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How is it already August… Hey everyone! Posty here, with a new post coming straight to your post-box. This month's update will go over some visual updates that we have made to some of our characters, featuring some fresh new drip and a little bit of plastic surgery, a little treat for you all from the music men, and a new character joins the Desolation cast? This time around, you will be hearing from the team and not just me! So let’s get into it, Ruby will now take over and go through the graphical updates she has been making to the game. Ruby’s Plastic Surgery Clinic Hiiii it’s me Ruby, and as the title above states I’ve once again reopened the doors of my plastic surgery clinic. Truth be told I have no clue why I held off so long to do this, but whatever, it’s done finally. Here’s the redesigns of both Aderyn and Aaron! Someone’s gonna have to stop me from giving everyone long coats. Even if someone tried to stop me, they’ll find I’m an immovable force. Alas… I tried to keep most of their physical appearances intact from the original. I already liked Aderyn so she faced minimal bodily changes besides her outfit. Aaron, however, got sent to the barber lol. Unfortunately I’m not a fan of the type of hair from his old sprite, so I changed it up to something still similar but more to what I find looks better haha. You’ll find I base my design principles half off of vibes and half off of actual studies haha. For the thought process, I tried to give Aderyn a ranger look (that wasn’t just the X/Y ranger lmao,) that I thought also fit the actual rangers aesthetic present in the game. For Aaron, I tried to lean more into him being the Director of Cellia North, his arguably more important job in the grand scheme of things, haha. These sprites are still subject to change, so there’s a chance for there to be some differences in the end product. As a signoff, these two aren’t the only ones who went under my knife~ There’s one more existing character I’ve taken for a haircut and shopping, so have fun with that info until I inevitably decide to spill who it is hehe. Catch you whenever I have fun, non-spoily stuff to show~ - Ruby Oh no. We have to update the ron emotes now….. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What do you think about the drip? Ruby has been smashing it out of the park with all the graphic updates she has been making to the game, and with Omens working alongside her in the artist department, Desolation is looking pretty sick Now I’m going to pass over to our musicians, Darius and Rust, who have something in store for you all! Darust’s Music Corner Welcome to Kanzen Cliffs -- a new, explorable area on Arcanius Island after traversing through Chryseum Canyon! Because of this area's relevance to the main story, I wanted to be very particular in how the track was written. Rust and I actually went through three different iterations of the track before we finally settled on this one, and I am super proud of the work that went into it! Please let us know what you think either on this blog or in our channel on the Reborn Evo server! We're always looking to improve player experience :) The composition is written for string orchestra with flute, french horn, vibraphone, and piano taking turns with the melody. Usually when composing, I come up with the melodies first and then work out the harmony, but in writing this piece, I'd actually had the chord progression in my drafts since Episode 6, just waiting for the right opportunity to use it. My goal with this piece thematically was to separate two very distinct areas with strong personalities (Chryseum Canyon and Kanzen Temple) with something much more serene and playful -- almost a respite from the stressful canyon's irregular meter (each major is seven beats/counts) and the unsettling temple's pulsing D minor #13 chord. (For those interested, minor chords contribute to darker feelings like anger or sadness, but adding the #13 brings an air of mystery, very common in Jazz music. I recommend listening to "So What?" - Miles Davis if you'd like to explore further) Funnily enough, I came up with this chord progression when I was experimenting with Christmas songs back in December of 2022. I was working on a reharmonization project at my university (where you have to take an existing song and change the chord progression while still keeping in sense with the melody), and developed this progression from the classic, "Let it Snow!" The resemblance is a bit obscure, but the observant ones of you may hear slight references here or there throughout the piece. That's all for the composition side of things, I'll now turn it over to Rust to tell you about the magic he casts during the production. – Dariusolation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Oh boy, my turn! Kanzen Cliffs as far as I know is the first track I worked on as an official member of the team. There's a few where Darius asked me to do some production work, but this one was special since I was an actual team member. Kanzen was a funny one because I went in planning to try to have a cohesive sound between tracks. Give the OST its own identity if I had to describe the plan and it started with this track. When Darius passed it over to me, I initially went with my usual down-sample to DS quality and combined it with the Gen 4 and 5 instruments.... Yeah, that pass didn't really hit the spot. I then decided to go for a hybrid of higher quality samples mixed with soundfonts (though this track is actually void of Sfs). I did at least try as much as possible to pull from the same sources as the Game Freak Composers. I've now got a solid set of general sounds I can pull from now, but let's focus more on this track. While Darius did say we went through three iterations, I went through way more changes before sending a version to him that I thought might be good. So many French Horns were tested on my end to fit the feel until I remembered I had a program called Noteperformer that does an amazing job of replicating realistic playing. It hit the spot for the overall vibes of the track (get it? Because, there's a vibraphone in the track). A good portion of my work is just hearing the original base Musescore playback and trying to the best of my ability to figure