because we usually have horrible weather in February here), I'm going to smash out these story-lines before I do anything else instead of having them carry over to other development builds.
4. I am going on to month 2 of having the Omicron variant of COVID. All my symptoms point to long-haul, fatigue, cough, loss of taste, increased depression and anxiety. It's not been fun. Regardless of your point of view on the vaccine, quarantining, or shutdowns (because I'm not hear to debate with you or anyone about it over my devlog lol), I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. It just all around sucks. I hope you're all staying safe/positive out there.
5. I've come to discover that writing all these plotlines is basically just "Having the thesaurus open simulator". It's both hilarious and torturous. It's like writing 29 chapters for a novel, but each chapter is for a different novel. I've written novels before, and the process was smooth and streamlined. This... is insane, hahaha. Hopefully I'll be able to keep my head above water. I've only managed to complete 6 out of the remaining 23 I need to write as of February 16. AHHH. I'm currently writing about a lovely secret character who loves to dance and play the flute. And no, it's not the pied piper.
6. It's February 23, and I have 17 of 29 storylines done. It doesn't look like I'm going to be completing these before the end of February. With the release of Horizon Forbidden West, and my work schedule, I'm trying to keep myself as happy as possible while moving along with my developing adventure and I'm prioritizing having some fun playing Horizon with my fiance, and possibly getting a new position at my day job after 3 years (finally). I could confidently say I could crank out 2-4 more storylines before month end, but then we go into March finishing up the last 8-10, which could take half the month. Oh well, at least it's getting done! After that, we move on to finishing character concepts so I can get the character art for all of my datable lovelies ready. Then, it's background art.
7. I managed to escape from the majority of my COVID symptoms. As usual, I just stay sick super long, so no long haul for me. There's no other lasting  symptoms other than my cough, which isn't helped by my asthma and the recent -40 weather we've been having.
8. Because I don't think there's anything else to add - I'll just be uploading this log as soon as I'm done editing it. I go forth - writing until my fingers bleed. And then drawing until my fingers bleed! And then... programming. Until... my fingers... bleed.