Rin's April devlog (Patreon)

Devlog, devlog, devlog! This is my first devlog, isn't it? Should I introduce myself...? Probably yes considering here on Patreon you've only interacted with Bunis' content so far and not all of you are on the discord (Why aren’t you? Get in there already it’s fun I swear.)

Well, then. I'm Rin, and I'll be the host for this and all future devlogs. I'm the guy you probably see outside of Patreon the most often and I'm also the writer and programmer for the game, so that's what I'll be talking about today.

So... May just started the other week which means 1.6 is pretty close to release (for patrons at least), so I might as well tell you everything that we've added so far.

First of all, the thing a sizeable amount of you guys voted for: Gabe's route rewrite.

I'll be honest with you and say that I wanted to rewrite this route since I first played this game, before I was even part of development, which means that I've been meaning to rewrite her route for over two years now. You don't know how glad I am it won that poll.

When it came to how to approach the rewrite, I thought the best way was to not change too much about it. I never really disliked her route per se, but Gabe's character was weaker than it should've been.

You see, my main critique of the original route isn't that it doesn't end with a romance (though I AM adding a possible romance ending) but that it didn't make sense that it didn't.

Gabe's trauma regarding her mother cheating on her father and the divorce would definitely impact her relationships, but what she says in game is straight up stupid. She's incredibly incoherent for no reason at all whatsoever. Like, c'mon, she literally says she fell in love with the MC and then changed idea because she remembered her mom is a slut. What?

And, although I'm not a fan of netorare or even just regular cheating, I'd like to point out that the MC literally fucks almost every woman he meets and says "I love you" to like half of them. Clearly compromise and monogamy isn't really in the MC's values (Though I guess you COULD reach the game's ending while only romancing Taliya, but why would you? I mean she's great, but...)

Anyways, back to what I've worked on so far: Gabe's rewrite is almost over. Why only almost? Because I wanted to go five steps further.

Instead of having Gabe's route be as straight as Lori's (sorry Lori, you lost the vote) I've decided to give the route 5 possible ending states: 2 bad endings, 1 FWB ending, and 2 romance endings.

Baldur's Gate III is the new big game (I know it came out almost a year ago, leave me alone) which works the way the new Gabe route works, though I'll admit that my actual inspiration was one of my favorite games ever, that being Fallout: New Vegas.

Now almost every single choice throughout Gabe's route either raises, maintains, or lowers Gabe's trust towards you. If it's not high enough you will get either of the two bad endings, if it's high enough, you'll get either of the romance endings.

As a matter of fact, 4 of the 5 endings are just different outcomes of the picnic. One is an automatic bad ending, One is an automatic good ending, and the other two you can get by either winning or losing an argument with Gabe.

Considering at least the first half of her route is mandatory to finish the game, I really wanted to make her route special. She already gets multiple H-scenes (More than Evelyn, Aerin, Lori, and Zenelith's romance route) so I wanted to elevate her character writing the most. Everybody loves Taliya and it's not just because she's hot (I hope) but because she's definitely one of the best written characters in the game.

Here's a fun fact: Taliya's original draft had her say "I love you" to the MC at the end, but I thought changing that final portion into a more heartfelt confession without ever using those words would be a better choice for her character and, guess what? I don't think nobody has ever even mentioned how she's the only character with a romance to never say those words.

Anyways, back to the 1.6 update. We also have a few new scenes for characters already in the game.

Since the rewrite was just, well, a rewrite, we used this opportunity to add h-scenes to multiple other characters.

Two new h-scenes were requested by the two people who got the Demon King tier. One with Thea and one with Triss.

Thea's new h-scene is a pretty brief event. Thankfully with her already having a full route writte it was extremely easy to add a new h-scene. For Triss though, we had to expand her route to include a full new event for her route, with the scene that was requested, and we even had to come up with a way to make a sex scene work in the context. You guys know how much we love keeping the sex as the ending of a route.

And we even finally got a repeatable Lori scene! She really needed one didn't she after she lost the vote to Gabe (reasonably so).

Don’t worry though, we’re planning on adding a new h-scene for Gabe as well in the near future, she isn’t just getting a rewrite, she needs to become a top tier Randel girl. Justice for Childhood Friends.

And to end this devlog, I’ve got some more fun news! Besides all these things, we got some more reworked art by Aqrisu. Here's a sneak peek of a few of 'em: