Zumi

also known as "zumi has discovered the flip canvas button in clip studio paint" As I previewed in the previous dev post, I've been going back and editing all the character artwork! A while ago I've noticed that qualitatively the old artwork really does not match up with the more recent art. This is both because the more recent artwork wasn't made in a rush and is simultaneously also made after I've gained more skill in drawing. Out of curiosity (and also after seeing some flipped art in youtube thumbnails) I decided to check to see how the art looked when flipped and found out a huge majority of the artwork suffers from what I like to call mirror syndrome, meaning, the moment when the canvas is flipped the face decides to skew itself in 23409823 different directions. I wanted to scream. No way in hell i was gonna let that remain that way, so being the reasonable and completely sane person that I am (that's a lie) (i'm not sane) (reasonable is debatable) i thought it was a SPLENDID idea to go and edit the 120+ pieces of art I've made (including some stuff that hasn't been shown off) to be better! because i'm normal like that. eyup. That being said though, I'm not going to showcase all of the changes because this post would literally take me another whole ass day to write, so instead I invite you to look at the new versions in the official art thread! I've also updated the art post to include new versions of all the icons, and have also made completely new wallpapers of the updated character art to go along with that are generally darker in terms of colors and don't blast your eyes out when changing back to your desktop at 2 am if you're like me!! They're also infinitely easier to set up!!!!!!!! And won't get outdated with every map update!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it's pretty great and they look super nice in practice. go check them out! Before I leave people to their devices though, I did tease a certain character getting artwork on discord and twitter, didn't I? Well, no need to wait with baited breath anymore, for here he is; The new appearance of Adam Might as you first see him in Grand Dream City! Adam's always meant to be kind of a showoff during the time you spend in GDC, but his old appearance really did not do it justice. Jan himself explained that the reason for Adam's somewhat weird appearance in GDC was because of his own perceived lack of skill with spriting at the time, so we ended up deciding that it was time for a redesign. He kept the open blouse and sunglasses, but pretty much everything else has changed. There's a couple of throwbacks to his Blacksteeple/Terajuma outfit worked into his new outfit, though! His sprites have also been updated to match the new appearance and will be included in the upcoming update, 13.5. But wait, there's more! If you take a look at some of Jan's older posts, you'll maybe have noticed that Ariana's sprite has been updated, and maybe have suspected her design got an update. And it's true! That's exactly what happened! Her design has been revised for both her first and second appearance, and her artwork has been changed to match. Her design didn't change too much from her old one, but it does have more detail than the old one as the previous one was a bit too plain in comparison to most other protag designs. That's all for now though! Again, I invite people to look through the new art as I've spent quite a bit of time on making sure the art looks better. The art will also be updated in-game! For now, thank you for your time! i'll stop hogging the dev blog for now i promise. i've been posting too much sdkjsdklfjsdlkfhsdgskdjslfdlskdj o7

Well, here it is, the long awaited follow up to the balancing survey we held for Normal mode. Better strap in for a long read, as I’ve got quite a couple of things to talk about! I’ve been kinda putting off making a post about this because of the inevitable complaints we’re going to get bombarded with in the comments of people who refuse to look at things from our perspective, so before I talk about any of the preliminary changes we’ve come up with at this point, I want to make a few things absolutely clear to people as I don’t feel like having to repeat myself like a broken record in the comments. Yes, the overall difficulty will be toned down for the vanilla experience rather than being adjusted to make fights more difficult. We do not care if you don’t like these changes because “MUH CHALLENGE”, it is not our problem anymore. We want to give the player a smooth experience where you don’t have to get stuck on the same fight for hours on end, and with the current state of balancing it’s just not possible to give that experience. If you really want to continuously get pulped by every single fight in the game, there will be passwords added in either V13.5 or V14 that will manage difficulty on a smaller scale to make things harder or easier– please use those instead. The amount of challenge you give yourself is in your hands from this point forward, we’re not going to make things purposefully insanely difficult anymore as dealing with people getting mad at us for making things too hard is just… so not worth the time and energy. If you're an intense/veteran normal player and want to retain the challenge you enjoy, I suggest you make use of said passwords or look into difficulty mods instead—we're leaving intense in the hands of the community now instead. We are responding to data we’ve collected with the survey. We’ve had close to 350 responses to the survey! Sure, it's not the complete playerbase (it's