Hi! D-CELL is officially on holiday break until early January (we are tired,) but we've got one last tiny little present for you before end of year.

So, first off on these patch notes:

• That! As part of the change to the save system we made to help facilitate this, we also added multiple save slots. You get three of them! That felt like the right number, to me. Also, importantly, episode select is universal, so you can start a new file from Episode 2 if you want. That's everyone's favorite episode, anyway

• Replaying episode one takes you back to the intro sequence, which a lot of people requested. You no longer need to scoop out your save file to hear me say "mic check" slowed down and distorted in your left ear.

• Railgrinding is a little tighter and a little better and now has sound effects! You will know now much more intimately if you fail a note.

• We fixed a lot of miscellaneous related bugs softlocking the game if the player had the audacity to pause the game in the middle of them

• Unsimilarly but semantically related: sometimes the game would not be paused behind the pause menu despite the pause menu being paused. This pause problem has been put on pause, and the game should now always pause when you pause.

• Brickout is not supposed to have a multi-paddle upgrade. What a nightmare that was! Thank god we fixed that. Who would have wanted to play an easier version of Brickout?

• Walking too far ahead of Quaver and then entering cutscenes used to have a chance of softlocking the game and that's fixed now! Hooray

• The sewer had some triggers that were accessible before you were supposed to see them and I know that sounds very fun as a player of video games but it just made everything more confusing (unintentionally) and the game is already confusing (intentionally) enough.

• Starting the arcade quest without Treble in your party could freeze the game. This is fixed now. I'm surprised this is a thing anyone did

• There was a softlock when interacting with the bulletin board in front of the school building. This was my fault, there was a typo in the code. It's ok to yell at me for this

• Multiple collision issues have been fixed. Beat should no longer suddenly decide to live next to a janitor's shed forever

• Sometimes the Bioacoustics door would not let you enter it. Technically, this makes sense if you think about it, but also it ruined the game

• Several challenges that were not unlocking properly should now work correctly. Sorry for this one,

• Resolution should save properly when opening a new arcade mode session, now.

• We're still looking at granular setpiece replay options. We'll talk more about this...in January!

• We will also talk about fail restart in January.

• Also also in January: a lot of microfixes to some small beatmapping issues and transitions too sudden to react to.

• Also also also in January (wow): more stage backgrounds for arcade mode!

• More robust save features (including a lot of microstate stuff around dialogue choices) are coming in the future now that we have episode select and multisave working.

• More performance improvements! There are always going to be some of these. We'll keep doing it little by little. (fun fact: that means "poco a poco" in English.)

• More improvements to dialogue pacing and scene flow stuff will continue to happen to ensure interruptions only happen when they're sup• And a million bug fixes as usual forever! Please continue to send bug reports to the official form![docs.google.com]

And that's it. HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL! Sorry we don't have a novelty Christmas single free DLC for you. I'll bug the team to do that next year

-rj

(<3 d-cell)

ps i haven't played it yet but i hear of the devil is pretty good and chapter 2 dropped today. it has lena raine (from our own breakout edition!) on the soundtrack, so maybe go check it ou

We have points shop items now.

• An option for "Higher Compatibility Videos" has been added to the options menu. If things still break with FMVs in any regard, please flip this on. If this still doesn't work, talk to us gently and we will go back into the mines on your behalf

• Pausing during the slowdown on the final hit of a song should no longer break everything

• Pausing after that hit should no longer require an input to move forward

• You should no longer be softlocked during the performance in the lighthouse if you try to restart over and over or quit at the end, thus saving you from even more embarrassment than is intended

• Snacks can no longer freeze the game and/or you. (This statement only applies to the game, of course. Some snacks in real life can still freeze you if you're not careful.)

• The pathing to go fix what's causing havoc at the arcade could previously break, and now it shouldn't.

• Sometimes you could accidentally progress time on the first day of this episode. In real life, that's called "spacing out." In the game, that's called "unintended behavior." Beat does enough intended spacing out as it is, frankly. Any weird or broken save files caused by this bug should be automatically fixed!

• And on top of this a handful of other broken dialogue triggers were also fixed. Who needs 'em.

• The challenge "if the game isn't broken, you already have this" now works properly

• Feel free to screenshot that out of context

• Episode select is coming soon. We're targeting this week, because we want to get it done and out before D-CELL goes on a holiday break.

• Setpiece replay, as well (that's probably not this week, though. Give it time).

• Fail-restart instead of fail forward

• Tons more performance improvements

• Tons more bug fixes (as goes without saying, fixing a bug here does not mean we are ignoring a bug that hasn't been fixed yet!)

• And other features in the future...

Continue to send bug reports via our bug report form here. I'm sure you would anyway, but also if you want us to actually fix it it helps that it all goes to the same place: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe55RWKCW18rEJcrzNDnVciAyjdw0Z_a-893GJgaqrnSd4Lyw/viewform

(<3 d-cell)