Chapter 4 BETA Release

Early / BETA Release of Chapter 4 of A Shot in the Dark will start on Wednesday, March 27 for our supporters on Patreon and SubscribeStar:

• Wed, Mar 27 - $40+ Patrons & Subscribers
• Fri, Mar 29 - $20 Patrons & Subscribers
• Sun, Mar 31 - $10 Patrons & Subscribers
• Wed, Apr 3 - $5 Patrons & Subscribers

Remember, anyone with a lifetime pledge of $10+ also gets access to the Interactive In-Game Walkthrough Features + Hondo's Complete PDF Guide!

Official Public Release of Chapter 4 for players who own the game on Steam and Itch will happen in mid to late April, once we have had time to add Steam achievements and do further testing once those are added.

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THIS IS A SAVE-BREAKING UPDATE!

WARNING!!! SAVES WILL BE BROKEN THIS UPDATE! Opening old saves will introduce bugs. Please plan to start a new game or use the Entry Points feature to avoid opening old saves. To be safe, please consider deleting your old save files: https://savelocation.net/renpy

We know broken saves are a huge inconvenience for players, but unfortunately we made too many changes to the foundation of the codebase for it to be avoided. 

What's new in Chapter 4?

With this update we are adding:

• 16 scenes, 9 lewd
• ~55K+ words
• 2,226 renders
• 97 animations
• 28 songs, 21 sfx

Ren'Py upgrade and code optimization

This update we upgraded from Ren'Py 7.4.11 to Ren'Py 8+ which allows us to take advantage of the newer optimization features Ren'Py has to offer! We also took this opportunity to refactor our code to integrate well with Crowdin and help automate the translation process.

New Achievements feature added

We've now added Achievements (which were previously only available via the Steam platform) to the game itself so that players on all platforms can access them! All players will get notifications when achievements are completed and can check in-game to see which achievements they have completed or not.

If you have the Walkthrough features purchased and enabled, you can also get hints for the achievements in-game.

Note: Only Chapters 1-3 currently have achievements implemented in the BETA version. Chapter 4 does not have achievements in the BETA version, but they will be added before we release on Steam and Itch in April.

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Unlock All Memories feature added

We added the ability to Unlock All Memories with a toggle in the settings. We already had the feature that allows you Reset All Memories. These are quality of life features to help players who get stuck in bugged states, are playing on multiple platforms/devices that can't share saves, etc. Both can be found in the Options menu in the More tab.

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Brand new GUI throughout entire game

Thank you to m. of Tsundere Studio for the complete GUI overhaul! We couldn't be happier with how it all turned out. Be sure to add their game to your Steam wish list: I Just Want to be Single!!