Happy Friday! Just a heads up. This is going to be a long one, with more insights and announcements than actual game progress. Regardless, I hope it is an informative and entertaining read.

Those of you on the Discord server know that I’ve spent the last few days in the hospital with my partner. Today is the first full day she’ll be home, and while she is still recovering, I think the worst is behind us. She is still in lots of pain and far from being herself, but there is a glimmer of hope in our eyes. She’s my lighthouse, one of the guiding lights that keep me on course during the most difficult storms that life has thrown towards me. I owe so much of my professional and personal success to her.

Spending so much time in the ER (The nurses were kind enough to allow me to sit next to her, holding her hand for most of the time spent there) gave me lots of alone time with my thoughts. It gave me time to evaluate my life and my goals. Making Infinite Stars the best visual novel I can be is definitely in my top five. It also made me realize that if I ever pass away, I would want the community to continue working on Infinite Stars as an open-source project for everyone to enjoy.

I’ve (unrelated to the last few days) been working on some self-improvement. I recently got my PSM I certification, and I’m working towards my PSPO I certification. I’ve also been applying to universities to start my MBA degree. With all of this, I’ve decided to move Infinite Stars to the Agile framework. (For those of you who don’t know, it’s just a different, sleeker way of project management that encourages smaller, regular updates and faster adaptation to changes in the marketplace.)

With that said, I am unofficially looking for more part-time people to join the Infinite Stars team. The main reasoning behind this is that I want to give people looking for some agile/scrum experience the opportunity to make it possible. Most companies want individuals who have x years of experience working in agile teams to be considered as a hire, but few companies are willing to help individuals get that experience in the first place.

I’m unofficially looking for an additional writer or two and an additional character and background artist to help out when Zaph and Caba are busy. The coding is straightforward, and I don’t really need any additional help with that, but if someone out there wanted to get involved for the experience on their CV, I’d be willing to help them. Also, if you have skills that you feel will help contribute to the ongoing success of Infinite Stars that I haven’t mentioned (Social Media, Chief Executive Cheerleader, Community Management, etc.), you are welcome to reach out!

Infinite Stars has always been for everyone, and it will always be free. While I don’t mind working on the project during my free time, for free, I feel that others that do so should be compensated for their time in more than “exposure” and “experience” - Those of you interested are more than welcome to reach out to me on infinitestarsdev@gmail.com

As for the actual dev progress, I’ve been fixing the odd typo here and there (Thanks to everyone who has been reporting them.) I’ve also been editing and rewriting some of the story and choice content. Thanks to “Ant” on Discord, who mentioned that they would like to see more flirting options. This struck a heartstring with me, as it fits in perfectly with the vision of Infinite Stars. It might take slightly longer, but players should have more options to decide exactly how they react in a situation, especially when it comes to relationships. While I can’t implement every possible reaction every time, I do feel there is plenty of room to improve on the way choices are currently being presented.

I’m still waiting on some more artwork for the upcoming scenes that will remove some of the current black screen backgrounds between scenes, and we have a whole batch of art asset briefs ready to go out to the artists.

I hope all of you have a fantastic weekend, and I look forward to sharing more soon!