Hello, long time no see! It's been almost a year since my last public update on the project, I thought it would be a good time to share an update on the status of the project, as well as the future!

As some of you may remember, I got hired in March 2025 to work at a big game company, due to this and some personal issues (more on that later) I haven't had as much time as I want to to work on PH, however I did manage to get things done.

As I said the last time, PH is pretty much feature complete, anything from here is mostly polish, but there are still some key things I want to do before releasing it completely.

Some of you may have realized but I did soft-launch 1.0 to the stable branch a while ago, but the game will remain in early access until I have proper marketing material to make the launch big.

There are currently 4 new songs in development, one of them is already in the game but without graphics, I will share more news soon, in the meantime here's a teaser of the art for one of them!

The website (and by proxy, the backend) has been getting DDOS'd by companies scraping data, not sure what for, whether it's AI training or other reason, either way I am working on counter measures for (installing anubis on the server) but it's gonna take a bit as the infrastructure I built is a bit of a mess, I plan to make it nicer.

One thing that's always plagued PH is needing yt-dlp for videos, in the end I decided to allow videos in the workshop, in fact, 1.0 won't let you upload songs without video or audio data in the songs themselves anymore!

I do plan to continue supporting yt-dlp for existing uploads, indeed I added the deno runtime with the game, which should make yt-dlp slightly more reliable.

I also created a migration tool to migrate your own songs to not require yt-dlp anymore, so you can upload them to the workshop!

To improve future archival and sharing of songs outside of the workshop I started work on an open format called PHZ.

PHZ files are just zip64 files structured in a certain way, they include metadata for archival purposes, they can hold multiple mods in a single file.

A new export tool has been added to the game so you can export your songs to PHZ!

Eventually, I'd like all workshop uploads to use PHZ once it's stable, however current uploads are still using the "bare" format.

I still have nothing to show about this, but I do want to redesign the game UI, I have contracted an external UI designer to do this for me, I will share updates as soon as I can!

I have updated the base engine to Godot 4.6, this is currently experimental but it should be fine, this means that DX12 will become the default renderer again, which should improve frame pacing & more on windows, shutouts to Skyth who has been working on Godot's DX12 renderer for a while now!

I've also been busy fixing bugs to polish up the experience, here's what's changed:

• PH-222[github.com]: Fix being able to create a slide note hold by selecting a checkbox in the inspector tab.

• PH-239[github.com]: Fix various issues with downloading media from the editor, such as overlapping windows and being able to take the download prompt to the main menu.

• PH-261[github.com]: Fix workshop songs with very long titles causing the container to overflow.

• PH-292[github.com]: Fix alt+scroll shortcut not working.

• PH-296[github.com]: Fix intro skip indicator staying on screen permanently if the intro is skipped during the fade in.

• PH-299[github.com]: Fix editor keybinds triggering inside text boxes.

• PH-301[github.com]: Add the ability to download song variants from the editor.

• PH-301[github.com]: Fix workshop description disappearing after opening the song twice in a row.

• PH-310[github.com]: Fix download list not clearing when a song is finished downloading and fix the queued song count not being updated

• PH-313[github.com]: Workaround timeline issues when using a resolution lower than 1080p.

• PH-315[github.com]: Fix localization of song list input prompts being missing.

• PH-329[github.com]: Fix non-workshop songs trying and failing to upload scores.

• PH-333[github.com]: Fix rush note consistency issues.

• PH-341[github.com]: Fix downloading multiple songs' media at once causing thumbnails and audio to fail to load.

• PH-345[github.com]: Fix deadlock when loading the options menu and then trying to load the songs menu.

• PH-346[github.com]: Fix error on close caused by steamworks data caching.

• PH-378[github.com]: Fix double-clicking a song entry (not a chart entry) to enter a broken state in the editor

• PH-397[github.com]: Fix left-facing slide note particle scaling being wrong.

You can read the full update changelog on the wiki[projectheartbeat.wiki.gg]

• New trailer

• (perhaps) UI redesign

• Stabilize PHZ format

• A secret thing I'm working on :P

2025 was a hard year, getting used to having a normal job after so many years was hard.

The hardest moment came in late June, my mother returned from a trip to the countryside (1000 km away) to visit my grandparents, my dad dropped her off at home and when he returned home she was unconscious and on the ground.

Unfortunately my mom was declared brain dead the same night due to a subarachnoid brain hemorrhage, luckily we managed to donate as many of her organs as we could, so at least her death wasn't entirely in vain. This was also hard on my maternal grandparents, who are both over 80 years old and are still devastated to this day.

I will be dedicating 1.0 to my mom, naming the update "Marina's Legacy".

Regarding PH and my work: I've kept myself busy, working on PH, side projects and of course on the game from my day job, I wasn't sure if I should be happy that my bosses are happy with my work, since I've always had the desire to resign and return to be a broke indie, but the pay is good and we do need the money now that my mom is no longer with us.

I've also been working hard on my car, I originally wanted to convert it to run on LPG to bypass old car bans, but the government said that was no longer allowed, so I'm now turning it into a street legal race car :P

Obligatory MR2 picture to accompany the post!

Thanks for reading, until we see eachother again!