April 30 Update (Patreon)

April has been an unusually busy month in terms of Patreon updates, hasn't it? I'll cover some miscellaneous business, then talk about TLS 0.27.0.

Thanks again to everyone who helped out by reviewing Ouroboros in Newgrounds. I wasn't sure if it would be well-received, but it has a rating approaching 4/5 and it got three awards: Frontpaged, Daily Second, and Review Crew Pick. With over 25k views so far, that's a lot of new eyes on my work. It didn't lead to all that many sales or new patrons (that I can be sure of), but it did lead to enough that I feel good about the time I spent on it.

Random news: I have been complaining to Patreon about the comments system and they actually responded positively! Improving this is allegedly a priority for them over the coming period, so I gave the best feedback I could.

May events: next month should include the release of KoD over at Hreinn Games and another TLS update. It probably won't include the side project I have been alluding to, but hopefully that day is drawing closer. You may also get another preview that should be fun. The TLS update is what I'll talk about for the rest of this post.

It seems I may not have been clear enough, so in case anyone is uncertain: the party's plans for Aram are completely wrecked. Their plans have gone smoothly for a while, so I wanted some red herrings. ^-^ The balance of the political situation is irrevocably altered; next Yhilin iteration the party will have a last moment to breathe before war begins.

My plan for the third chapter of TLS was that it would begin with a battle and end with a war. While the upcoming events aren't going to be an extended, full scale war - that would be a game unto itself - they're definitely going to be major and I want them to have real weight and impact.

This is going to be similar to the Battle of Yhilin in some ways, but I also hope to take what I learned from there and execute it bigger and better. This will be longer (more than one update) and there are a lot more elements in play. So many plot seeds and hidden variables will finally come to the fore... just putting together everything in a satisfying way will be a real task.

What I do not know, at this stage, is how many updates the war will require. Part of this will be determined by event flow: I don't want to break logical units into pieces, even if that means longer/shorter updates. Part of it is real world scheduling: I don't want to double up on other releases. Maybe I'll fold the next Yhilin visit into another update, maybe it will be a quick update to keep up momentum while other things happen.

I'm not sure exactly how things will go, but I promise you this: I'll be working a lot on TLS to bring you the upcoming war events in the most efficient fashion I can. One thing I'll say: this war will cover a whole bunch of your answers to the "What are you looking forward to most?" question on the demographics survey. This should be a lot of fun for everyone. ^-^