Well, it's May. I'm still alive at the time of writing this, let's hope that lasts.

I don't know who/if anyone remembers what I said about Rainbow Heartbeats when I first started working on it as Doki Doki Rainbow - that it was a game idea I got from a friend of mine. This friend has been in my life for over 10 years, and it's unfortunate, but our friendship has come to an end for now. To put it simply, I got tired of putting 100% into the friendship and getting nothing back after 2-3 years of slowly hearing less and less from them. It's emotionally exhausting to hold out hope that something will change, and I'm not sure why it's turned out like this, but it is what it is.

What's also unfortunate is that they gave me a lot of ideas that I have seriously alter and turn into something else to avoid intellectual property theft claims (I don't actually foresee this being an actual problem they gave the ideas/concepts willingly and have never been vindictive/spiteful, but people change, you know?), if they decide to go down that route. This includes a creature design I was going to utilize in a future game, that they designed, as well as a character design for one of the secret characters who I modeled with them in mind.

This will be the second friend, and last friend, I've lost from my childhood, and with that, it seems that the years where I was the happiest have come to a close in that chapter of my life.

What does this mean for Rainbow Heartbeats and the future of Opalizard? Exactly nothing except hurt feelings. I don't have a desire to partake in a friendship that doesn't benefit me, and and it's upsetting that Rainbow Heartbeats was the culmination of a bunch of ideas to give my friend something they said they desired in the gaming world. However, it's been a long time since I've come to terms with me making this game to prove to myself I could do it, rather than providing it as a gift to my friend. Where our "friendship" goes from here is up to them. They can put in the effort and show me they value it, and I'll reciprocate, but for now, it's over.

It sounds like I'm breaking up with someone, but honestly, is that not what the dissolution of a friendship is? Breaking up? I have mixed feelings about everything right now, so it's been quite depressing to say the least. But onwards and outwards.

• May begins with me completing the last of the character art (outfits and facial expressions).
• Finished the "character slides" which are colored graphics that appear on the main menu and include all the love interests.
• Completed Friendpulse Icons for every character.
• Concluded with Locationator Icons for all locations.
• Finally I did the last of the Sampod App icons, which included 3 new apps, the "re:Minder", "Hintable", "Xem", and "Candier Fancier".
• After that, I completed the graphics for the friendship candies, which consisted of 20 candy graphics, as the main characters are the only ones you can befriend, whereas the secret characters can only be romanced.
• I did... launch a kickstarter. Which is HERE. A friend of mine immediately jumped in to be a backer, and I've had a few stragglers here and there, which I'm eternally grateful for! I do have some ads running concurrently as well to try and generate some traffic too. If you feel like throwing in a bit to show your support I would really appreciate that, otherwise, the game will still likely be made, just not as fast as I hope it could be haha.
• Onwards to background art. The background art is the last of the major art that needs to be completed, aside from some UI fixes/changes. This will honestly take me longer than the rest of the month, so there may not be further updates from here, but time will tell.
• After backgrounds I'll be tackling music. Aside from ambience, each location has a little ditty that plays when you get there, a sad piece, a happy piece, and an upset piece.

I did decide to push this out now before the end of May because I don't feel there will be much more updates, since the remainder of my time this month will be working on backgrounds. I took a new shift at work as well, so I'll be working 10 hour days 4 days a week, so that will be an adjustment as well.

Thanks as always! See you next time!