impossible to collect the opinion of everyone anyways), but it's a much more reliable data source than smaller circles like rejuv gen and the likes are. As a result, it gave us a much better indication of what fights truly are troublesome and which ones are fine. Turns out that fights some people perceive as “too easy” has shown in the survey that they're actually a lot more challenging for people than we thought! From chapter 2 onwards, every chapter had at least one major fight that was giving people problems one way or another— yes, even fights that we as the devs were surprised that people were having trouble with. We are simply adjusting according to the averages and read through the notes people left to sift out what the sore spots were for those fights for most people. “But why aren’t you appealing to the audience that likes the challenge?!?!” I hate to break it to you, but that group of people is a small but vocal minority. And besides, no matter what we decide to change, someone will be pissed off and will disagree. Jan’s somewhat recent post on tumblr best explains how it is dealing with this, it always feels like a losing game trying to satisfy everyone. Balancing Pokémon—which is inherently unbalanced to begin with—in a way that it’s fair for everyone is a NIGHTMARE. So to answer your question, at this point we’re just trying to make it fun for the biggest group of people possible, which is a more casual playerbase. As such, we’re improving overall QOL by making fights not as difficult so the game feels more streamlined to get through. THESE CHANGES ARE PRELIMINARY, AND NOT ALL OF THE CHANGES WE'RE MAKING. Like I tried to explain in the comments about the boss bars in Jan's previous post on the dev blog, if something turns out to not work as well in practice, we will likely change them over the course of testing and see if things work better that way. If a fight is still too difficult, we'll likely make more changes to adjust accordingly. The stuff mentioned in the post is the changes we've made prior to testing, and which we'll have to try out to see if it works out. For now, I would appreciate it if people would hold their horses about yelling in the comments that they don't like the changes (regardless of whether they seem to make things easier or harder) because we've literally not even tested some of these in practice, thus we don't know for sure whether these changes will be definite or if they will receive further revisions. We're communicating this with you guys because we see value in being transparent about changes we make and being honest about what the current situation's like. Sorry if the game’s difficulty is not heading in the direction you want it to, but we've decided that we want to steer the game in the direction that's the most fun for the devs to work on as well, and specifically Jan's. He's the one who has to make the game, and in the end we've agreed that this is the healthiest for both us and the game in the long run. On top of that, I want to stress that just because we're very open about communicating to people about development and therefore are generally very much within reach of the playerbase, it does NOT mean people have the right to send us pointed or passive aggressive messages constantly telling us how you don't like certain things. This is not your game, and therefore these are not your decisions to make. Once again, if Jan (and subsequently the rest of the team) stops having fun, Rejuvenation stops being made. Please, we ask you to treat us with respect over this. ———————————————————————————————————————— *cough* That being said and on a more positive note… Let’s move on to the actual changes, shall we? I'll put stuff for each individual thing that I'll cover in spoilers in the case people would rather not know about specific changes! New additions are marked in green, changes are marked in yellow and things that got removed are marked in red. The new additions are added on top of the existing field, so most of the changes do not fully replace what's already there, but instead will open up more avenues for the player to make use of when going into a fight. (Frozen) Dimensional field & Angie Sky field & Souta Haunted field & Narcissa Bewitched woods & Flora/Florin Some more minor but notable changes... As mentioned before, these are preliminary and definitely not the only things we're looking at to change. Stuff like Geara's battles, boss battles and most other gym leaders that haven't been mentioned before are being looked at—with Saki's fight likely being redone from the ground up due to that the fight is fundamentally a pain in the ass and can't be fixed with just one or two minor changes. It's taking time as people are busy, but we're still working on them and hoping we can find a solution for making the fights more manageable than they are now. ———————————————————————————————————————— That's all for now in regards to changes! We're adding more in the future and there'll probably be another post about it when the ideas have become more concrete, but that'll be a while away from now. For the time being, we'll keep working hard to make the game a better experience overall. What's next on the list to do? Well for me specifically, if you've seen my twitter last week or so, I'm working on fixing up the official artwork for almost all of the characters as I've come to realize I really should've utilized flipping the canvas more often to see if what I drew makes any proportional sense........... of which a lot I'm ashamed to say they did not. BUT I'M WORKING ON IT. Will it get a separate post detailing EVERYTHING? Probably not. But I'll be making a post when everything's been uploaded and fixed! Here's a couple of the more notable changes. Oh, and I'm considering making completely new wallpapers with the character art that doesn't blast your eyes out at 2 am. But that's up in the air. we'll see....................... anyways this post has gone on for long enough. i'm done hogging the dev blog for today, so until next time!!! please don't kill me in the comments!!!!!!!!!!!!! thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! o7