out what Darius heard in his head when writing. Luckily, I seem to get close to the mark most of the time (pretty easy with this track for the strings considering he had used the BW strings, so I just used the original source!). Throw on some reverb to Darius's taste with a few effects and mixing and you get a nice track. If just hearing this track gets you excited, then I can't wait for you to hear what else Darius and I have in store for you! - Rust ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Without further ado, here’s the track! Don’t say we don’t treat you all… We dropped quite a few teasers and it’s about time we just go ahead and reveal a brand new track for EP7. I am really excited with the musical direction we are taking with Desolation, and I hope you enjoy this! How would you like your tea? As a fellow British man, I like a good ‘ol cuppa during the day. It could be anytime, in the morning while I’m hard at work, when I come home from my job, or even later in the evening when I have some bits to crack on with. But sometimes it’s nice to head down to a nice cafe, sit down and enjoy a nice cup of their finest tea, accompanied by a treat of your choice. Do you want some scones? Maybe even a slice of cake? I definitely find myself indulging in a nice cafe every now and then, when I went to Berlin recently I found myself in a few cafes (including the Hoyoverse cafe… 3 times… Don’t ask), anyways where am I going with this? You might remember from a previous update last year, I shared this screenshot of Astraciel. Amongus A Gym situated in this town full of mushrooms and wonders, but did you know it was also a cafe? Of course you didn’t, I never mentioned it to you, until now. But who is the Gym Leader? Well, let me introduce you to the newest character to the Desolation Cast! Meet Delica! Yes, she finally makes her appearance in Episode 7. You might have heard her name throughout your journey thus far, but you haven’t seen her yet, until now… Actually I think we revealed part of her outfit in an old dev blog during Episode 6’s development, so shout out to you if you recognise the drip! She acts as the Gym Leader in Astraciel, in which her Gym is situated within Astra Café. All in all, she’s a sweet girl who cares a lot for the people around her. Whether that be those she’s attending to in the cafe, or her challengers at the Gym, she will always greet you with a smile on her face, an absolute sweetie pie! How will she be able to assist you during your travels? You’ll have to wait to find out! Delica is a character that I’m really excited for you all to meet in game, she’s essentially Ruby’s “babygirl” and a character we’ve been sitting on since we joined the development team back in 2019. I look forward to you all getting to find out more about her story. To celebrate her reveal, here is a cute icon that you all may use! To accompany the reveal of the newest character joining the Desolation Cast, she needs a theme to go alongside her right? Anyways, here’s a snippet of Delica’s Theme :) delica_snippet.mp3 Yes we’re past the music section and you’re getting more music, wow wow! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Before I finish off this development blog, I wanted to throw it back to you all, the community. Progress is being made but with no end in sight currently, I understand that it has been rather slow as a whole, and I know a lot of you are eagerly awaiting the next update to Desolation. So while I can’t hand over EP7 to you all now, I wanted to ask if there is anything in particular you would all like to see in our next development blog? And we will look to base that post around community feedback! So ask away, drop comments on this blog or in the Deso General channel in the Reborn Evo Discord, and I will compile a selection! Til’ the next one folks Posty

Hi, it’s Orsan here! Just a quick post for you all this time: We’re not dead! 19.6 is currently in the works. A ton of people are cooking up a ton of amazing stuff for this update! We can’t wait for you all to see it. Every time I look in the Community Cooperation Initiative discord, something new and wacky is going on. So much is being worked on, though, that 19.6 is going to take a while. Please bear with us! A few quick announcements about some of the people who have been helping out: We have a new developer on the team! Joining us from the Community Cooperation Initiative, it’s Karvanha! If you’ve played 19.5, you’ve probably already seen some of Karvanha’s contributions, such as the multiple rows of balls in multi battles and the move descriptions in battles, to name a few! Karvanha has also made an unfathomable amount of bugfixes and put a ton of work into the Gen 9 engine implementation for modders. We’re all glad to have him on the team! Returning from the old team, also, it’s Azzie! She’s been knocking it out of the park with her contributions as well, between ████████████ and █████████████████! Oh, I can’t show those yet, can I? Well, rest assured, she’s been doing great work– one of these two features wasn’t even initially planned, she just dropped in with it and we all immediately fell in love. Over on the Community Cooperation Initiative side, we recently pulled in several artists– Apophyll has been helping us with some sprites for a secret feature for a while now, and MoonPaw, bowle, meteors, Not_Aza, and inserobite102 have been helping us create many variants of existing sprites– such as our new protag sprites! These were shared on Discord a while back, but here’s a preview for you all here! They’ve been doing a great job! AiedalEclipsed, who made the initial updater for 19.0 and manages the links for the downloads of all three games, has also been cooking up an improvement to a feature of the game that’s been there since Episode 1! It’s been a little messy for a long time, and the new improvement to it is great! Thanks, Aie! Yeah, that’s… pretty much it! We’re all working hard to make this update great, between core developers and the Community Cooperation Initiative! I probably shouldn’t leave this off without a screenshot, huh… How about this? (yeah i know i don't have the updated protag sprite, it's on a different branch and i don't feel like switching) Thanks for all of your patience and support! See you all next time!

