Version 0.6.0 Update Preview (Patreon)

The February update, v0.6.0, will be released to patrons on February 9. It will come to the free edition a week later, on February 16. This update will be titled Bandita.

This update primarily focuses on story content, and features a large portion, probably more than half, of Chapter 2. If you're a patron (or thinking of becoming one), please read the very bottom of this post for some updates that I want you to be aware of.

Chapter 2

To get to Lord Pelenor, the player character needs to get into the castle, and to get into the castle, one of the royals or nobles inside has to invite her. Rais has a plan to get the player character an audience with the king while also restoring Gray's honor, but things go south before the plan can even be fully laid. Now the target of powerful enemies, the player character has to choose whether to stick to the plan or lay low until things blow over...

Chapter 2 features a few relatively large branches, and how exactly things go down is up to the player. Regardless, you'll need to be ready to make some tough choices, and you may temporarily lose access to certain characters or areas, while gaining access to other things. I think this is a pretty dynamic section of story, and it took a lot of time to plan, craft, and test.

I hope you enjoy it. It's focused a little more on drama than silliness only because the events themselves are relatively serious in nature, but this isn't a new tone or anything, this section just happens to be a bit on the dark side.

New Side Content

I plan to add a few new requests and two or three new activities as well. I'm being a little vague here because not everything is implemented yet. One of the activities is done, two more are partially complete, but I expect to only have time to finish one. Only one new request is fully implemented, with a second started. This last stretch of dev time here will be dedicated to trying to get this side content in, and I'll cut what I have to to make the release date, so I can't promise specifics.

The completed activity provides some additional content in the barracks; a warning ahead of time that it probably won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it's a type of erotic content I've wanted to add for a while. The new requests, as always, will come with special traits and world changes.

New Area and Faction

The new area, the bandit camp, is the base of a new faction. Their special faction activity won't be available until the next update, but you can still raise your rep with them and earn a bonus to cunning. I hope to finish at least on of the two activities I have planned for the bandit camp location, but they'll eventually have their own group sex variant, among other things.

Depending on the decisions you make, you may spend a lot of time here, or even wind up living in the bandit camp rent-free for the rest of the game.

Other Stuff

Some other new events and scenes have also been added, in addition to corrections and editorial changes. No new character progression has been added in this version, but the next version of the game should feature new potions and traits, and probably even a new perk or two.

Some Notes - IMPORTANT FOR PATRONS

This was a hard month for me. I haven't been able to get as much work in as I wanted to, and the work I have got in has been brutal and difficult due to the branching paths present in this section of the story. Coupled with the fact that I'm having trouble making much headway with patronage, and I'm beginning to wonder if I will be able to maintain this pace. 20,000+ words of content per month, plus all the scripting and mechanics I tend to add, plus maintenance work on my software and tools; it's a lot. Not to mention the fact that I'm trying to develop content creation tools for mods and content writers, trying to build relationships with said writers and get them started producing content, and trying to produce art and character portraits. I also need to eat, and this project doesn't even pay for itself, so I can't cut any paying work out.

I haven't made any decisions, and I expect there will be a normal update in March and it will be about the ordinary size. However, I think in the future, updates will get smaller or less frequent. I'm not sure which. When I know, you'll know. I don't want to drop too much of this stuff in an update preview, but I also want to be honest with you guys. I am barely hitting these deadlines, and it's starting to really get me stressed. So expect changes. I can only do what I can do, so I'm sorry. I'll let you know specifics as I figure them out.

We'll have a longer talk about this sometime after the update releases.