Game Update #22 (Patreon)

Hey there, folks! I hope you're having a good weekend. We're mid-month, which means it's status update time.

First, shoutout to the biggest milestone of the past 2 weeks: the frat party update was publicly released! If you're someone who already played the update, there is actually a new menu and closing screen in the public version. The latter might be of particular interest if you are planning to do another playthrough...

I don't have a super lengthy update today. With end of year distractions here, I've mostly been focusing on fitting in as much writing as I can. But I did schedule in breaks this month to accommodate the holidays, so I'm still on the track I set for myself.

There are a couple notable development areas to to talk about:

Art

As noted at the beginning, I made some new art for the public release that came out this past week. I wasn't originally planning to, but inspiration hit and I felt it was time to change up some of the branding around the game. 

The new menu was a little challenging since I was experimenting with some transitions, but I really like how it came out in the end. I especially like the transition when you start a new game.

There are also some Easter egg CGs hidden in the game now! But don't worry, they're not too hidden. I'll give a big hint - replay the ending and check out what the new end screen looks like...

Sound & Music

I hit a big snag with this one. Something I should have considered but didn't: a lot of royalty-free music/sound sources won't let their assets be used in adult products like this game. Which is a big bummer since I had some great music picked out before I thought to ask if I could even use it.

I was suggested some other places by other adult VN creators that I'll check out, but it'll take a while to sort through all the tracks to find something I like. But I'm definitely going to keep working on this. Brian's Sandbox has been doing a video playthrough of the game in which he added ambience, music, and SFX, and seeing that in action, it really does add so much to the experience.

Looking Ahead

I said in the last update that my overly ambitious plan was a dev build this month. But, as I'm sure we all expected, that's not really doable considering the time of year it is. So right now I'm looking towards January for an early build to share with Seniors & Graduates. It'll really come down to how quickly I can complete the script, so there'll be more news on that in the next status update.

That's all I've got this time! I hope you're doing well as we head into 2023 🙂