Dev Update #5 (Patreon)

I'm doing something a bit different this week. There are a lot of changes with Chapter 5 of To Be A King. Instead of dumping all that on you at once, I'm going to share some of the changes here in my weekly dev updates as we count down to Chapter 5's release. Simply put, the changelog for this release will be insane.

First, a progress update. I've completed 19 scenes out of 35. Your eyes are not deceiving you. We went from 28 scenes originally planned, to 29 scenes last week, to 35 total this week. Most of these scenes are short, but I'm trying to fill out this chapter with some awesome content. You all have been waiting quite awhile for this release, so I want it to be worth the wait. We officially passed the 850 total renders completed mark too. There are just a few scenes left to be written, along with a few small to dos before I'm ready for alpha testing (in addition to the remaining renders, of course). Progress has been a lot faster than I thought. No idea on total render count or word count right now, but this will be a release unlike any other I've done. For a quick comparison, Chapters 1-4 combined have a total render count of 1661 renders and word count around 48,000. Chapter 5 is going to be darn close to that length.

Let's preview one of the changes coming with Chapter 5 (If you don't care, there's nothing else in this post, so feel free to go enjoy something else). As I've mentioned previously, I've overhauled the game significantly. I'll be detailing all the major changes in a post before release, but let's look at one of them today. This is the biggest change, so let's get into the details.

When I started rethinking To Be A King, I wanted to achieve more of a video game feel. My inspirations were games like GTA, Assassin's Creed, and Cyberpunk 2077: story-driven games with a main story, but that include numerous other little missions/side quests. Now, I'm not delusional enough to think I'm getting anywhere close to those game mechanics, let along their quality (ok, so hopefully better quality than Cyberpunk 2077 at launch). But I wanted something different from the linear VN I had been doing. Something that has replayability, but not the punishing type where you have to replay a game just to get an additional scene or two. If I could pack in some extra content, but give players control as to whether they want to play each of these additional scenes, all the better. This brings us to the biggest change for Chapter 5. This change impacts everything in the game, and I've reworked the first four chapters to incorporate it.

I'm introducing free roam. It's a Renpy-based game, so this is not Assassin's Creed or Red Dead Redemption, but I'm dividing the game into main story and free roam elements from here on out. For everyone screaming at their computer screens about how they don't want to have to figure out where the hell to click, and please throw sandbox designs into the pits of hell, I hear you 100%. I personally don't enjoy the games with a large map that does not make it clear where you need to go next, especially those that base things around the time of day. If you love that sort of thing, more power to you, but To Be A King isn't going to work like that.

I know the big frustrations with free roam in most adult VNs is figuring out what the heck you're supposed to do, and when you can do it. I've solved both problems, the latter one by not having any sort of time system. You can play the entire main story without needing to touch the additional scenes, which I'm calling quests and map events (there is a difference, but I'll get into that in another post). If you want some extra gameplay and more story, those are there.

During the main story, there will be breaks now where you will be put into free roam mode. From there, you can play quests, visit some areas of the map for special scenes (this part is still very much a work in progress as new scenes will be added here with each release), or resume the main story by just clicking at button at the top of the screen. If you have no interest in free roam, you can play through the entire game without doing more than having a short pause while you go to click the button to resume the main story. You'll be alerted to new quests through the user interface, so no need to click on 18 different locations only to discover that you're just stuck. If any of this sounds confusing, there is a short tutorial now at the start of your first free roam mode to explain how it works.

So, why the change? As I build out new quests and short little adventures, I want to keep the main story clean without a lot of detours. If you just want to enjoy the main story, that's fine. For players looking to get more detail on the world of Caudium, spend more time with the princesses (and other interesting female characters) and get more lewd scenes, or just see what little easter eggs Roy has put in, have at it. My goal here with this new gameplay option is to not clutter up the primary story, while still offering some fun (and extra lewd) options with each release. Some of these you can play multiple times without having to replay the main story, and I plan to experiment a bit with the types of quests and the mechanics that those have. Initially, these are pretty simple, as I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew with coding this myself for the first time.

So that's the biggest change for Chapter 5's release. You'll want to keep this in mind since Chapter 5 will be close to equally divided into these new quests/map event scenes and main story scenes. The main story scene count is subject to change, but, right now it is 19 scenes. I think you'll really like the quests, some of which are only triggered if you have made certain choices. Look for another dev update from me next week with another sneak peek at what is being improved for the next release of To Be A King.