Roadmapping 2024: NTR’s Path Ahead [Long Post Warning] (Patreon)

Hey-ho, dinner fans! Welcome back to part 2 of our yearly party, where we pretty much do up a Public Teaser post for the whole year ahead, muhaha! Welcome on in, it’s time we set down some expectations for the year ahead, it’s our very own “State of the Game” speech, if you will. We’ve already done one up for AoH right here, but be warned… Since that game is a lot further along it’s plans are a lot simpler to put to paper. This here post is going to be a bit of a long one, so buckle up now!

Let’s get to it shall we? Lets see what 2024 has in store for Noemi and co. Firstly though, how the last few steps got us here!

2023 – Getting Here

Nobody likes to dwell to much on the past, but it’s been a couple years of hard fought and just a little under-happy inducing amounts of progress, but what we have had has been some pretty good stuff. It’s left us hunger for more and filled with desire to grab at more this year. That being said, it means what we say for AoH in it’s roadmap will be true for Noemi too, as much of what we wanted to achieve is still on the board. Expect to see some shifted priorities below as the ground has moved with the newest versions released, but the top goals set still being what we’re reaching for.

Top Line Road Map

And here we are in 2024, so to the future we’ll look now! Our top line takeaway from today, if there is only one, is that we’re sticking with what has been our planned goal for NTR for a while now, namely we’d like to get to a wide swath of content down and open up to a more fan driven development process. For those only hearing this for the first time, we’ll elaborate:

It’s our stated plan to keep adding to NTR’s character arcs* up to the point we see the main splits and can get a taste for each of the paths available. Once we’ve done that, we’d like to transition to a new way of doing things, where you the fans here can vote for each version down the line who’d you’d like to see get the next batch of Major Focus scenes while we pepper in content along the sides as the Minor Focus from Main Story/Kriem/Frankie/Kelsey, all with some amount of balancing from us too.

As for achieving this goal, we’re getting closer and closer, but we still expect that this won’t be the year we get there. There’s a few bits and bobs as to why and we’ll touch on that below in content sections, but the main thing is that we’re expecting to make 3 versions up on that goal this coming year, v0.22 up to v0.24, with a slim outside chance at a 4th late in the year of all ahead of schedule. So then, shall we crack on and get to seeing what those updates will entail? Indeed we shall.

(*: Roy’s arc is still on the long finger and therefore not included in the base expectations to achieve our planned goal. We’re still deciding what +/- his arc brings to the game in terms of content gains to development costs, and last year’s progress wasn’t enough for us to turn attentions back here just yet.)

Top Priorities

As is the way of things around here, we like to take that topline plan and break it down into a few attainable points of action. Usually that’s our Top 5 Priorities but as we narrow in on our desired point on the development line, it might just be the case we’ve got fewer than that. In 2023 we summed it up in 4 points instead, like this:

Return our focus to Noe and how her infidelities are affecting her relationship, particularly by paying attention to both Beck and Brad’s content again. Pump up the game’s lewds credentials with more x-rated scenes. Keep some variety of female content alive by including more girls than just Noe in the fun, specifically Kriem and Kelsey this time. Lastly, further expand and populate the gameplay end of things for a more enjoyable experience overall.

With the 2 versions we managed to complete last year we made partial progress across the board on those 4 top priorities, but not enough on any particular 1 of them to truly call them done. For that reason you’ll see just below, we’re keeping all 4 of those goals as is, only shifting their weight around just a little bit. So for 2024, here’s Our Top 4 Priorities:

- Firstly and foremostly, we want more Beck and a return to Brad arc content, because the name of the game is NTR and we want to see more that happening. The additional part to this is back to our Top Line goal above as well. We’ve recently taken a jump forward with Beckcontent and reached the point off the path’s splits. We’d like to see some more on the alternate path to the one we already gave a taster of before we can say we’ve met that plan above. We also need to advance the Brad path significantly to met it too, or at least 1 of them because his splits very early being the husband-to-be. Together they make the biggest bits of outstanding content to achieve before we can get to proper fan votes and other delightful future aspirations, so it’s for sure our #1 priority right now.

- Our second most goal, as it should come as little surprise, is once again the “More Se.x and Sexy” for the now fourth time at this, because while NTR is the name of the game in goal 1, the nature of the game (and all our games) are lewdness. We’ll see more of that heat to begin with, but we’re also still pulling up the (thankfully) last of the arcs up from the earlies and so we’ll still be a bit from “double fisting it” with fully x-rated every version, but there’s plenty of heat on it’s way for ’24, especially for those hankering for the ntr fetish vibes.

