What's taking so long?

We've been focusing on work and as usual we've neglected to keep you properly updated. I'm going to make an effort now to give you a brief overview of what we've been working on.As you well know we've been adding content at a slow pace, with only 5 of the total 14 levels/maps released so far. This is not however because just creating more environments is time consuming or difficult, but because we need to progress the game's core features to properly support further content and the story.When we came to Steam with Exanima we rapidly fell into a cycle of constant refinement in response to feedback. We spent an enormous amount of time reiterating exisiting features and trying to improve what was already there, rather than moving forward with the features that were still missing. This is a cycle we've been determined to break, but it has already left us with a huge amount of work that has yet to be tackled. We also find ourselves wanting to develop a solid and aready sophisticated foundation for new features, immediately building things to higher quality standards, in order to avoid wanting to revisit previous work yet again.We've taken all the feedback we've received and endeavoured to build new content to new standards. We're trying to break free of the sometimes monotonous environments, to involve the player more directly in the story and do many other things besides. The game has grown greatly in size and scope since the initial Early Access release, involving some very substantial additions and refinements.The upcoming update features the first part of a large non-linear environment that will make up the rest of the game's content. We're using new environment building features and we're adding a lot more intricate and unique detail. We have improved both visual quality and variety in our level design.In order to do this we had to make substantial additions to our level building tools, and we've also created some new advanced tools for general asset creation. These tools allow us to make higher quality visuals while hugely boosting our productivity and avoiding many pitfalls that have caused us to waste a lot of time in the past.With these important additions to what we're able to do, we've also been revisiting the early game content, taking advantage of new environment building features, introducing new unique elements and remastering key assets.Perhaps the most important addition coming to the game is dialogue and NPC companions. You may now have someone by your side to share in your misery, and perhaps even carry that damned torch. This will introduce important new gameplay dynamics and provide an avenue to better expose the story and your own involvement in it.While perhaps most of this could have been done with simpler methods, we've tried to build an important foundation for NPC behaviour and dialogue that has many applications within the game, and many more to explore and build upon. This has been the biggest obstacle towards a release as we are attempting something quite ambitious and there was much work to be done spanning AI, dialogue and authoring tools, even a native OO scripting language. In the long term, it is one of our most important goals to create NPCs that have believable dynamic behaviours with meaningfully diverse player interaction.With this complete overhaul of the AI we're also trying to tackle many other issues and add depth and variety to even the most basic interactions with the denizens of Exanima.While we're not quite ready to include it just yet, we have also been working on Thaumaturgy. We will be adding up to a final total of 6 forms of thaumaturgy, with many powers and related skills. Mind is the first, as it is central to the plot. It also ties in with a lot of the work we have been doing with AI.There will of course be many new items and various refinements to the game in general. We are not comfortable with giving you a release date for the update just yet, but we are at the end of a gigantic endeavour and doing our best to piece it all together and wrap it up.(We're trying to avoid spoilers of the new content, but I will continue to add screenshots here that I think are appropriate)