Happy new year!! 2021 is over. (Patreon)

Hello everyone, Keo here!

2021 is finally over. Putting aside our personal lives, it was a great year for Dawn Chorus. Since the beginning of the year, the total wordcount for the game has risen from 61,824 words in v0.6 update to 178,242 in v0.17 update released in November 2021. That's more words than the first two books of Harry Potter combined, which honestly blows my mind - and that's only counting the text itself, without all the code that surrounds it. We're roughly halfway through Day 2 now, and meanwhile I'm working hard on detailed outlines for all the routes and revising them to make the best visual novel I can.

I've learned a lot during this year personally. Back at the beginning of 2021 I still had little confidence in my writing, and looking back at the Day 1 content I can say that I was justified in that. I'm definitely a better and more confident writer now than I was back then and sadly it shows in some places. I go back and rewrite some parts or at least a few sentences from Day 1 for almost every update. In the upcoming Mikko update I want to introduce a few changes as well - the route won't be dramatically altered, but I'm changing a lot of scenes to fit my vision better. 

Regarding the delayed Mikko update, I don't have a release date for you yet, but I hope to have it ready within two weeks. I wrote about 3k words of content for it in December, which is not a lot and I still have a lot to do. I spent most of the time at work in December on working for the outline for the whole Mikko route and consulted it with a few writers I know and admire, which means that writing for the next updates for that route should go faster and easier. Also, as I mentioned, I went back and started reworking earlier scenes too, that takes a lot of time and doesn't increase the wordcount much.

I was relieved and touched seeing your response to the delay announcement. Thank you for all the kind wishes, I regained almost full mobility by now and I'm feeling much better physically and mentally. 

Thank you all for your continuing support! I wish you all a great new year, may it be better than the last one!