8/18 Status Update (Patreon)

At the Mountains of Friendship reached some big milestones this week. All ten starting girls have their voice acting done, all ten starting girls have their scenes more or less complete and proofread, and I commissioned the very last pieces of art needed for the game's launch. I'm pretty certain that the September 22nd date I mentioned last week is going to happen. Like I said before, I probably could get it out sooner, but I had a vacation scheduled the first of two weeks of September for a long time. It's just safer to release it after that.

But before that, it's Netoria time. Tomorrow I'll put out the test build for the gropes update and the full public version will come out next Friday or whenever the art is done. 

The remaining pieces already have their line art finished, and the one above has flat colors as well. I'm sorry for the delay in the epilogues, but AtMoF really demands almost all my time right now. It's kind of funny that right now Netoria is being delayed by it when AtMoF has been in production for over twice as long. The timing was supposed to work out that Netoria would be finished right before the At the Mountains of Friendship launch in June. All things considered a delay of three months isn't that bad.

And then once the epilogues are out, I'll be spending a lot more time on Naked Ambition. I don't plan to stop work on Netoria anytime soon, but the expansion content will be stuff that comes out periodically rather than one of the main fixtures of my production schedule. I'm glad the game has been such a hit, but it really is a side project. Maybe not in terms of how much people enjoy it, but in terms of cost and production value. 

The Apollo Games balance sheet has been in the red for the past two years because of how expensive AtMoF is. It's got high quality art in droves, voice acting, 40 sex scenes each with their own illustrations, and it hasn't even come out yet. I'm sure I'll still get plenty of comments saying "Okay, but not a lot of content for a first release though" somehow. I thought about maybe launching it as a paid title and doing a sort of early access, additional content over time kind of thing, but the whole structure of it is made for Patreon. 

Once this game comes out, tier benefits should be a lot more valuable and structured. You'll be able to vote on content more directly, and there will always be something for the $5 and $10 tiers. Preview and test builds for other games will continue as normal, but no matter when you join, if you're a $5 Patron there will be early access to a character waiting for you.

If you don't like AtMoF, not much will change. I've been working hard on this for a long time, so if you've been happy with my pace of updates so far, they shouldn't change all that much. I hope you all enjoy it though because it's the most ambitious game I've ever made under this label. It's pretty nerve-wracking being this close to release. I've been having people playtest, but I won't know for sure what the reception is until it actually comes out.

That's all for this week. As always, thank you for your continued support.