Hi everyone,

Progress on POPGOES Evergreen has been pretty good. I still consider it to be "early" in development, and to set comfortable expectations for the community and my team, I implore that you do NOT assume that it'll release any time soon. It will still take a long time. I personally think it'll be the final game in the initial five Fanverse games to release (yes, even after TJOC...)

The part of my team that has been working on Evergreen lately (Sian, Mr. Nobo, and Garrett McKay) will continue working on it. Mostly in developing rooms, and designing/modelling characters and props.

However, Emil and I are going to focus on POPGOES Arcade for the time being. Some new management has been put in place for the Fanverse due to Scott's retirement, and we have been encouraged by them to work on POPGOES Arcade, and its Premium update (the additional content we are making for it, for the ports), so that it can potentially roll out this year. Sounds good to me!

We are almost finished with a general update for POPGOES Arcade. This will be available on Game Jolt as a normal, free download. It won't affect save progress. I'm not sure when this will be released, but I think before the end of this month sounds likely.

This update should include:

Updated gameplay visuals with new room lighting

Updated cutscenes, including completely reanimated 100% ending, and special effects added to "bad ending"

Faster load times, around 2x faster to open the game

Smaller file size, from around 220mb to 120mb

Red the Robin is now Holly the Robin, with new sprites

Updated intro, pause, outro text, and game icons with new fonts, logos, and information

Updated in-game UI elements

Intelligent enemy spawning: No enemy in a long time will mean there's a higher chance of one spawning

Once we are done with the free update and it has released, Emil and I will continue working on the Premium update for the game. For those unaware, there is a paid version / DLC of POPGOES Arcade that includes a "post-game chapter".

If you consider POPGOES Arcade to be separated into two parts, one where you fight the Corrupt Minibosses, and then one where you fight the Dead Minibosses, then you can somewhat expect the post-game chapter to be a THIRD part of the game/story.

It will include new items, new enemies, new areas, new music, and a cool but simple story.

This part of Arcade will take a little longer to make, naturally, but we do hope for it to be ready, and potentially in online stores, before the end of the year.

I will of course continue to lead the Evergreen team and communicate with fans despite this change of focus. I just wanted to explain what we are focusing on right now, and what to expect in the near and far future.

Big thanks to the team for their hard work, and to you for following us along.