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  • Rejuvenation Development Blog

    Hi! I'm Jan and I occasionally post updates about the progress of Rejuvenation in this section!
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    Jan
    I don't have a witty joke to make here for this dev blog
     
    aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
    it's the last one, too. As of typing this i only have a few events left to do (Note, they are all long and complicated and I may not get it right on the first try)
     
    But what have I been cooking? Well, a lot!
    Renegade has been complete. Like, fully. Maybe some battles need tinkering here and there, but all cutscenes have been made, all events have been done.
    I may go back and add a few easter eggs, item placements etc. But yeah! 
     
    After Renegade, I needed a BREAK from main story stuff. A lot of the events in Renegade were very intensive on me to make. Not really from a story/mood perspective, but from an actual development side. I really pushed the limits of what I could do in Renegade. But as a result I did get burned out a little. I mean, if you see what I cooked, you'll understand! Really wanted to drop it around Christmas time as a present, but I'd rather get it right on the first try rather than try to fulfill some funny date dream.
     
    =======================
     
    New Early Game Content:
     
    I said there would be no side content for v14, and that's kinda not true anymore. I mean, there are a few sidequests DURING v14, and are time sensitive to that, and by a few I think literally just 1 lol. But thats a lore sidequest-- I'm getting off topic. Anyways, this is to say that I actually did a few new events in the early game because Gen 9 kinda forced me to. Game is huge, but all the encounters are very tight. 

    First off, there are new missions in East Gearen (Minor, non help center ones) 
     
     
    Past Regrets:
     
    The week after I finished Renegade, I was desperateeeee to get out of v14 content, so I went back to the past and came to a conclusion.
    Man. These maps are really held back by my decision to keep them gen 3. I think the game really shines best when I put my own spin on things. 
    And no, before you get worried. I did not remake all of the past (again). I did give it a texture update, though! For those confused by that, I simply
    mean that the maps are the same, I just made custom tiles instead of using default R/S/E tiles. This includes battle backgrounds as well.
     
    A comparison of Kugearen City:
     
     
    Skip Skip Skip!:
     
    There are other few things I have cooked, but I'm can't give away every surprise right? 
    Okay, that beeing said. This is most likely going to be the final dev update before v14 releases. It will not drop this year. So do not expect that.
    But I estimate testing will begin sometime in December if I'm lucky. Again, no promises. Also no promises on how long testing will take. It will just take as long
    as it needs. It's a BIG chonky version. This game is a behemoth. But it is made for crazy people like me.
     
    I bid you adieu, with one final screenshot
     

    Jan
    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! 
     

     
    😲
     
    Jan
    Seems like my last post was done sometime in... July? What? Time goes by SO quickly.
    Anyway, I just wanted to crawl out my grave and actually show that yes, I'm doing science and I'm still alive.
    Before I continue, I did upload a bit of a preview back in November!
     
    You can view that here if you missed it:
     
     
    So, besides that, what's going on in the rejuv world? It's been a year! You said this time it wouldn't take as long!

    Well, I was wrong as usual. Life comes at you fast. To the people who thought the game would drop the february after v13.5 dropped... Uh, no.
    This game takes time and I will take my time. I still plan on being 60 and playing Pokemon and that's just a fact we're all going to have to live with.
     
    That being said, update! Where am I now? Well, Paragon is in its final stages! (Besides one big thing but that's something i need to work on over time, even during Renegade's development.)
    I'm in the final new area and I'm working on finishin up the story. One event takes me a day. Maybe more sometimes. 💀

    I wanted Paragon to be done by the New Year, but I always forget that December is my suffering month (aka holidays), so that never gets done. And then I remember January is my annual I'm so fucking burned
    out from life month. So progress has been a bit slow now, too. But then February rolls around and I'm like hold on I'm a beast?
    Also, I know I'm going to be asked this.
     
    Q: "Will you release Paragon once it's finished, or will you release that when Renegade is finished?"
     
