Welcome to today's blurb!

Let's talk about the banner real quick!

I am a huge, huge fan of Yume Nikki. As a matter of fact, that's what the banner for this post is based on! I love the art, I love the exploration, I love the music. The atmosphere is sublime. While the gameplay itself isn't exactly exhilerating, it's a masterclass in creating tense, unique atmospheres. All of to which was done in RPG Maker 2003! Can you believe it?

When making the logo for this banner, I mimicked the way it was originally done for Yume Nikki itself. As it turns out, it's not too complicated making the design! The logo for the original game was done by making abstract forms of Japanese characters in hiragana. After that, I can only assume this, but a number of special sprite effects and distortions were used to get what the logo currently looks like. In my experience in making the logo, I made white Japanese characters that represented the word blurb, used a number of negatives and outlines, then applied a number of Aseprite's convolution matrix effects. The two that work the best in recreating the logo are the drunk-5x5_+ effect, which blurs the logo into 4 different directions with aliasing, and the misc-rock-edges effect, which brings out the darker outlines of the sprite.

After that, I applied a number of little edits since the coloring had to be manually done. I used the custom palette "Yume Nikki" by SpaceSandwich from Lospec and the font "Yummy Nickles" by hujle.

It's very rare when I recommend something to this sort of degree, but if you haven't played Yume Nikki, I 100% recommend it. Just make sure you have a guide with you, it's the kind of game that needs it if you want to see EVERYTHING.

With all that extreme glazing aside, don't forget that I have an ongoing contest for the blurb going on still! Refer to post #77 of the blurb in the speculation column for details on that!

Now let's see what the community has been up to:

Still no development media released recently?

Things may be running a little thin in terms of what I'm able to write about as a result of the lack of current development media being posted, but I've been in a similar, precarious situation before.

So, what will we talk about for speculation today? Well, for one, we can talk about the potential delay of EA3 (which stands for Early Access 3, the next iteration of Earley Acces for Brickadia)! That's right, as a result of numerous circumstances and situations that have transpired in the past month, development for the game has met a potential roadblock.

While it's obvious that development on the game hasn't stopped, the question is more so what will make it into EA3 once it finally releases? When will EA3 drop if it's delayed?

For starters, let's look at the possibility of a delay.

First on the timeline, we get the potential release date here:

Credit: Zeblote

Wow! June 19th! That's pretty close for when this blurb is released, isn't it? Gnarly!

That post was made on April 19th, 2026. Fast forward a little to May 18th, and we get this potential complication:

Credit: Zeblote

Uh oh, that's not good! A delay? Worse yet, some features might need to be cut? Wow, that sucks!

Well, let's put this into perspective for a moment.

For starters, we know that the game released on July 11th, 2025. Then, EA2 dropped on December 12th, 2025. Our expected date for EA3 is June 19th, 2026, but we're being told that this will likely not be the case unless certain features are cut out.

If there is a delay for EA3, then I imagine it probably won't be a long delay. Based on the release dates mentioned earlier, Brickadia has a major update release about every 5 to 6 months. We can assume that June 19th is being chosen because of Steam or, more importantly, Steam Summer Sales.

Steam Summer Sales this year starts on June 25th. Having EA3 ready by June 19th not only provides the gaurantee of an update, but the luxury of a discount sale for people who might want to get the game at that time. In other words, it's a pretty gnarly deal!

Keeping that in mind, will the game actually be delayed? Given that we haven't been given a solid answer on this from the development team, I would think probably not. If there were a delay, I imagine the delay would be very short, probably either by a month or so. Additionally, given that we've already seen a lot of major features get developed already, like voice chat proximity, the reworked Resizer tool, and a myriad other of features, I can believe that maybe some small feature here or there that we might not know about could get cut. That is, of course, if we assume that the features we've seen are in full, operational order which, if they weren't, would lead me to believe that there won't be a delay.

So, in short, if the developers still want to try to send the game through that window for the Steam Summer Sales, I think we'll still see a lot of the features that have been shown through development media. If they aren't ready, then I can believe we'll see a delay.

Not the longest speculation column, but considering EA3 is technically "supposed" to release in a month, it'd be good to tackle this topic now moreso than later, don't you think?

The fact that this speculation column is short also gives me ample time to remind folks that there is an on-going contest that I am hosting! For more details, see the #77th blurb's speculation column, all the way at the very bottom!

Stay tuned.