Update (and Cheesecake!) (Patreon)

I thought you might appreciate a bit of cheesecake - or would it be devil’s food cake? Either way, I wanted to show you guys one of the things I’ve been working on since I last checked in - the succubus’ character design! I learned a few new 3D tricks during the course of creating her, so the exercise was useful in a couple of different ways!

0.7 Release

I decided to work on her because I’ll be changing the release schedule a bit. I’d originally said I’d be releasing the rest of the dungeon as 0.6.2, but I’ve decided to add the succubus H-scene and the H-scene progression overhaul and release it as 0.7 instead. I’m not going to announce a release date, but you can expect it out this month (October).

I will still be releasing a 0.6.2 - probably within the next couple of days - but its main purpose will be to update the hospital game to the new plugin-based version, which I hope will make it more fun and less annoying. I’m doing this mostly because 0.6.2 will go public when 0.7 comes out, and I want to have the rough bits cleaned up as much as possible - and in 0.6 the roughest bit was the hospital game.

Plans for the Future

It’s been a while since this game launched - I’ll be hitting the 1 year anniversary next month! In the course of developing the game I found that some things turned out better than I’d hoped, other things came out much worse, and some things ended up evolving away from my original vision. Going back and revisiting my original ideas for the game has been on my ‘to do’ list for a while now, and I finally set aside the time to do it this past week. The first thing I discovered - much to my surprise - was that I hadn’t written much of it down! My first task was to reconstruct my original ideas, and I think I did a pretty good job of it (they’re now safely recorded in Scrivener).

What I found was that I still really like my original ideas. Earlier this year I tentatively decided I’d cut a lot of the stuff I’d originally planned in order to make the game shorter and keep it ‘punchy’, but I’ve come to think my original ideas were much better than the revised ones. For instance, my marketing copy from day one has referred to ‘other worlds’ that the PC would adventure through. Well, that was the stuff I was gonna cut. But now I’m not :)

Having said that, I will keep an eye out for things to cut - I want to keep the game as ‘punchy’ as possible within the context of the story I’d planned to tell. One example is the Slums; Ogremarsh was originally going to have a slum district, but I think I’ll give it the axe. The military district and the commercial district will be the only other places that I’ll be introducing in the orc capital.

Also, there’s 2 more characters that I’d planned to accompany you on your adventures through all the worlds - and you’ll be encountering them soon :)

Longer-Term Project: Game Revamp

Finally, there’s a revamp of the game I’ll be working on as a side project. A lot of people seem to like the game, so the beginning obviously has something going for it, but I think it's got some definite weaknesses. One goal of the revamp is to improve the new player experience.

Another part will be changing the visuals a bit. I’m looking at using larger busts for character conversation portraits as opposed to the tiny headshots, and maybe also introducing some other quasi-VN (Visual Novel) eye candy as well. Finally, I’ll be working on making the mapping look better. It’s been a weak point from the beginning, and I’d finally like to fix it up.

I don’t know when the revamp will be done; I’d like to get out at least a couple more content releases before then. I also need to learn how to map better; I’m going to make it a point to play a few games with good mapping, so if you have any recommendations, please leave them in the comments! Anyway, the revamp is something I’ll be working on, but isn’t something that I plan on delaying releases for anytime soon.

So there you have it. Expect 0.6.2 (NOT the ‘supplemental’ release!) in a few days and 0.7 later in the month. I hope you enjoy the pic, and thank you for your support!