    A: I will not release Paragon once it's finished. Paragon and Renegade are meant to coexist together. Even if it means I hold onto a finished Paragon for a year, it is what I've decided. ty.
     
    And yes, I did say Renegade probably won't take as long, and that's 😹PROBABLY😹 still true but please don't hold that as a promise. Nothing is a promise.
    Except for the things I'm going to promise right now.

    Gearen Laboratory
    I didn't expect the lab changing to look more sleek was going to be such a contentious topic. Though, I am willing to give some context on the decision. Whether or not you like it is up to you.
    (Spoilers for v13 story. I can never remember the chapter number/plot correlation.)
     
    During the expo drop, it was revealed that Celine went to Reborn City to learn more about their league process and how it was done. Inspired by the way the league is run in that region, she chose to emulate
    that process and as such, the Gearen Lab (The PUBLIC league HQ) was meant to look more like the Grand Hall. But that in of itself isn't the main issue. People found problems with the way you get your starter.
    Calling it boring and less exciting than previous versions. I do agree. However, the intent was to streamline the first few moments so that you get your starter as fast as possible. And as of this moment, I'm still quite happy
    with that.
     
    There was another reason for this change, though. Gen 9 was coming out and I knew I wanted to include it.  Which means more events taking up space in the mini biomes. tl:dr i was running out of space and expanding
    the biomes took a lot more technical work than expected and thus just defaulted to tables i could just perma extend.
     
    Regardless, I understand that the more personal way of obtaining your starter is important to some people. Especially those who like to create OC's. I hear you, and I understand you.
    Which is why I plan on creating two versions of this experience!
     
    Express Version:
    Is exactly how it is now in game. You go up to the table and adopt your gerbil.
    Standard Version:
    Amanda will take you downstairs into an enlarged biome where you can walk around and find your starter and pick it. Older rejuv versions did have this. But it was removed due to the maps being ugly lol.

    Now, this is not promised for v14. I would much rather work on new content than spend energy working on this rn. However! I am promising that this will come eventually. It may even come in v14 if I finish things up early! Or who knows, I may gain inspiration randomly during a testing period or whatever and knock it out in a day. These things happen. I have ADHD. It is what it is.
     
    Prologue Intro:
    Everyone knows the intro with lil Maria walking around her house and then somehow finds herself in some horror game!
    Well, the quality of the intro has been bugging me for several years now. When I take a break from a release, I usually do something fun to unwind and shake off the rust.
    This cycle, I finally went back and used my current skills to update the intro. Yes, with the Pangoro story still present, if not a bit changed.
     
    Old intro:
    New Intro:
     
    (These gifs/images are a quite a bit old as I've shown these off on my patreon like a year ago, but theyre still like 99% relevant minus some polish and detail.)
    There's also a few new secrets to be found in the intro, so you definitely want to keep an eye out for those :).
    And also no it is not necessary to play the entire damn game again just for the intro. It's neat! but not necessary.
     
    Uhhh, what else do I got to say?
     
    I guess I can dump some stuff I posted on my discord? There's not much this time around. but ye.
     
     
    Yeah, that was kind of a bad showcase, rip.
    Everything is very hush-hush. under wraps. CIA. FBI. Uhhh idk 9/11... never forgetti spaghetti whatever. idc.
     
    I do care, but also I'll leave you with one thing. A word to have you prepare a lil better. But.
     

    [Image ID: Image of a mysterious room with a Zygarde statue at the very back of it."]
    You better start collecting those cells.

    Jan
    Hi! It's been quite some time since I've written a proper dev blog post here, huh? I can't even remember the last thing I said publicly,
    so I'll just regurgitate some information I've thrown around recently. Sorry if that's old news!
    Well, this version is a special version where nearly everything I show is a spoiler, so showing stuff has been really hard-- But I want people to know that
    development is going quite well! Here are the avg percentages for Paragon (Renegade has not been worked on yet.)