This post has been sponsored and narrated to you by sad bear i found on etsy (if this is ai ill kermit) please listen to this song and be sad as you read So it's been 5 months. Hey... How are you? Good? No? Sorry. Progress: Paragon: Part 1: 100% (Tested) Part 2: 90% (Untested) Part 3: 95% (Untested) Renegade Part 1: 100% (Untested) Part 2: 95% (Untested) Part 3: 85% (Untested) I took a big break during May, and a few days off in June. I needed it. Part 1 in each route are done! Part 1 (Renegade) needs testing, but I'll do that later. Part 2 of Paragon has a big segment that needs a lot of work. Likely will be done last. Part 2 of Renegade is basically complete, I just need to create a cutscene with the two M's Part 3 of Paragon is nearly complete. I have one last segment, but it's the hardest one. Part 3 of Renegade needs its last segment done as well, but I did so much work in one small time period that I need to do something else. I've been focusing a lot on Renegade recently because I got that Ren(egade) in me. Let's talk about it. Introducing THE WONDER TOWER I mentioned a long time ago that a lot of the events of Paragon's Karma files -still- happen in Renegade. The player just isn't there to take part in them. Most notably, some interesting things with Alice (Again) But this time it's a bit different... Alice has created a special dimension called The Wonder Tower. What is the Wonder Tower? - THE WONDER TOWER, is a 3 zone mini rogue like. The player will enter the tower and be cursed by the Queen who rules it all. Angelica! Also, it's ANGELICA'S WONDER TOWER. You've been stripped of your Pokemon, but fear not, there are Pokemon available to you inside THE WONDER TOWER! Also! The Pokemon you get here are yours to keep! They're received at random, though. Each time you lose, your experience will get a bit easier. I tested this area out with some of my dev members and the reception was really good. Review: "It was really fun" - Jan 10/10 starly. Renegade exclusive btw. To sum it up: 3 Zones 3 Bosses 3 ??? Encounters 2 Locked up Teammates ummm what else. oh yes. playable m2 segment us renegaders really won with this post... go us. In other misc news... Two icons from emo village got an emo upgrade (no) rad... zumi also posted this preview what's with all the emos... also... did u know... renegade and paragon are both having "xen raids"... but each are getting their own unique areas ? like... in renegade you cant go to paragon's maps and vice versa... Why did I do this... Well... it's becaus e i love you. That's all I really have to say... I'm still shooting for a release this year... but if its not perfect why bother.... oh and one last image for everyone!! Yay!

Hello hello! Posty here delivering you the latest instalment of Desolation Development™. It’s been a while folks and I hope you all are doing well! And not suffering too much with this heat (if you’re from the UK, you know how the weather has been lately), before I jump into this beast of a blog that I have lined up for you all, I just want to once again say thank you. The reception we received following the news of Caz’ Departure was overwhelming with love and support for myself and the rest of the team to continue carrying the torch he passed onto us. We are excited for what’s to come, and this post will showcase the changes we have been working on to improve the Deso experience, but first one last little announcement. From one departure to another, Crim has decided to leave the team. Crim joined us during early EP6 development once we decided it was about time to expand from our original 3 man band. They provided a ton of useful insight and produced some stunning work which has left an impactful mark on the game. We are forever grateful for the time and effort they put into the project and wanted to thank Crim for everything. We wish them all the best for their future endeavours! And with that, let’s move into what this post is all about… Gameplay. This blog is going to be… long, juicy! But long. So I will be splitting this into individual sections with spoiler tags, so feel free to read all of it, the sections you are most interested in, or just skip to the end and say “first” down below in the comments. Anyways, we have a lot to cover so buckle up folks, so let’s get into it shall we? Gen 9 Mega Evolution Changes Overlays Boss Mechanics Field Updates Ability Boxes Drinking at Drifblim Drinkery --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, that was a lot of information huh? I hope these last two posts were interesting reads for you battle folk out there. We have a lot of cool updates coming to EP7, from optimisations to further gameplay balances, Desolation continues to improve with each version. We have a lot of exciting content to come and I really do look forward to sharing more with you all! Now before I wrap up this post, I have a few extra details to go over. Patreon Updates A few updates have been made as of this post going live to our Patreon tiers. For starters, I want to make an announcement regarding our Crown Tier. As you know, this was removed due to Caz’ absence. Now that he has taken a step back from development, what will happen to this tier? After a discussion with Ruby, we have decided to not bring back the Crown Tier during EP7’s development, instead we will look to bring it back once we begin work on EP8. The reason for this is due to the length of EP7 development already, adding additional workload to what is already a monstrous amount of work developing the story would only continue to delay the game coming out. I