MKM: roadmap until version 1.0 (Patreon)

it's been a long time coming folks, but we're in the endgame now!

In this post, I will inform everyone about the remaining steps necessary for the completion of project Mystic Knight Maya. These steps will be developed in more or less the order displayed in the image above. No particular dates are set because those are very tricky to get right, given the nature of game development. But I can safely say this: I'm working as fast as I can as a solo developer, and I want to release version 1.0 as soon as possible.

The primary goals are the main steps needed to finish the project. Each of those squares represent a major milestone standing between me and my final objective, and once all of those are done, the project will be considered completed.

The secondary goals exist in parallel to the above. They are still important and very much related to the primary ones, just not as crucial. These will still be implemented in some capacity, but could have their overall scope reduced in order to free up more development time elsewhere.

Finally there are even tertiary goals (not shown in the image) that are absolutely not essential, but are still on the table as of this moment. These can be considered wild cards, ranging from ones that I'm almost sure that I will still add in, to ones that are very likely to be cut entirely.

And that's the gist of it. I wanted to make this post for various reasons: as a way to organize my own thoughts and plans for this final stretch, to align and clarify the expectations of my lovely fanbase and to be more open about the game's current state and overall development.

With all of that properly conveyed, this is a good point to stop reading if you so wish, but bellow I will expand further upon each of the primary, secondary and the tertiary steps. If you're interested please do read on, there are some interesting stuff there, just be prepared for a long post.

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PRIMARY GOALS
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1) More Items. I still need to implement more potions/consumables with new effects, as well as new sub-weapons, accessories, and other miscellaneous key items. Even when this step is completed, I'll probably still be working on items as a whole until the final version.

2) Stage Layout Rework. This will be a big one. Essentially, I will re-design and expand upon the terrain of most if not all stages of the game; from the beaches to the high-tech biome. The idea is to shape them into their final form, by adding new layers for exploration, changing the position of enemies, adding secret areas, add/remove hazards or roadblocks, possibly adding new mechanical challenges here and there. I want to make sure that every corner of these areas serve a purpose in the gameplay and are a fun to transverse, to entice (and reward) exploration and just providing a good challenge all around.

3) Final Boss. Finally add the ultimate big baddie mastermind into the game, and consequently the 2 story endings. I want the final battle to be memorable and unique, and seeing as implementing bosses is always much more difficult than common enemies, I figure that the final boss will require a ton of work. I will also re-work and re-balance all of the previous boss fight behaviors, increasing or decreasing the challenge wherever necessary. I will also create the remaining bad endings for some of the bosses (beach boss, futa minotaur boss, etc).

4) Final Balancing and Polishing. A crucial step, this is were I will give another look and consideration into various systems and elements of the game. I will refine things like enemies' max HP, damage and rethink their attack patterns and behaviors. Balance shop prices and essence farming. Polish overall game sequence progression and difficulty. Revise user interfaces and navigation. Add more options in the menu, etc.

5) Marketing and Final Release. Once I'm satisfied with all of the previous steps, then I will do a "feature-freeze" and stop working on the game proper, and focus almost exclusively on the administrative tasks required to officially release it. And frankly there's quite a lot to do here. Translating the game into other languages, create or commission all of the art assets required by store fronts (mostly steam) and for general marketing and publishing.

Once all of the above steps are done, Mystic Knight Maya will be officially released!

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SECONDARY GOALS
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1) Lust Feature. This step has ties with the first 4 primary steps, so I have to figure out how to best go about this system. It could be some kind of status effect that Maya will have to deal with when collecting essence. There could be a machine or some kind of feature that Maya can resort to in order to reduce it. It could also be some kind of "doom clock", where it increases thought the game based on her actions, and if it gets full she succumbs or leads into an alternative ending. The main thing is to think how having high (or low) lust can affect Maya, the ero scenes and even the basic gamepaly. There are many ways to go about this kind of concept, so I'm still undecided how to best approach it and how to naturally integrate it with the other systems.

2) Secrets. Related to the stage layout rework and new items, I'll add new side/hidden areas which will reward players with the strongest items as well as extra essence. There could be more depth to this feature as well, but given this is all about secrets, well I don't want to spoil much more here haha. Originally I actually had a lot of crazy stuff planned here, but have been silently cutting down this concept more and more. There could be a fun post way in the future after I release MKM where I will talk about all of the crazy things that I wanted to implement.

3) Enemy Difficulty and Behaviors. I will revise all of the enemies statistics during the final polishing and balancing phase. I also want to see how I can improve their behaviors, in terms of attack patterns and difficulty. Currently some enemies are too easy and provide no challenge, while others are too difficult and annoying to deal with. Some enemies have no wind-up to their attacks which is poor for readability, and others can be easily ignored by players. I want to strike a good balance here to account for the 3 levels of difficulty that I will have in the final game (easy, default, hard).

4) Story & Lore. I will revise all of the current dialogue in the game, and will add new ones for Nene, Farina and [???], as they will be the main source of story-telling. The original idea was for the island in the game to be populated by various NPC's, but I've scrapped that idea a long time ago, so what I'll do instead is to add a new category of items called "Notes", which as the name implies, will serve to fill in some gaps in the lore and narrative exposition. I want to keep the overall word count of the game as low as possible while still conveying a decent story.

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NOT ESSENTIAL - TERTIARY GOALS - NO PARTICULAR ORDER
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1) New enemies and ero scenes. Frankly, the game already has way too many enemies (and scenes) as it is. Way more (like 3 times at least) than what I had originally intended. But I literally just added 4 new enemies in the most recent release, so who knows anymore LOL. This is the main appeal of the game, and honestly it is what we are all here for: the smutty scenes. So what I'm saying is that yeah it's very likely that I will continue adding new content here during this final stretch. If not anymore new enemies, then at least new alternative scenes to existing enemies. I do have a text file where I compiled a list of new scenes based on the fan-box, so there is that as well to work on.

2) Repeat Encounters with a Main Antagonist. This is a very common trope in many games, where the hero and the villain meet at various points during the course of a game, and I had intended to add one into MKM as well. But I dunno, with so much priority work that needs to be done, I feel like this step here would require a lot of time to pull off nicely and do it justice, so I've been considering sidelining this idea. We'll see.

3) Emotion system for enemies. For this step, envision little speech/thought bubbles (or emoji) that appear over enemies, indicating their current behavior towards Maya, whether that be chasing her, lusting for her, gearing up for an attack, enraged, etc. Those would appear during ero scenes as well, adding some fun spice there.

4) Teleportation screen rework. I'd like to change it from the current formal UI and boring list of images, into a full pixel art map of the island. Think something along the lines of the title screen of the classic Yoshi's island for the SNES (easy google if you don't know what I'm referring to). Not only this would make choosing a teleportation point more accessible and practical, it's also much more fun and it would also double as a map for the island, helping further establish the lore and theme of the game.

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And there we have it. Mind you that the above is not exhaustive, meaning that there are many more little things and finer details that I will also work on and refine, but I didn't mention above. Things like more sounds effects, maybe changing some music here and there, adding more accessibility options, better gamepad integration, polish the user interface, add a new title screen, add a proper degug/cheat mode, etc.

It is a ton of work, but I'm chipping away at it consistently so I'll continue going strong!

Thank you for your patience and support through all of those years. You literally made this game, and by extension my dream of becoming a game developer, to become reality. Seriously, you make a difference, so thank you very much.

Best Regards,
Mega