    Part 1: 90% Completed
    Part 2: 45% Completed
    Part 3: 90% Completed.

    So as you can see, a lot has happened in nearly a year since .5's release (Jesus christ, it's been that long?)
    I feel like I could've been farther along, but unfortunately I've hit some irl snags, as we all do. My childhood cat Jupiter, who was 16, passed away.
    That was rouugh. Then other personal things I won't get into really bogged me down... Fortunately, I can feel my productivity coming back bit by bit.

    Besides that sappy stuff, I do have SOME stuff to show you. Just a collection of screenshots I had on my twitter, and some things I had on patreon.
    But before that, here's a big one. Reldin Island got a glow up!
     
     
    There's a whole other section to this place, but I'm gonna keep that a secret for now :3.
     

    Various other stuff that don't matter lol:
     
     
    But yeah, that's pretty much it for now. Please know that even though updates will still be a bit scarce, I am doing my best to get this done ASAP. Conversely, I am also taking my itty bitty time with things because I want this version to be good lol. From what I've made, I think it will be. Very packed with content. Also did I say Gen 9 was being implemented for v14? if not then surprise !
     
    I'll be back... in a month or two or something. idk. Anyways yaaaaaaa
     
     
    Zumi
    HEY
     

     
    Though it's for something very different this time around! For people who have browsed the Rejuvenation Club before, they might be aware of a Q&A thread we did back in 2019, and a tiny bit more recently there was a Q&A stream that Jan and I hosted after V13's initial release in 2021. We haven't done one in serious capacity since then (if you don't count the impromptu one Jan did on his tumblr a couple of months ago), so why not bring it back? We're not going to be able to post many updates about the game itself, but we still don't want to have complete radio silence on our end, so we're doing a Q&A with the entire team again!
     
    To give a quick rundown of the team so you know who could potentially answer specific questions:
    Writing: Jan (also does tilesets and overworld sprites) Art: Crim, Nym, Soulja, Dallas, Winter, Zumi (also involved with writing and music) Programming: Haru, Falirion, Sardines, Cass Balancing: Alex, Azery (also does some programming) QA: Ramiru, Dream, IceCreamSandWitch, Autumn (also does some of the move animations)  
    I can't guarantee all of us are available or willing to answer, but I know at least some members of the team will be happy to pop in and reply. And it could be about just anything! It could be about the story, but also about the game's development as a whole if you're curious. Or just about how the devs have been experiencing Rejuvenation from a developer's point of view! The world of questions is your oyster and you can do whatever with it...
     
    Well, as long as you stick to the rules.
    Please stay courteous with the questions! Crude questions in regards to us or the characters of the game (i.e. "can you kill off this character bc they suck", stuff like that) will be ignored and/or removed. We will not give answers to questions that are obviously veering into spoiler territory for future content. For your own sakes as to not drive yourself nuts over theories, please do not treat our unwillingness to answer certain questions as confirmation/de-confirmation either. It'll do nothing but cause confusion LMAO Please don't ask about adding romance options for the MC. The answer is still no— it's even been mentioned in the old 2019 Q&A post that they won't be added and that has not changed. There's a whole list of reasons (narratively, technical and personal) for this decision, but the tl;dr is that it's just plain not worth it. We're asking in the nicest way possible to please respect our decision on the matter and to not press it any further, we will ignore/remove your question if you do. (That's not to say we disapprove of any ships entirely! We simply instead encourage you to dabble in making fan content of your favorite ships yourselves through writing, art or other means. Just don't bother us to indulge you on the matter in official capacity, that's all.)  
    We'll keep the Q&A running for a week and will be answering questions as the week progresses before closing it off. If you've read all of that and agree to be nice, then fire away!
     
    Have fun! o7
    Zumi
    Heyo! Here I am again!
     
