Update - Iku collector card (Patreon)

The release

This month's game release is out and I'm happy to have it done a little early because I want a bit of extra time to get things started for next month. The features I included this month were a little less time demanding because I just didn't have as much time available this month. Also, I didn't have a lot of ready to go stuff in the reserve tank, since the month before I'd done the big Kim/Iku release.

Discovering a bug in the release almost immediately after posting it was a real pain. My connection doesn't handle uploading very well - it pretty much shuts down all downloading whenever I'm uploading anything big and it takes hours to upload something the size of PAL (remember I have to do both the exe and the blorb versions each time). 

Collector cards

As you might guess, the above image isn't actually a part of the main game, but rather one of the new collector cards I'm working on. Collector cards are legitimately hard to come up with, as are the right places to make them unlockable, so I was originally planning to do only five new ones for Attack of the Nega Maids. This week I went through some random image ideas that I'd tried out in the past and still had lying around in folders, and out of that collection of ideas I managed to find enough material to expand the new collector card set to ten cards instead. I don't actually like giving away the surprise, like by showing the image above, but I probably will show another one at some point too. :) 

I don't know whether these will start showing up in the next update or at some point later on. Three of them are going to be rewarded for beating the Nega Maids, so those ones at least won't be in there until the Nega Maid battles are. The rest will depend a little on what I've got available that month and how everything else is fitting together, but I imagine it'll be pretty soon.

I've also got a few extra pictures and ideas based on the stuff that happens in a few of the cards, so that stuff may show up in the victory suite as well, once the relevant collector cards are in there (so it makes sense together. There's one of Iku at a strip club, for example, that has a couple of follow-up ideas, just because I liked the design I did for her as a lap dancer.

Combat enhancements

(I always say this) I know it's not the top of everyone's wish list, but I've done a bit of work on the combat system. I've been programming in new features - in particular setting up a new status effect: "berserk", has taken a lot of work. (I really hope it actually works.) The new combat features I'm working on are: six new enemies, four new status effects and three new monster "powers", plus I'm developing what the Nega Maids will do in combat. I think a lot of the new stuff is pretty cool, so I hope you're into it!

I've pretty much decided on the six new monsters I'm including: they're the demilich, the whisperer, the cube, the tyrannosaurus, the beholder and the basilisk (although the last might be subject to change). I got some suggestions with those, so thank you to everyone who suggested anything, regardless of whether your ideas make it into the final version it was a big help! I've been writing up some of the needed entries for those monsters recently, because they've all got to have descriptions, "scan" results, body part descriptions and little intro scenes, which isn't overwhelming but does come to a bit of work across the week.

One other thing: I'll admit that there's some combat graphics that I've planned to make to bring all the images and animations up to date just like they were in the 1.0 version, but I've just been really disinclined to get around to it. It's a boring job and I don't feel like anyone much cares. It makes the game a little more polished overall, but if you're getting into the combat system you're already deep in the game anyway, and not because of the combat graphics.

Oh, and thanks again

One last thing; I've just been meaning to say that it really helps me emotionally to be able to do this work to know that there are a bunch of people willing to support me doing it by contributing to me. I'm not big on sincerity, but thanks very much, sincerely, because your support really makes this possible.

Anyway, moving on... do you like the pic? And do collector cards and/or combat enhancements make a difference to you? Yes? No? Let me know - it'll help me know what to develop in future!