So at this point, it's probably not that big of a secret that 13.5 is turning out to be about as substantial as a whole ass version. Sure, it's no V13 tier of copious amounts content mind you, but still plenty substantial in both content that's being added and content that's being updated as well. And with old content being updated comes the tradition of the per-version session where I go absolutely fucking off the shits with cleaning up the sprites because I've come to realize that stuff does not look as good as they could be. It's a fun time! And there's more updates to sprites to come, but I figured I'd show off some of the stuff that's been cleaned up during the first day I sat down and worked on a bunch of the sprites. thank you github fork for making the comparisons far easier to show off because of the old/new comparison display. god bless Starting off with Keta, as I've previewed one of the sprites before on twitter! His sprites were in need of cleanup on several fronts. The first one needed a correction on the hair to be less round and more accurate to his official art, as well as the torso needing to be angled a bit better. He also actually has a neck in the sprite now LMAO As for his bad future attire, the sprite as a whole just seemed entirely inaccurate to what his other sprite looks like, so it's more drastic of a makeover. in crim's words, and frankly, i think that's an accurate assessment. He's also taller and like with his other sprite, his hair has been resprited to be more accurate as well! As a whole, it looks more appropriate for him. nice Next up, Ren! Specifically, his outcast sprites. Nothing too special going on here, just minor cleanup on his coat with the hood up and his face in the second sprite where the hood's down, as it lacked additional shading. Also, the lighting is consistent in the first sprite now!! which it wasn't on the hood!!!! and it was BOTHERING ME TO NO END. so i fixed it. yaaaay Next up is Agent C(rawli)! as you can see, he is fucking MINISCULE in the old sprite. Which isn't entirely inexplicable, because he was a child in earlier iterations of Rejuv. That's a remnant of the past though, and nowadays he's an adult and taller at that so I fixed his sprite to be taller and properly reflect those changes. Erick is next! Both his battle sprite and his vs portrait were rather dated compared to the other sprites. A lot of the detailing felt messy, as well as his face being very round in his portrait compared to his official art, so I elongated it a bit! The horns also look more defined and the sleeves and shirt have slightly cleaner shading. Colors are also accurate across the board now! Next up, Neon & Magenta. Like Erick, these sprites have barely gotten touched at all since they were first made, so I felt after V13 now's as good of a time as any to clean up these sprites. The masks look more accurate to the Puppet Master's overall design, and the colors of the sleeves match the official art now as well. Also the shoes look like actual jester's shoes now!! Honestly for me it also took a little while to get used to the mask looking different, but it deffo looks better regardless. Next up, everyone's beloved *cough* sky grandpa, Souta. His sprite has always been a bit of an awkward one, what with the pose being tilted and the robes being rather detailed. This sprite kinda become more of a rework rather than a simple cleanup, and the difference is pretty palpable if I say so myself. It also includes the change in his staff's design which i still need to fix on the official art for both him and eldest, but w/e as well as a general reshade of the robe to have more accurate lighting and colors. i still hate spriting that robe, by the way. it has no right to give me as much trouble as it does ANYWAYS.......... Next up is Ryland! So while his first sprite actually goes unused as of right now, I wanted the cape to be more dynamic. This was in order to match the second sprite's rework, as I fixed the shadows colors to be less... blue? purple-ish??? it shifted very much towards blue on the color wheel, too much to actually look good, so now it's a bit less saturated. The second sprite I actually made from scratch during V12's dev cycle, but ever since later on in V13's dev cycle, that sprite has started to bother me with how much it stands out proportionally compared to other sprites. It didn't feel right, so I felt a rework was in order for 13.5, and the result you can see here! I like this version a lotttttttt better, feels more dynamic imo Next up, Nim! It's really just her vs portrait that needed a cleanup. Her face felt very small in comparison to the rest of the sprite, as well as the hand feeling too big, so I fixed both alongside with the hair being more clean looking and not as overly detailed! It's the same thing Erick's sprite suffered from, which is the result of a sprite becoming dated over time compared to my current spriting style. And last but not least, Melia. Her first sprite just got some overall