    As I promised in my previous post, I still had one more art post that I owed in regards to some remaining character art, as well as an illustration of Venam that I still had to make as a reward for her placing high in the 2020 popularity poll. Yes yes, I know, it took me FOREVER to get around to doing it— but guess what! I've finally got it done, and the remaining character art is finally done as well! I'm not gonna beat around the bush, so let's get a move on and show off the art. I'll keep things brief!
     
    We'll start off with Venam's popularity poll artwork!
     

     
    A 1080p and 1440p version can be found here!
     
    Next up is the remaining character artwork for pre-V14 stuff! The characters that have received artwork for this final round are Jenkel, Hynde, Maman, Cosmia & Comet, Peony, Adrest and Variya!
     
     
    At this point, if anyone feels like any artwork is missing it's either because it's just not worth the effort (i.e. temporary character outfits) or because they're slated for a later release/inclusion in V14 or beyond. I'll leave it up to your imagination which one's the case :) But for now, this is all the official art I'll be showing off prior to V14's release... So this'll likely be my last post for the time being (unless I'm tasked with writing a post about V14's actual development again. teehee)
     
    As per usual, all official art as well as icons and links to full resolution wallpapers and artwork can be found back in the official art thread! All artwork has been added to their respective chapters in the archives (Jenkel is in CH2, Cosmia & Comet in CH11, Variya in CH15, Adrest in .Karma, Maman in Sidequests and Hynde in Sidequests as well).
     
    That's all for now! Enjoy and see you next time, whenever that is! Thank you again for supporting the game's development!
     
    o7
    Zumi
    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
    Zumi
    I'M BAAAACK
     
    WOOO I'm excited to finally be able to write this post!! Two weeks I have been awaiting to be able to post these as I wasn't able to include them in the first post due to them being SPOILERS—or in one particular case, a character that you can find relatively early on but is hidden in a place that sometimes people forget exists. But no more secrets, for we shall now reveal the five remaining new pieces of artwork (along with a set of CG's that wasn't included in the previous post)! I'll put some minor explanation for each character in separate spoiler tags since I don't want people to click on this post and then get blasted with massive spoilers just from a glance, so proceed with caution.
     
    Anything that isn't included in this batch but might still seem missing is something that can possibly still be included in a later batch or V14 instead. Who knows! Perhaps there's a reason some characters haven't been included.... or maybe i decided putting it off is for the best considering how much i've already done for .5 but i'll leave that up to your interpretation
     
    ARTWORK (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD, PROCEED WITH CAUTION)
     
    MUSIC
     
    On a final note, the INPRNT shop with a bunch of the official art now has two more prints available on the store; one of the characters included in this post, as well as a print of Erin's popularity poll artwork! Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about Venam's artwork that she's also still supposed to receive in that regard—I just haven't had time to sit down and work on that one yet. My plan's to have it done before V14's release, and I will add it to the print shop when it's done right away.
     
    Anyways, that's all for the art & music uploads for this particular version! There's a couple of other characters that are already in the game that I've got slated to draw art for between now and V14's release, but I do want to mention that this dev cycle we're likely gonna keep the details and explanations about the completely new content more on the down low. We're working towards the climax of Act 2, and this is something we absolutely do not want people to be spoiled on, so what we'll be sharing will likely be pretty selective. Gotta keep things a surprise, no?
     
    As per usual, all the official art can be found back in the official art thread! Wallpapers and icons have been added as well :)
     
    Thank you again for supporting the game's development all these years and having been so patient for V13.5's release! We're excited to finally be moving into the territory of doing completely new work again rather than having to focus on reworking old content. We're finally at a stage where quality is overall very consistent across the board, so now we can pour all our energy into progressing with the brand new story parts and gameplay.
     
    Until next time!!
    o7
    Zumi
    Hello everyone! It's been a week since V13.5 has been released (already?!?!?!?!? what the FUCK) and that means it's time for me to start uploading the new music and artwork I've done for V13.5! I'm also including some of the artwork that's been in previous posts, but am including it just in case someone missed it since I know people like having stuff in one place!! In other words, consider this a compilation of all the art that's been done between V13's release and now.
     
