Thanks for reading this and also thanks a lot if you've followed/donated/played the game. The demo has gotten a fair bit of attention the past few weeks, at least by my standards, so it's been pretty nice to see all that and also that almost all the feedback I've seen is positive.

A lot more progress has been made on Lonely Things in every area. The prospect of finishing it now only seems like a lot more work, not a constantly receding goalpost. Here are some features that have been added:

•  Dialogue choices. These were always supposed to be there, but they aren't in the demo because I was reworking the system. It works great now.
• Character affinities depending on choices (mostly 'invisible', but alter certain things in the story)
• Skipthrough button for dialogue. If people are replaying, or even if they are just a fast reader, this will probably make things more enjoyable.
• New puzzle types, ie lockboxes and keypads with codes. 

A few more gameplay features will come, depending on inspiration and whether they fit, but the majority of the gameplay aspect is now pretty much complete.

I've made a lot of graphical improvements (I've included a screen of the new west hall below), and that's going to continue. As I was making new areas in the game, the graphical quality kept getting better as I did, until the maps I designed first looked totally out of place with the new ones. So I've gone over most of the areas and either redone textures, or redone the maps completely. The hotel is basically bigger and better looking now.

So many people have said nice things about the demo, but with the stage the game is at now, I wish they could be playing the current version. However, I'm going to wait and just release the complete game when it's done rather than revising alpha versions or anything like that. I'm still confident that it will be released this year, although I'll avoid saying when for now. 

I have new areas built and integrated into the world. A few more still need to be made. There's lots of new music waiting to go in, too. It feels like recently the game kind of reached a tipping point where before that, I was still tinkering with what exactly it 'is', whereas now it's more like the full game already exists and I just need to put the work in to see it through. Maybe it's because it's closer to finished that it is non-existence.

That's enough for now. Thanks again to everyone for showing interest and/or support for Lonely Things. If you liked the demo, I think you'll really enjoy the full thing. I'll back back in a few weeks with another update.