- We’re still open to keeping more than just the Italian Filly of Philly under the camera’s eye in the days ahead, but as was the plan with last year, we’re making sure to keep the focus in a little bit. We’ve got 8 girls on the roster who make the A or B tier list (your preferences may vary) and we’ll be sure to see most of those faces again this year. Aside from Noe though, we’ll be including Kriem and Kelsey as they get a chance to catch up with the attentions shown to Frankie and Asana (well, not as much as her) already to play for. We’re not only picking these girls for their own merits, but they also will add to the arcs mentioned in our #1 goal above, and further balance out the gameplay as we’d like. That brings us to the last goal on this list.

- Yet more work on building up and out the gameplay, the focus on the “out” part to start. It’s been long overdue that we at last reach the last additions to the width of the gameplay and start putting all our efforts on depth. The Day Off section is still missing 2 activities that’ll allow for last stats of Kriem (Romance) and Kelsey (Open Mind) to be trained at last so you can build your team to fit any role you want… plus we get to put Noemi in a last few new activities she’ll be out of her comfort zone and under the control of her youngest friends/employees for a change! This will also bring us to 40% completion (minimum) for Days Off as well. Nice! Aside from that, by adding to the Kriem and Kelsey arcs we’ll be adding incentives to shuffle the roles around Little Toscana some more, getting those girls to move plates and Noe and Frankie to work the Kitchen/Media/Entertainment hours etc. Aside from that, each of our versions add new restaurant outcomes, and we’ve still got Lv1s, Lv2s and Lv3’s to add across the tasks, both Good and Bad, and some long unattended to Trap elements too… A lot, sure, but we’ll sprinkle in progress much of that as we add sweet things to find and see, as we also bring the Restaurant Manager up to 40% filled in (minimum). Along with playtesting rebalances, we’ll keep up the efforts to make the game a fun one, not just a sexy one.

So how does all that find you? Would you agree with us what’s on our minds for the next year’s worth of content is where the game will pick up the most magic? It’s our plan to make big gains on all of these 4 element in 2024, knocking out some of them and allowing things like the gameplay to stay but with a new focus by the time we write up the next set of plans like this. You’ll also notice that in the year ahead it’s clear we won’t be able to do all this and the other miscellaneous scene additions we’ll need to hit that Top Line Goal, which is why this year is all about setting the foundations as solid as they can be… not just for next year but by achieving this it’ll be strong grounds for the years ahead. Oh, we’re feeling a creative surge now!

Scenes and What to Expect

We’ve actually gone into more depth above in each goal than we normally would, so we’ll try not go too deep in repeating in these sections below now. No need to let his energy to get things made go wasting, eh? So the main to touch upon here is we’ll be keeping the Major and Minor focuses for the majority of the year, perhaps with a transition in the middle that’ll mean more of an across the board affair. As per the content coming, we can break it down into 2 groupings outside of the usual arcs, much like we did last year, so let’s do that again:

Noemi’s Content – As the star of the game there’s very few non-gameplay outcome bit of content that doesn’t include her, so we’ll see her as a big part of all but perhaps 1 scene along the way this year. That being said, her time as the one and only will be limited for this run of versions and only about 1/3 of the content will fall on the arcs built around her. As stated above in Priority #1, Beck and Brad will be the main arcs of hers we’ll see. Players can already tell what the Beck arc will taste like if they’ve played v0.21, so we’ll not spoil it, we’ll only say we’ll be seeing the alternate option for players to follow. When we get to Brad, we’ll be sticking with him for a good while, and focusing on the “Give Up” path, which is the ntr-focused one, you’ll be glad to hear. We’ll get a nibble or two of that in the coming year as we build up that story with some tantalizing pacing.

The Team Noe Girls – If math is your strong suit, you’ll notice we’ve got 2/3rds of the content left, and that’ll be going to the other Team Noe girls, specifically Kriem and Kelsey, with Noe all up in the middle of things so fear not. We recently saw a little bit of Kriem’s arc play out and we intent to pick it back up and pull it forward almost as much as Frankie’s has been, and the same goes for Kelsey after who is lagging a scene behind even her on just 2 so far. This will as we said above open up the gameplay more in a few ways, balance out all the arcs to at least handful of scenes each, and also add more to the girls’ characters and screen time so the scenes on the Beckand Brad arcs mentioned already will have more context to them, through them.

The long story short here is that we’ll see Noe’s face and other anatomies plenty, but be ready for spoonfuls of teenage veal this year in our diet. ‘Bout time we built the bonds of Team Noe some more as they start to put their thumbs on the scale of each of the character arcs, eh?