    Some keen-eyed people going through the post may notice that some characters and new music tracks are still missing—but do not worry, for those will be uploaded next week instead, or will be drawn at a later point. We're giving people a liiiiittle bit more time to (re)discover these characters. Or we're just keeping them for the next batch bc they're spoilers, lmao. We know a lot of people are on new playthroughs, so unlike V13 we're taking a little bit more time before posting all the funny spoiler bits. (i'm personally gnawing at the cage bars for next week to arrive as soon as possible for a VERY specific reason, but that's an aside. if you know you know and i prefer it if people don't point it out in the comments LOL... let's keep the comments spoiler free from stuff that isn't shown here shall we?)
     
    And speaking of new files—if you haven't done a new playthrough yet, PLEASE start a new save and continue on from that one with future update releases. I promise you it's going to cause way less issues in the long run. Not only is there a lot of new stuff to see and do (including some very neat stuff you would probably miss on an old save if you've done most side quests before), it also just doesn't snap your save in half when entering some older areas like it does right now with old, converted saves LOL. Unfortunately we can't actually fix all the problems with due to how some variables are used. :( We're trying what we can to make the converter catch as much as possible, but some stuff will inevitably break, and we won't be able to fix it. If you want to start a new run of the game but don't want to take a super long time to catch up due to game difficulty, I highly suggest starting on Story Mode and switching back to Classic through Mr. Luck's contracts once you're at current content. The mode is significantly easier than Classic and will be plenty easy to go through for people who normally play on a harder mode. Or don't and stick to Story mode, or just play on Classic! It's up to you!!!!!! The world is your oyster and making use of passwords can make your life easier or harder as you please.
     
    Tiny tangent aside, let's move on to the actual contents of the post, shall we?!?!?! GOSH. I'm putting everything in separate spoilers and categorizing so the post is easier to navigate and not flooded with a bunch of... uh, more separate spoilers. You can just skip to whatever piques your interest the most!
     
    ARTWORK:
     
    MUSIC:
     
     
    POSTERS?!?!
    That's right! As of today, a bunch of the official illustrations for the game are available on my new INPRNT store to buy as prints! If you have a particular fully detailed illustration that you like, there's a pretty big chance that it's available on the store. I plan to add more in the future, but we're starting off simple with what's currently available.
     
    ...there's also two, uh, tiny bit saucy prints of two specific characters on there, which some people might recognize them from my twitter shenanigans from the past year or so.
     
    i'd say i'm sorry for also putting them up there, but i'm really not LOL. do with that what you will
     
    I will note that this is my personal store, so I'll likely be uploading things from other series and hyperfixations as well. The store won't be 100% dedicated to Rejuvenation for that reason, but there'll still be a lot of it available there. I'll also post about it if any new Rejuv themed prints go up! INPRNT takes roughly half of the earnings as they do all the production and shipping work, the other half will go directly to me. Soooo, if you want to support me and my work, consider buying a print from there!
     
    ------------------------
     
    That's all for this post! So again, next week the post with all the more spoiler-y stuff will go up. If there's some stuff missing even after that, it's simply for another time in the future, likely somewhere between now and V14's release. Thank you again everyone for having been so patient with all of us over the past few years, and we hope you've been enjoying the update!
     
    As per usual, all the official art can be found back in the official art thread.
     
    Now, we've finally got V14 to look forward to and work towards... Spicy. 👀
     
    See you next week!
    o7

  • V14 is still very much in active development! We just can't show anything that's not OOC nonsense from the devs because it's all spoilers. Sorry!

     

    As of 05/04/2025... yeah we're still working on things. THINGS ARE HAPPENING but also please be patient with us

     

    enjoy more ooc nonsense. or else.

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