v0.3 update plans

I figure I should make an announcement for this before SirIzike ends up having to field this question a hundred times 😉

(If you see this post, but didn't see GROVE's update announcement, that's because the fan flowchart here is an officially-unofficial fan project, and this isn't the official game page. I think a few people got a bit confused about that. Make sure you give GROVE DEVELOPMENT a follow if you haven't already!)

In short: yes! I'll try to update the flowchart.

The caveat is that RegalBuster and SirIzike have worked really hard on the update and turned it into a very steep serve. Evidently they're a little hardier than I am in that regard. So, since updating the flowchart in one go would likely take quite a while, and because I'd like to take breaks, I'll stop matching my releases to GROVE's and break them down further. (More on that below.)

First off, before I start work, a few things need to happen:

• The game must be fairly stabilised.
  Right now there are frequent patches, and some of them change how things function enough to be relevant here.
• I'd like to 100% the game "casually".
  Making guides is a different process from playing a game for the enjoyment of the game itself, and I don't want to spoil that for me.
  (Though, frankly, this is a game that in no way loses its charm for me through understanding more of how it works. It's a rare real gem that doesn't seem to rely much on smoke and mirrors, or on misdirecting the player, and often wears itself on its sleeve. Makes me rethink a few things I've been told about game development and writing.)
• I need to get those slugs unstuck from my mind just a bit, so that I can concentrate on literally anything else.

Then, I need to figure out some things mostly ahead of time:

• The game is so full of content now that the single-page structure of this guide, as it is right now, is becoming a burden.
  (It's also much less linear now, in some ways, so I'm not sure the linear layout between chapters makes all that much sense going forward. Might go for something a bit more booklet-style to make navigation easier, but let me know what you think.)
• I'll rethink my development approach a bit so that it stays sustainable for me. Right now this is a single HTML file with embedded stylesheet, but I'd like to split it up a bit to make it easier to manage. No current plans on what exactly I will do in this regard.
• GROVE's gained some additional structures for how/where side-content appears. It probably makes sense to have some unique symbols for these, and to describe a few of them more explicitly from a sort of travel reporter's type of perspective.
• I'll most likely discontinue the fan fiction/fan art links, and remove any existing ones from the flowchart. There's been too much of it for a while for me to feature here in a good way (or rather: my ability to do so doesn't reach my standards).
  I'll see if I can include some pointers on how to find fan creations instead, both for players who'd like to spend a bit more time in that world and for fan creators as orientation on which places are popular in this regard. (I may need some pointers in this regard, so if you know about a search query that reliably brings up GROVE-related works somewhere, please feel invited to point those out in the comments.)

Afterwards, I'll likely first update the v0.204 guide, with the v0.3… changes to those chapters. Then, I'd like to mostly follow the quest structure, publishing guides on each one at a time. For events and information that aren't part of a specific quest and not unlocked directly by one of them, I'll still try to publish them in logical packages, but separately.

For these smaller updates, you can follow me here or periodically check this guide's devlog. Once my guide is caught up with the game, you should notice through any of the official GROVE update channels also. (SirIzike mentioned that they'll post an announcement when I update my guide, but I'll ask them not to announce the smaller ones since that could get spammy and a bit spoilery. So, as usual, please only follow me here once you've completed your first playthrough.)

As for when any of this should happen: When it's time and I can fit it into my schedule.

One small piece of information ahead of time, since it seems to come up a lot:

There are no missable 🍏s this time. This means you can play through the main game worry-free and pick them all up in the post-game if you'd like. They're (in my opinion) not quite as fiendishly hidden as last time, either, though still appropriately off the beaten path.