November in Review (Patreon)

Heya folks, a new month is upon us! Which of course means another free release update is up on the blog! It's also time to start talking in more detail about the endgame development phase.

Really, this phase covers two different sections of the game: endgame and post-game. There's actually relatively little work remaining before we get to the big 'end sequence' of the game, but of course I'm sure everyone wants to see what happens afterwards as well (and perhaps get in one more round of sexytimes). In both cases though there's not really much left in the way of game functionality to work on, and virtually everything for the next few months is going to be writing focused, a switch compared to the last few months.

More specifically, what can you expect from the next few months? First, once you've hit a certain point in your coup advancement plans, Hellfire will give you one more briefing on how to take things to the next step. Then it will be time to execute those plans, and this will focus entirely on the Directors. For each case you'll have the option to choose, do you wish to go for a peaceful liberation, or a more aggressive infiltration? You'll be able to combine the two paths to some extent, but too much inconsistency will lead to bad things. It will be possible to complete the game by only completing six of the eight Director plotlines, however, for those who may wish to skip on the single-gender species. This content will probably take the next 2-3 months. Our artists meanwhile will be continuing to fill things in with Specialist and citizen encounter CGs.

Following that, I had a recent poll to determine what will get the writing-time focus for the epilogues. There was a tie, and using the system of 'list order wins', Specialists will get one final round of individual scenes before we wrap up development. We will swing by the other areas of the game, but they will get much shorter summaries as I don't want to spend all of 2021 writing epilogues. Then there'll be another round of cleanup tasks before I declare the game complete, but as that's still some months away I'm not going to speculate too much yet on what exactly will be included.

In any case, I hope you're excited to get to see your coups launched into action soon. Our next release will probably be in a week and a half, and the next HD art pack update is aimed for this weekend. See you soon!

In summary:

November Accomplishments:

• Recruit checks/assignment functionality completed
• Several Director scene and Codex updates
• One new CG set from artist Vin4ART!
• New music!
• Many bug fixes

December Forecast:

• Endgame briefing from Hellfire, and introduction of endgame mechanics
• Several Director plotline endcap scenes (starting with Commandos and moving down the line)
• CGs featuring Specialists and random citizen encounters