BEngel Development Update – March 2025

Hey everyone!

I wanted to take a moment to talk about the development of the next BEngel update and give you a bit of insight into what’s been going on behind the scenes. So, let’s roll back a few months to December 2024.

Back then, I had just finished and published the last Bound to College update in mid-December. I didn’t waste any time and jumped straight into working on BEngel again. I managed to get quite a lot done early on—character costumes, locations, all coming together smoothly. At that point, I was feeling pretty confident. I thought, "Alright, this update should be ready by January, maybe early February at the latest."

And then... I had an idea.

Since things were going so well, I thought: "Hey, why not add a little poker minigame to this chapter? It’ll be a fun extra and shouldn’t take that long, right?"

Well, let me tell you—turns out, my definition of "a little minigame" and reality do not align.

With my very rudimentary programming knowledge, this minigame quickly became more than just a small side feature. It was a challenge—one that kept growing and eating up my time. The deeper I got into it, the more I realized that making a functional poker system wasn’t as simple as I had hoped. And of course, once I started, I couldn’t just stop halfway. So, I kept going, tweaking, fixing, and learning along the way.

Then, while working on the chapter, I also started rewriting parts of it—trying to make it more engaging, give the player more meaningful choices. Naturally, that took extra time, but I think it’ll be worth it in the end.

Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all this, I also decided to add fire animations.

Because, you know… why not make things even harder for myself?

I figured out a way to bring actual animated fire into the game, which I thought would be a cool effect. What I didn’t anticipate was how much of a nightmare it would be to render. Turns out, my hardware wasn’t quite up for the task. So, I had to split the animation, render different parts separately, and then piece them back together in post-processing. The result? A three-second animation took me an entire week to finish.

So yeah—January passed. February passed. And now, here we are in March. And still… no update.

But don’t worry—it’s close!

Right now, I’m working on the final sub-chapter. The minigame is mostly working—just a few bugs left to iron out. If everything goes according to plan (and I don’t get another "great idea" that derails everything), the next update should be out this month.

Now, I’m curious to hear from you all—what do you think? Is this kind of extra content, like the poker minigame, worth the wait? Or should I focus more on pushing the main story forward instead of adding these little side mechanics? Let me know in the comments!

And finally, I just want to take a moment to thank all of you—my supporters—for your patience and for sticking with me through this process. Your support truly means a lot, and I can’t wait to share this next chapter of BEngel with you soon.

Alright, that’s it for now—back to work for me!