Dev diary - Major gameplay changes in v0.8 (Patreon)

There's a new release out! 

Patrons can get v0.8 here.

This is a huge update for implementing and refining systems - it's got a bunch of tweaks we've been working on over the past few months. We want the game to be fun and intuitive to play and that takes a lot of experimentation and balancing systems off against one another.

New Az'ea ritual

The latest ritual to be added is Az'ea using her breasts!

This will require more obedience from her than just having her use her hands, though, so you'll have to be getting her acquainted with some stern discipline to make that happen!

You'll now have a choice of which ritual option to try when you select her for the task, though the screen is still kind of a WIP.

The portal ritual cooldown timer will reduce based on lust scores

Az'ea has discovered that by aligning with the Circle of Lust (getting the girls' lust scores up) they shouldn't have to wait so long to do the rituals any more! You will cut off a day's wait at these lust score increments: 10, 25, 45, 70, 100 and 200.

Upgrades and moods will boost praise/discipline/instruct actions

The moods of the ladies will affect the results of your interactions with them. If she's feeling sad maybe a compliment will lift her spirits and be extra effective. If she's getting angry, maybe it would be better to save your kind words and deliver some swift discipline to the backside!

The most immediate effect you'll notice is that you'll want to discipline Az'ea at the right times, when her mood allows for the best results. (Oh, and we're boosting the base effect of discipline & praise to 2, and instruct to 3.)

The objective with the game design is that we plan for you not to feel like you're "grinding" stats - that feeling mostly just comes about because of pacing issues. As we add more content and more systems the feeling will go away to a large extent, but we're also making tweaks like this to help balance things and make your daily decisions on how to spend your time a little more interesting.

Weekly food trader

Every Wednesday you'll get a visit from a food trader (unless you've been neglecting Greenwood's security - in which case maybe you won't!) and they'll offer you the chance to sell 50 or 100 food at a variable rate. This gives you a chance to do something with excess food to make some money, but you'll want to make sure you get a good deal and not sell so much that you cause starvation.

Weekly omens

Every Sunday the town priest will now read the auguries and decide whether Greenwood is experiencing divine approval or not. If you are, you'll get one of a selection of benefits, if it's unclear then nothing will happen at all, but if it's bad then you might need to appease the Gods! (Or just force the priest to take another hard look at those chicken entrails and see something else in them.)

With this, the food trader, setting the tax rate and some other things that are still upcoming, you'll have a variety of things popping up on regular days in addition to the more random events.

Improved tooltips

Here's a feature that doesn't sound flashy, but which I think you'll appreciate a lot - we've worked on making sure that the tooltips are improved in a variety of ways.

Firstly, when choosing rooms for a maid to clean, you'll now see the name of the room and what it can do once upgraded. This makes the act of choosing rooms to clear out a lot more considered and in testing we've found it makes a big difference.

Secondly, when looking at room upgrade options for rooms that haven't been upgraded yet on the normal manor screen, you'll also see what the upgrades do.

Thirdly, when choosing jobs for a maid, you'll be able to see how her skills, moods and even the weather will affect the result!

Weather

When you wake up, you might now find that it's cloudy, windy or raining, and the girls will comment on it. These weather states will affect how some jobs go (rainy days tend to generate more dirt and laundry, while windy days dry laundry faster) and in the future might affect some events, too.

Phew, that's a lot for one month! We've been very busy. And there's several more smaller tweaks to the gameplay in this update, too, but they're in the full change log.