Merry Christmas, this is my gift to to you all! Thought I forgot about NTFM? Guess what! I didn't!

I'm EXHAUSTED! Do you all KNOW how much art I drew for this update? A lot! Anyway, a few months later than I expected, I present to you all my pride and joy of 2023:

No Time for Mercy: Definitive Edition!

The definitive edition is everything that I wanted NTFM to be when I first created it for the Spooktober 2023 jam. While Spooktober may have only been able to get the large gist of what I've had in store for this game, the Definitive Edition is quite literally the whole story I wanted to tell. Every single bit, piece and thread is there! This can be as small as an extra line or two, or even as large as a brand new major scene in Day 7! No spoilers, but this Day 7 scene makes the icon and Act 3 title screen make a lot more sense!

Definitive Edition Changes

Just a quick rundown of what I've changed with the definitive edition:

• Fixed a multitude of bugs that would take way too long to list
• Added a pause in the game before timed choices! After the end of one message, you have to click forward to advance the message and start the timed choice! No more reading a line halfway and then panicking because the timer started!
• Added 9 more full-screen illustrations!
• Added 35 more half-illustrations! (I'm not kidding, I counted them all!)
• Wrote randomized events for Day 5!
• Created 2 new characters to meet during Days 2-5!
• Drew a sprite for every single person with a silhouette, including the new characters! Two sprites have a few extra expressions, as well.
• Completely rebuilt the audio system - no more weird bugs when you save, load, or skip text!
• Wrote 4 new Bonus Scenes, which you can access after achieving the Good Ending!
• Rebuilt the Options from the ground-up, and added a lot of new quality of life features! I'll let the screenshot speak for itself:

• In a similar vein, I also redid the gallery! Now, everything is sorted into three categories - Illustrations, Half-Illustrations, and Characters!
• Piggybacking off that, now every single character with a sprite has a card with a little blurb about them! Here's a screenshot of how that looks in the gallery:

• Added a brand new and major scene in Day 7! This one's a doozy - it clocks in at over 4,000 words, accounting for all possible choices!
• Added 3 new endings!
• Punched up Day 7 a bit with some flashier animations - which can be disabled in the Options menu if you're photosensitive!
• Did a bit of cleaning and trimming of loose ends; it's nothing major or impactful, but a few words here and there to make certain lines flow better.
• A Mac port of the Definitive Edition!!

I'm not too particularly sure if the original version of No Time for Mercy is going to ever be updated anytime soon. I'd love to go back and fix the stupid audio system, but as of right now I'm incredibly tired. I'm going to be taking a break from game devving for at least a few months; most of my time for the past 3 months has been spent trying to perfect and polish NTFM's definitive edition to the extent that I'm happy with. For now, though, PLEASE be sure to check out what NTFM Definitive has in store!

By the way, if you pick up the $15 bundle, you'll get the definitive edition, game jam edition, and the 15 full illustrations available as wallpapers! It's a pretty good deal, if you ask me!

Unfortunately, saves are not transferrable between the Jam Edition and Definitive Edition! 

Indiepocalypse

I've been keeping it a secret to myself for a while now, but I figured this devlog would be the best place to spill the beans. No Time for Mercy is going to be appearing in the 48th issue of the Indiepocalypse Anthology! While it is only the game jam edition, I still feel super honored to have a slot in Indiepocalypse!

The 48th edition is going to release on January the 5th, 2024! If you purchase it, you'll get version 1.0.2 of No Time for Mercy's game jam edition with 9 more games! Additionally, I got to create two pages in the 48th edition's magazine! My post-mortem thoughts are there as well - an Indiepocalypse exclusive! A part of each sale of the Indiepocalypse magazine gets kicked back to me, as well, so by buying the 48th edition you're supporting me a little more, and I really appreciate that.

What's the future of No Time for Mercy?

Honestly, I'm pretty much done with NTFM. As of the definitive edition, the whole story I wanted to tell is out there for everyone to read. I'm still going to be keeping an eye on the game, of course; I still want to fix up the audio system in the game jam edition and poke around a little bit in case there's more bugs, but apart from that the game's going to go largely untouched. No more massive updates anytime soon. 

In short: Any and all updates are going to be bug-fixing builds as of this point.

Now if you'll all excuse me, I'm going to just...

Yeah.

(Oh, and also: No Time for Mercy was conceived, outlined, created, and had a definitive edition all before the completion of Yandere Simulator!)