Devlog and Musings - Breadth and Depth (Patreon)

Hey guys, quick update on what we're working on right now for ToA - if you don't have access to the weeklies, there's a ton of stuff you haven't seen yet that I won't mention - here except in this brief non-exhaustive list: Mermaid, encounter respawns, goblin/orc rematch, second town, encounter UI overhaul including hide button, Spider, Mermaid, and Goblin pregnancies, ok done - but the new stuff we're working on right now is tracking and displaying the status (soon visually, but currently via text) of your butthole, rectum, and colon, now that we have both cum and eggs to fill those with.

And while we're working on modelling buttholes, I figured we'd make a devlog and also some musings - mostly to take a break from modelling buttholes, which I've been feverishly doing since breakfast.

So one issue we've seen raised for a while is the issue of depth vs. breadth - that ToA development seems to be geared towards more of the latter than the former.

There are two main reasons for this: the first was that because of bandwidth constraints, adding new content to the game each month while also building on old ones or old concepts wasn't very feasible - now that Maj is fulltime, this isn't nearly the concern it was.

Before, Maj had 20 total time slugs, which meant 10 time slugs for content, which left 10 time slugs leftover for features and revisiting old content - now it's more like 80 time slugs, so 10 and 70, respectively. And I don't doubt that I've added a few slugs to the new content as well, making sure it gets at least a little more love on its debut, as was the case with the Mouth Fiend and Mermaid.

The second reason is pretty simple, and brings me back to buttholes, like most things do. Until now, the status of Hiro's butthole was pretty one-dimensional. Cum, eggs, cocks - all treated fairly the same, with some special logic for each. So if I wanted to add more meat (depth) to the goblin encounter, and have her impregnate you... there wasn't a great way to do that. If I wanted to add more meat (depth) to the existing sex system, there wasn't a great way to do that either.

In other words - even when you build up, you need to build sideways. And without knowing how tall a building is intended to be, or even its shape, you can't tell how wide that foundation should be.

A lot of people have opinions about whether you should go wide and shallow or deep and narrow in terms of a finished game, and similarly people have opinions about whether development should be "construct the whole house, starting with foundation, then walls, then ceilings, then wiring, then plumbing, then painting, then furnishing" or "build a bathroom, then a kitchen, then bedroom, then living room." These opinions are great to have, but opinions, buttholes, you know where this is going. If you think you've got that particular hobgoblin slain, make sure to collect your Nobel Prize in project management or whatever. It's likely there isn't a one-sized-fits-all answer.

What matters in the end is that you have a house. We're still building ours, and you're helping us do it. Thanks for that.

With that said, we do plan on revisiting old encounters, and deepening the mechanics and their interactions. We have our current medium-term roadmap which we're not planning on deviating too much from - but once it's completed, we'll enter into the next phase of development.

For those who are interested - at our current rate, the roadmap will be completed sometime in April or May (!!!). There are a lot of opinions out there about how Patreon development is about "milking" for as long as possible - know that those opinions are the WORST buttholes. Just the absolute worst. As soon as we're done with ToA, we'll be working on another game, or its sequel. And if we end up working on ToA forever as some kind of mega project (unlikely, but a decent number of creators end up chained to their breakthrough work), that's what it'll be - an endlessly updated behemoth of a game, and that will only be if that's what you guys want.

In the meantime, please enjoy the game we're making as fast as we can, courtesy of the time slugs you've so graciously provided, and know that there's so much more we have planned, and that you'll have a say in all of it. In that vein - let us know what you think, and when the time comes, make sure to vote in the surveys you can. :D