Devblog, summary of the year and our future plans (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

The last update was in June, and the last Devblog and even earlier - in April. It's been quite a while, and although we've posted some content in development since then, we know you'd like to hear more news and details about the status of future updates. Especially since it's the end of the year, and it's time to sum up and share plans for the next year.

The main thing - work is keep going, all team members have their tasks that they are currently working on. Unfortunately, our coders faced personal difficulties this fall, and honestly, so did I. Last month, I got into a car accident, and while miraculously no one was injured, I wrecked the car, and what's worse, my insurance didn't cover the incident, so I had to spend all my personal savings on repairs, which, in turn, led to a series of other unpleasant events and ultimately took a toll on my mental state. I even tried to go offline for a while to reboot, but it didn't help much. Instead, with each day I didn't work on the game, I felt even more guilt. I'm sorry you had to hear this, but I'm even more sorry that it turned out this way. Well, I hope that by talking about it out loud, I can finally get back to work.

Our main priority remains the quest of the snow leopards - Ai'Lu and Balta. We've mentioned several times that this quest was highly ready, but it still hasn't been released. When we talked about its high readiness, we weren't lying - the quest was mostly ready in the form we initially planned. However, evaluating what we had, we decided to spend more time refining it. The thing is, for a quest that is a significant milestone in Ai'Lu's personal story, we ended up with too little content with her. And considering the specific of content with Balta (which I continue to keep secret to avoid spoiling the surprise), we decided to take more time to expand this quest. You've already seen her new nude sprites in October, and you'll see even more soon.

You've also seen sprites and scenes with the nuns. In this case, we are satisfied with the existing assets, but we were dissatisfied with the quest itself. In short, there were too few actions in it; it could barely be called a quest, it felt more like a quiz. When we started thinking about how to fix it, the quest grew and merged with another quest. With Rodenta's personal quest, to be precise.

The Rodenta's personal quest  turns out to be quite extensive and includes many new locations and characters. In addition to the mentioned nuns, the quest will feature the dragon Azurel, who is the leader of the local spiritual society, a new female dog character Mia (who is also the owner of a VR salon, which I'll tell you about in a moment), and a new male wolf character Max. As usual, we want to make this quest non-linear so that you can play it according to your beliefs and get different scenes.

New character - Azurel

New character - Mia

New character - Max

Now let's go back to Mia and her VR salon. It will be a special in-game establishment where you can unlock scenes using in-game currency. Sounds like a pretty obvious concept, but it took us some time to figure out how to make such a scene unlocking method not harm the story and not break immersion. So we settled on VR. To be clear: I mean narrative in-game VR (like braindances in Cyberpunk 2077), so don't rush to get your real VR headset. This way, we can add sex scenes to the game before they appear in the main plot, as well as add scenes that would be impossible under other scenarios. I mean, Sheriff Mary isn't the type to get into bed with you on the first date, but for a small fee, Mia can create such a VR scene just for you. Another significant improvement to the user experience will be the ability to unlock scenes impossible in your current story route without having to start a new game. And as a bonus - we can involve artists who are not involved in working on the main characters.

"But wait!" you exclaim. "What about in-game currency? Have you seen the salary of a country cop? I can barely afford a burger!" Not anymore! Soon we will add a new gameplay feature that will allow you to earn in-game money regularly. We called this type of gameplay Patrolling. Here's how it should work: you'll be able to take shifts during which you'll face various situations (both typical for the police and more exotic). You'll be able to choose from several solutions to the problem and get different results. Sometimes you'll also need to play a mini-game. For now, these will be several different modes of the familiar match-3 mini-game, but later we'll add others. At the end of the shift, you'll receive a salary that you can spend on scenes or gifts to develop relationships with some characters. We've already finished working on the mechanics of mini-games and are now fine-tuning situations and balance to make sure the new mode feels interesting.

Fight with the Quigslayer gang member - interface is still a little bit WIP

Of course, this is not all we're working on and planning, but we'll be able to tell you more about other things when they are more finalized. Thanks to everyone who has supported us throughout this tough year. Maybe we haven't done everything we planned, but next year we'll come back stronger, so stay tuned!