want to be able to develop side quests that our Patrons have requested to a high standard and not half ass them. So this will be something I would look to reopen once we begin EP8 development. It will function similarly as it did in the past, with only a limited amount of slots available, more information on this once we get closer to EP8’s development. Furthermore, we have adjusted the wording for our Stargazer and Rose tiers to make it a bit clearer about what you are allowed to ask for as part of your perks, the changes are as follows: Stargazer Submit your name to be an NPC in the current version of the game! Rose At this tier, you can choose some attributes for your named NPC (Class from a list, Max Team of 5, and if you would like them to appear in the Keneph Resort Fight Club) Keneph Resort Fight Club? Yes, I will reveal this now as a part of this blog, Keneph Resort will be the host of a new Fight Club. We will go more into details about this in a future update, but for now that’s all you’re getting! Anyways, hopefully these clarifications make sense, I have compiled a list of Trainer Classes you will be able to pick from, in which we have now added new ones that will be appearing in EP7! Development Blogs This one will be kept short, but starting from the post in June, we will reduce the number of development blogs from once a month to one every 2-3 months. The reason behind this is to prioritise bigger and more informative posts, similar but not the extra length to this post. I want these posts moving forward to really showcase what’s to come in EP7, while also really focusing on development without having to rush about “what to put out this month”. This will allow me to think more in advance about what I would like to include for our blogs, and spend more time writing them up. I may start dropping some teasers here and there on our Twitter or in the Reborn server, so keep an eye out! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Woah boy this was a long post… I had to split this up into two individual Patreon posts as it was so long, but thought I would just chuck it all into one for the development blog. Anyways, I hope this has got you a bit excited for what’s to come, especially for the battle enthusiasts out there! And with that, I bid you adieu, until the next one folks! Posty

Heyo! It's been a couple of months since the last post on the dev blog! The holidays have come and gone, but things have been relatively quiet on our end since we stopped putting out the patches for V13.5, hasn't it? I completely understand people are looking forward to whatever we're putting on the table next, so I'll be using this post to explain a couple of things that have happened recently and what you can expect for this development cycle. For the past two months or so, most of us have been on an extended break! Many of us either just needed time to take a breather after V13.5 came out (which, y'know... isn't that weird to want considering we had two very intense dev cycles that both lasted 2 years back-to-back), or had personal matters to attend to/deal with. For this reason, we haven't really made any significant progress on the next update. Jan's made a start on mapping some of the new areas shortly before going on break, but it's nothing that we're able to show here (yet). This actually ties into the main point of this whole post, which is about that V14 marks the end of Act 2. Development for it has slowly started to pick up again! This is super exciting, of course! We're all super stoked for you guys to see what this act will culminate in, and moving on to the final act of the game— Act 3. However... Due to the nature of the update, practically everything in this update is riddled with major spoilers— and as we want to keep as much as possible a surprise for players, it means that development updates this cycle will be far and few in between compared to the past couple of cycles. This is a very conscious decision that we've made— and I know it may not be as fun for most people who are invested in the development process, but there really is just extremely little we can show that wouldn't outright spoil something major or indicate/imply something. So will there just be... no posts? about development??? at all????? That's not what I said, was it? There's just going to be less than usual! That being said, there's still a couple of things to look forward to during this dev cycle that I will personally be seeing to. I've got some characters lined up that will be getting their official art between now and V14's release, as well as the final artwork that I owe based on the 2020 popularity poll; the illustration I was going to make of Venam. I'll likely be posting this alongside the remaining character artwork somewhere in the near future. And of course there's still a chance we'll have proper dev posts from the team every once in a while! It's just entirely up to the discretion of Jan how much he wants to share or wants to be shared. I'd imagine it's not a lot though... The team—but Jan and I in particular—have been looking forward to this highly important climactic update for a very, very long time, and we want it to be just as surprising and engaging as we've been planning for it to be. That's all I can share for now, though. I'll leave you guys with the parting gift of a screenshot Jan shared on his twitter back in December for the people who missed it. In Jan's words, "it shows a lot but also nothing at all". Enjoy, and wish us luck for this dev cycle! We hope you look forward to what we've got cooking!! o7