Techie note! I've spent some time refactoring and streamlining how assets are loaded, using asynchronous tasks rather than the 'official' method of waiting for a callback.  This is superior in this instance because it means I no longer have to keep a semi-permanent record of information I require once the process is loaded, since by using the 'await' keyword all the details remain in-scope until I'm done with them.

It took a bit more time than I'd have liked, but the human-readable upshot of all this is that it will let me fix a couple of long-standing bugs, free up a tiny bit of memory and make the code easier to maintain going forward.

Unfortunately this means the next update has taken longer than I wanted. Originally I wanted it to contain a fair chunk of fiction, but right now I think I'd rather get some kind of update out - no matter how small - just to keep the ball rolling. I know everyone's eager to get to the actual story, but the Docks update won't be advancing the plot by very much. To make up for this, I'm making the NEXT phase of development all about adding new scenes to the two existing girls' stories, with maybe one or two hand-drawn replacements for those ugly AI-generated backdrops to sweeten the deal.

I've a few smaller issues to clear up this week and hopefully there'll be a new version just in time for April.