Big upgrade poll (Patreon)

A little while ago after we hit the full-time work goal I promised to make a poll concerning the next major goal - the first big process upgrade. Now that the v0.4.0 is finally in alpha in its more or less finished state, I want to take a moment to talk about all the possibilities.

Please note, this is not a binding poll, I will try to go for the more popular option, but if it doesn’t work out, then oh well, will try something else. I listed most of my ideas in the 0.4 dev update 3, but I’ll go over those once again in a bit more detail down below:

Additional writer with a focus on sex scenes. As I said earlier, I do not think my sex scene writing is good. Passable, maybe, but I’m certain it could be much, much better. So the obvious solution would be to hire/partner up with a writer who is much better than me at making stuff read really hot.

Additional writer with a focus on worldbuilding. And I mean “worldbuilding” in the sense that the game will feel more reactive, more alive. This includes more minor talks, discussing and reacting to past events, some friendly banter. There are quite a few scenes that should probably play out a bit differently depending on the player’s decisions and on the order of the events. This is another thing I really struggle with because making such talks is always a low-priority task, so it just never gets done, really.

Additional artist. Well, this is super straightforward. Renders take a lot of time. And even though it’s much harder to do animations, relatively simple scenes also require a fair bit of work. After dwelling on it a bit I believe I could offload some of the work to another artist. Some events are super simple, a girl talks with the MC and interacts with some props. And yet, it’s twenty or more renders, and each pose requires a couple of minutes to set up, check for clipping, recheck the light, then press render. Freeing up an hour here and another there would help a lot.

Episodic content. While thinking about all the challenges of partnering with an artist and making sure that our work matches in tone, quality and general feel, I had an idea. I already have some almost completely separate stories in the game. The space dream, Rina and her logic club, stuff like that, it does not need to look exactly like the rest of the game. In one discussion thread someone suggested making an anime dream, with all the cliches and tropes and anime-like shaders. Why not? Sounds fun. Can even be a separate download.

Voices and SFX in sex scenes. This, to be honest, is my personal favourite. I know that it’s just going to result in more work for me, but just can’t help it. I really, really want to know how the fully-voiced sex scenes would look. If we go down that way, I will start by ordering a voiceover and some sfx work for a couple of animations, and then we will decide if it’s really worth it.

Commissioned art. This is not strictly game-related, but something that might be cool if you appreciate the world and the characters. I could commission artbooks (actually, I still want to make one in any case, but can’t even find time to sit down and make an outline for it), maybe even a small graphic novel or two. Some stories from the girls’ lives before the rift, something like that.

So what do you think will provide the best return on investment? Let the poll commence!