Gameplay

Once again, we pretty much covered this one in our Priority #4, but let’s recap here since we have the usual heading. A little recap then for each side of the gameplay sections:

Downtime Phase – It’s always been our intention to have 9 activities for Noe to spend her Days Off on, from the 100’s of potential things we’d love her to do and see her do. So far we’ve had the Park through to the recently added Clubbing, but there are still 2 more to add (1 Kriem related and 1 Kelsey, can you guess them?) and we want them both opened up this year. When we open them up we’ll be adding the first 4 links in the chain story there to bring them to parity with the rest of the things to do already. Since we’re currently planning each activities chain to be 10 links long (1 every 2 points of upgrade), that’ll put us at 40% complete on this side of the game at last. Nice, huh? Let’s get our mouths wet thinking what could be instore for Noe this year here, huh?

Restaurant Manager Phase – Noe’s Days On the clock, at the shop, will see more content added to it too. We’ve still got some partial implementations along the Lv1s, but mostly the Lv2s and Lv3s to fill in, but the biggest target on our list is to at last add new Traps/Counters/Proactive/Reactives for the Mid-tiers to either Cooking or Entertainment (already done for Waitressing and N/A for Promo). We’ll be smattering these in over the course of the versions as the remaining CG counts allow per version after the scenes are accounted for. Largely the improvements to this section this year will come from better incentivizing playing the girls in varied roles as we finally allow you to build Kriem/Kelsey’s 3rd stats up, add scenes for them to unlock by earning tips and generally making better use of the gameplay system we’ve already built, particularly in the early to middle months of in game time. As a point of interest, as of the last version’s new additions of outcomes, we’re just below 40% of the expected minimum fill of outcomes to this section, and so we aim to crack into the 40% range on this side of the gameplays this year too.

Just a quick heads up while we’re on the topic, when we say “40% (minimum)” we mean the minimum amount of outcomes/activity links we’ve planned for come v1.0, that’s not to say it can’t be more than that 100% someday. We of course would love to have as much as possible out of the potential of both sides for the gameplay, but we expect we’ll start to use those currently gameplay CGs to make scenes faster once we reach the minimum goals for both aspects of the gameplay rather than add more on top, at least right away. That’s a post for another roadmap in another year of course, but just know that we’ve got our eyes on making more than “minimum” if we can, but our priories on scenes and content as it should be.

Stretch Content

And here we are, almost at the finish line. Time to talk about stretch content… or not…

We’ve got this header inherited from the last few years, but we feel we’ve got to learn at least a little something from the last few wobbly years. Let’s not get y’all too exited about more before we cover our bases, yes?

We’ll talk more about stretch content later in the year if it seems like we’ll have an extra chance at a 4th stay with Noemi, but it’ll be more of the same on the goals listed above as we try secure as much progress on that Top Line Goal.

How does that sound? Hopeful but prudent? That’s the plan anyway. Next year maybe we’ll have use for this heading again, only time and hard work/releases made will tell.

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Too Long, Didn’t Read

Perhaps our biggest post of any year is this, our NTR roadmap… It is the biggest project undertaken in our lives, even counting AoH, so that makes sense right? We totally understand that not everyone is such a diehard fan they have the time for the nitty-gritty of all that above, and some of you will come back to check this post at a glance to compare progress as well (we will, after all)… So for all you, here’s the TL;DR digest version:

Development Expectations – With AoH and getting it to v1.0 at last taking up a lion’s share of the year, we’re expecting 3 versions of NTR this year, starting with the in-progress v0.22 that’s upcoming then every other version leapfrogged with AoH like we do up to v0.24.

Goals and Priorities – Keeping the focus of Noe’s content on Beckand also the “Give Up” path of Brad’s arc, as we make the game fit with the name NTR more and more and the theme of ntr/cheating/cuc-holding. More lewd content overall, and an outsized gain of content to Kriem and Kelsey’s arcs. Adding to them will allow us to further expand the last of the gameplay elements and make the game more of a fun to play game as well as new kinky things to see.

Scene Content Focuses – Adding more to the Beck arc as we get a feel for the second option in his paths, then turning our focus to the Brad – NTR arc path, as well as Kriem and Kelsey’s personal arcs for added variety and flavour.

Gameplay – Finally opening up the last of the gameplay expansions, namely Downtime Activities 8 and 9. Additional Restaurant Manager outcomes including attention to the Traps/Counters again, and incentivized strategy play with new reasons to shuffle Kriem and Kelsey to new jobs (more trainable stats and unlockable scenes).

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So that, our dear family of fans, is that. Are you ready for a steamy hot dinner at the local restaurant yet? We certainly are. That’s a lot of stuff put to paper and yet we can’t help but want for more, but this here’s a good main course for the year head. Our most sought-after goal is still just beyond our fingertips, but with this year we aim to make it seizable, like how Sal makes Noe seizeable with every step in his plans… Muhaha!

Now, let’s get out there and get crafting! Until we hit you with the very first teaser of the year in the days ahead…

Be grabbing your knife, fork and pants parts, and beWilder!