Dev Diary #64 (Patreon)

Here we go again (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

I'm going to get straight to the point because I have several things to comment on so there is no opening monologue this time.

It's been a weird few weeks inside my mind since all this easy mode madness appeared... But luckily I can say that I've finally finished that mode and it's fully operational. I just need to polish small details in dialogues and some girl levels but I'll leave that for the beta since I'll check that mode in depth, I don't want to be every update having to release a bugfixes version.

I'll show you the visual changes:

Almost everything RPG-related disappears including access to the forest.

There will be no upgrade system for this difficulty, for the moment.

Everything to do with crafting has been adapted and only works with gold, everything.

The experience system disappears as it is an RPG thing. Every time you spend time with a girl, she will level up.

So much "reserved" space... no access to specialization and perks. Jobs have been adapted and are unlocked according to the level of that secondary girl. Only the stats are kept for plot reasons. 

I still need to design the accreditation + some dialogues at the beginning but I'll do that just before finishing the update.

Everything looks like "ezpc, Keisi, some flags here, conditions there and everything is ready", right? Technically yes, but it has given me more headaches than I wanted because the code base is not designed for something like this... So much so + different reasons related to motivation that my pace has slowed down a lot (I should have finished everything in a week and I think it took me two weeks).

Honestly, it's a mode that I didn't want to implement because the game is not designed for that, and I had to adapt it but I want to expand to other styles to attract another type of audience as I want us to be more and more here... You know. Especially because we don't manage to stay at +1k€ per month and it is a pity, especially for the goal.

Every month in one way or another we surpass that goal but the following month it goes down either because the pledges are casual or there are cancellations, etc., something that I can't really control.

We've been like this for 3-4 months and it's frustrating, very frustrating, especially when in every update I try to bring better content, and every few releases I try to revise all the previous stuff to improve the dialogues, renders, etc.

At no time am I despising the support of anyone whether it's 1€ or 50€, every cent and pledge is a dose of motivation to keep going and keep striving to dedicate myself to this. Almost every month we beat +300 patrons and we are getting closer and closer to 300 base. It's just frustrating to be stuck at the same number (earnings) for a while. I don't despair either, when the rise is too fast, the fall is worse and more painful.

That's why the easy mode was born and I'm detailing it as I think about it in order to "please the maximum possible audience":

- Easy mode - 

As I have already said, it can be summed up as an ordinary VN with a day system, so to speak. The goal here is to appeal to people who want sandbox but as little as possible and as little farming as possible in any aspect.

To achieve this, as you have seen above, I have also made a significant nerf to gold by removing materials in this mode.

- Normal mode -

As the game "has to be". I put it in quotes because it's the game as it should be for the average player who likes the H sandbox and RPG concept but doesn't want to spend 30 minutes doing exactly the same thing to get/earn something.

To achieve this, it's what you already know but it's still pending to make the last balance in materials + gold. My intention with the final balancing is to achieve a "light balance" so that everything LA offers feels satisfying but without being tiresome/tedious.

- Hard mode -

Not much to say here... as the game really SHOULD be and I WANT it to be. The whole rework is still to be finished but this is where the real fun starts for me because my intention is to make you "suffer" in exchange for good/spicy rewards.

To achieve this, an exclusive shop and tokens will be added, a concept that I really like and especially for those who like this sort of stuff. For me, it's still a headache because the average player plays on normal to play safe so I can't go overboard on exclusivity just for the hard difficulty. Here's an example:

I wanted to add Suna's animation (flash) to be unlockable with any main girl through the new tokens but... if I don't show this in normal mode which is a cool animation possibly not everyone will see it even though there will be a "difficulty transfer" option.

So my debate will always be what kind of things to add here. The summary would be that the "cool" stuff is better to add in normal and add alternatives in hard of the same thing.

Luckily for this kind of debate, I have someone specific to talk to on all these aspects so I'm relaxed on that side.

And that's my summary of why these kinds of difficulties exist. It's much longer but until I finish the new hard mode I won't be able to explain much more because I haven't applied final decisions on some aspects yet.

As the DD is getting too long I'll say goodbye here but I want to make a small mention to the whole diary issue. As it's becoming a habit to do only one diary a week or so I'm going to make some changes:

Probably from next week I will make some changes in the tiers since from now on I will make a diary for all of you who can see the diaries in general (all the tiers except Welcomed) and another one I will make public.

Why this change? It's simple, I've always wanted to have more public activity, especially in Itch but making many DDs for all communities... huh. You know I like to go into detail and explain all kinds of things so it was going to be very tedious. I wasn't going to do a copy/paste from here either because then what's so exclusive about doing it here?

So from now on every weekend (between Friday and Sunday), I'll do a detailed DD for you all here and during the week I'll do a short one for everyone. The public normally won't get spoilers and if they do, they will be 1-2 and SFW, the really interesting stuff will be reserved for you all.

I want to make one last note and that is that next week I will put the "turbo mode" to try to bring this update as soon as possible because I want to dedicate the whole month of April to L'sA because I would love to bring you the first version as a gift for the first anniversary of LA (at the end of April). 

My idea is to work as much as possible on L'sA and have the first version ready without too much content but enough to entertain you for a while living the LA universe through Lisapi. But for that I must first finish this version of LA:

• Finish the hard mode which includes the most tedious part of the update since there are new scenes/animations: Punishment aka pregnancy (optional to watch).
• New main quest: Purify the Moon Lake and """unlock""" Enya as main girl. I will explain more details but she will be the first girl who will NOT move to the Manor as soon as you meet her. There will be another main girl just like her in the near future.
• Test the easy/hard mode.

Along with the anniversary, I will rethink some benefits of tiers and start having more activity here whenever needed (does anyone miss the polls?). Soon I will explain why I stopped doing them and it's simpler than you can imagine.

I'll say goodbye for today!