Hello, Fishcross Islanders! I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for your support and enthusiasm for my strange little game. Today, I'd like to briefly share the story of Taiyaki Fabulous Museum of Fish Plus, the newly available upgrade of TaiFab.

After I released TaiFab, I almost immediately started working on the sequel, Taiyaki Fabulous Test Kitchen (TFTK). As all game devs reading this must know, developing a game is a trial by fire; any creative process is a learning process! With the helpful feedback of players and my own continuing research on GB Studio's capabilities, I started revising the engine of the first game for the sequel. In particular, an article from GB Studio Lab opened a whole world of possibilities for improving the nonogram engine, and the fine folks in GB Studio's Discord server are a font of information about the finer points of development.

While I was working on the sequel, my brother and I thought about printing a few physical cartridges of TaiFab to bring with us to a gaming convention. However, I really needed to reduce the size of the game for cost-effectiveness. I knew that the new engine for TFTK would be much more space efficient. Thus, in March, I dropped all my other projects and spent the month converting the first TaiFab to the new engine. My goal was to get the game from 2MB to at least 1MB, but I had a secret hope of reducing it even further to 512kB. I am happy to announce that I reached my toughest goal, and TaiFab is now 1/4 of its original size! 🎉

In updating and shrinking the game, I have made the following changes from TaiFab to TaiFabPlus:
- TaiFabPlus is GBC-only (for a few reasons related to framerate and tile limits).
- The Select button now opens a save anywhere menu, and the Start button opens the inventory and puzzle albums menu.
- Holding the B button allows the player to run (without having to put on the Deboots in the Debug Room).
- Several scenes (such as the inn, the path from the start of the game, the museum interior, etc.) are now smaller. I like this change! It's nice to get around more quickly in a tighter environment.
- Players can now cross out numbers while solving nonograms, and there are darkened grid lines to aid counting.
- Two puzzles now have updated solutions to align them to my original intentions.
- A few dialogues have been revised.
- The Debug Room has been overhauled with updated tools, six bonus puzzles, and a sound test area. By the way, you can't access the Debug Room in the same way as the old version...

These are the player-facing changes; of course, there are other changes under the hood, especially in the nonogram engine. (Shout-out to Columbrine for developing a bespoke data-formatting program to complement the new engine!) It was a lot of work, but I'm happy with the result, and I still hope to make a truly deluxe version of TaiFab in the future! And of course, I'm resuming development on Taiyaki Fabulous Test Kitchen and bringing a whole new game to the world (hopefully by the end of this year 🤞)! For now, I hope TaiFabPlus brings enjoyment and quality of life to players, and I thank you all again for playing my game. 💖