Sorry to tell you, but the public version will be released a month later then on Patreon. And its not even quite sure whether the first official
beta version for patrons will be released this month - as the workload for this first
beta version is massive.
Not only was the
alpha version - which is the only version available atm and as
Funman619 said only available for patrons
- completly revised and redone. As a matter of fact a lot of stuff was not implemented at that point. Things like the tutorial, QoL improvements, certain gameplay systems and mechanis had not been done and implemented (e.g. the magic crystals system, hide textboxes, walking speed, hall of fame, FF8 card game, game manual,...). Then N_Taii had to implement the day cycles for the main map and everything that comes with it: E.g. A LOT of freeroaming events for the different times of the day and the different days, as well as A LOT of interactables and dialouges with NPCs, there are a lot of doodads (animated art such as falling leaves) in the game as well this time. He also spent a lot of time reworking the menu and HUD design, implementing the 5 new handmade CGs (the banner and 4 CGs for the prologue) as well as new pixel art assets all over the game. This way the base game, the games fundament if I may say, slowly but surely is finished.
But on top of all this N_Taii added a lot of additional content, namely the introduction of the antagonists and the first scenes for the first corruption stage/level or in other words the very beginning of the corruption process (at least with one of the female main characters ATM). In the alpha version - which is already a lot of content - there is 'only' the prologue and the introduction of the MC and the female LIs. In order to progress the story N_Taii had to make A TON of new maps, all made with parallax mapping - which takes hours and had to commission a lot of art assets.
As of now the content is huge for this first beta - but as N_Taii wants to release a very refined and perfected first version for the public he wants to finish what I just roughly summarized. Thats why this first release takes so long. Dont forget that N_Taii hugely improved on different categories and levels, such as art, story telling, character personalities and relations, QoL improvements and so on - all of this takes more time though.
tl; dr:
- Alpha version (Prologue and introduction part 1) - Released - accessible as a 1$ patreon
- Beta version (Patreon release) (Alpha content + introduction part 2 and beginning of the corruption process) - not yet released, no ETA yet - maybe this month, maybe not. But I dont think it will take longer then until next month.
- Beta version (Public release) - under normal conditions the public version gets released 1 month later then the patreon release. Maybe N_Taii makes an exception with the first beta release though... we will see.