Dev Update #8 (Patreon)

Well, it was a great week here! The beta team was WAY faster than I expected, and To Be A King certainly got its most polished release ever, thanks to them. If you've enjoyed Chapter 5, you owe them a big thanks. They had to go through Chapters 1-5 to check to make sure that things were working & consistent. To Be A King Chapter 5 will be released to the final Patreon tier on April 21.

If you haven't yet, spread the word about the game. With limited options for "advertising" an adult visual novel, word-of-mouth is crucial to small devs, like me. Without it, we tend to plateau with small numbers of patrons and interest.

Chapter 6 work has begun. At this stage, it's script writing and outlining. Outline for Chapter 6, with detailed scene notes, is complete. Renders aren't too far off, I imagine. During Chapter 5's development, I enjoyed doing renders while other script work remained. I'll repeat that for Chapter 6. Way too soon to say Chapter 6's length, but I think the size of Chapter 5 is the minimum for Chapter 6.

There will be a poll very soon for the Influencer tier and higher tiers. I just want to give folks some time to play the latest release before I drop that poll.

I'll avoid any spoilers here, but we have definitely reached the stage of the game where you will need multiple playthroughs to see everything, if that is your jam. There is now a lot of dialogue changes, different renders, and different outcomes based on your choices. I know this because I spent a bit over a day finding a much better method to keep track of scenes, renders, and story progression.

I'll end by talking about a feature I previewed during development, but that did not make it into Chapter 5 - free roam. I had the best plans, and with it retroactively setup in Chapters 1-4, it played well (in my opinion). It was different, felt fun, and not overwhelming or confusing. But, with the amount of content in Chapter 5, it did not play that way at all when I used it there. It was a bit confusing, often a bit too much with new quest notifications, and kept a bit too much content hidden where someone might not go looking for it right away. With the restart of To Be A King's development, I really want to try new things. Sometimes you try things and they don't work out well. Free roam was definitely a victim of that, though I'm happy that I didn't put something in that was not up to where I wanted it to be.

With these larger releases, I'm now able to experiment more and try out some new story branches too. You see a few blossoming in Chapter 5, and Chapter 6 will continue several of those. Remember that you can always submit your suggestions via DM here on Patreon or in my Discord suggestions channel. One patron's suggestion already made it into the game in Chapter 5, so feel free to send them in. I'll have another update next week. Until then, enjoy To Be A King, and enjoy what looks to be a very busy April with adult visual novel releases!