cleanup to make her pose feel less static, as well as her hair color being accurate to the other sprites now as well since I hadn't fixed that yet! For the second sprite, I made her taller because this sprite always has felt kinda small compared to the other ones she has. It still feels like she looks small in it, but she's also bent forward slightly so it's like............................. whatever Though the biggest thing that's changed is this third sprite; her outfit that she wears on Terajuma. Along with V13.5's changes comes the total overhaul of Terajuma, and along with it comes an outfit change for Melia. We've felt like her current outfit for Terajuma doesn't really fit her that well, especially compared to her other outfits later on in the game, so it got a redesign, along with a change to the official art to match! I won't quite be uploading the full sized version of the art to the sta.sh archive yet (I'm writing this post on a small amount of time LMAO), but I will later. That's all for now though! I hope people find it interesting to see the before and afters as per usual, hehe I'll maybe do another one of these a bit further into development, depends on how much else I end up doing. I do have another post I'll have up in a couple of weeks, but that's in regards to the survey we held, so it won't be about the graphics. So for now this is all you'll be getting! see y'all later o7

...Because really, I should've done these for base V13. One of them I should've done even before that!!!!!! truly, my brain is a puddle of grey mush that barely functions, but oh well. I'm making amends right now!! Without further ado because I'm sure people are here for the artwork and not my incessant rambling, here are your characters with fancy new artwork! Cera, Erin in her Demoness outfit, Amber in her Ch15 outfit, Xara and Jean! ...Would it surprise if I told you that there's even more art on the way? Probably not. Because uhhhh I have *looks at notes with shitty smudged handwriting* a grand total of 19 pieces of character artwork for V13.5 as a whole. I need to draw one more and then this batch is done! Probably! Unless I think of more things to draw that I forgot about! But I SHOULD be good for now. .........................hopefully. But I'm definitely not done with art in general for 13.5-- there's more planned than just character artwork. And don't worry about the fully fleshed out artwork that I said I'd draw of Erin & Venam for the character popularity poll results; those are still on the to-do list. I've just been busy with working on another project of my own recently so I hadn't sat down in a while to work on things for Rejuvenation, lmao Anyways same shtick as usual, icons & links to the full artwork can be found in the official art thread! No wallpapers yet because 1) I'm lazy 2) I haven't made them for the other characters yet either 3) don't want to spoil v13.5 areas yet and 4) frankly I'm also considering redoing the format so they're not white in color scheme and blast my eyes out whenever I close stuff and look at my desktop at 12 am. And maybe just make them location-free as a whole, so they don't uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh get outdated after an update or two. We'll see what the future brings in regards to that. If it means making my life easier with these wallpapers in the long run then I just might........................ As for progress on 13.5's development as a whole (as I'm sure you guys are curious about that as well), Jan's back in full swing and has been making progress again after a long break! Though stuff isn't quite ready to be shown to the public quite yet, so I ask that you guys are patient a little bit longer. I'm sure he'll have a post up eventually! Sometimes you just gotta let those sweet sweet game dev juices simmer on low heat for a good while y'know? Let them cook thoroughly before they're ready for serving. An undercooked meal is never a good idea!!!!!! so consider this an appetizer from me. :) but that's enough of me hijacking the dev blog again. hope y'all have a wonderful day and enjoy the art! <3 zumi out

Familiar with an ? because you really haven't seen that much of them in the game, really... But you've definitely seen them before if you've played through V13! As Jan has been on a much needed break for a few weeks, I felt it'd be a good time to hijack the dev blog once again and show off some of the new official art for 13.5. So, lo and behold! Meet Kreiss, Cairo and Aevium's Champion, Celine! Kreiss Cairo Celine I've previewed Kreiss on twitter before and even put up his full body artwork on my own portfolio as a small teaser on the 9th, but he's gotten a complete redesign, which also includes something of an overhaul personality-wise. While appearing classy and sharp-looking, there's a little more to him than meets the eye... But as of what, you'll see at a later point (or for yourself in 13.5! idk what Jan's plans are in that regards). Next to Kreiss we also have Cairo (which I've also previewed before!), a character that was introduced in V13 on Route 4, as well as Celine, who stands at the head of the Aevium League as its champion... Or well, is supposed to. Shame that her current state of being is uh... A little bit Not Exactly In The Realm Of Consciousness! As per usual, the character artwork & icons can be found back in the official art thread! Again, no wallpapers yet because I'm waiting with those until after V13.5 is out. also pls send jan ur strength, he's in finals hell. godspeed you magnificent bastard ok i leave now bye