Tickle Magnet #11 Roadmap Update (Patreon)

Tickle Magnet #11 Roadmap Update

Synopsis

No delays posted this month.

I did a TON of programming work this month to try to get the game where I think it needs to be.  The scope of this game is an absolute beast, and I'm just trying to get my arms around everything.

So what do I mean when I say the game is a beast?  Well, when I looked at the marketing for other, similar tickling games, their word counts tend to hover around 50,000 words.  That's a pretty good sized game, especially passion projects that these games tend to be, i'ts around novella size in length.  When I ran a word count on The Cyriaan Chronicles #10, it's now sitting, after the epilogue, at around 70,000 words.  That's getting closer to novel length.  A touch above an "average" tickling game, if there is such a thing.  When I initially scoped Tickle Magnet #11, I wanted it to be big.  Like really big.  I initially budgeted 110,000 words, which is slightly longer than novel length.  I aimed high initially, but I have a specific vision for what this game is going to be, and knew it was going to be far longer than my previous game in terms of content.

Well, the newest word count has us just under 200,000 words right now!  So when I say the game has a lot of content, that's a vast understatement.  And because the length is significantly larger than I planned, it's taking me a long time to program it all in.  I would say that's the primary reason for the delay in production, but it's a good problem to have.  

This development has been rather exhausting, and I may likely take a break from game development after the game launches and is in a stable state.

It's also going to take a ton of testing, and that's something I'm trying to reflect in the road map now.  I'm aiming to start my first playthrough of the game in August, where I'm hoping to squash most of the bugs.  I'm giving myself two months for internal testing before I open it up to alpha phase testing in October.

January

Define scope of the game [COMPLETED]

Procure art assets [COMPLETED]

Commission first set of inner circle characters [COMPLETED]

Test UI [COMPLETED]

February

Main storyline drafted [COMPLETED]

March

Inner circle character story arcs drafted [2 CHARACTER INCOMPLETE]

April

Secondary characters interactions drafted [2 CHARACTERS INCOMPLETE]

Coding of the main storyline [COMPLETED]

Battle system created [ROUGHLY 40% COMPLETE]

Character sprites of characters in game [COMPLETED]

Finalize UI  [COMPLETED]

May

Voice acting recorded for main storyline [NOT STARTED, PUSHED TO OCTOBER MILESTONE]

Voice acting for inner circle story arcs [SHELVED]

June

Optional content coded into game [ROUGHLY 20% COMPLETE]

Artwork (busts) finalized [ROUGHLY 80% COMPLETE]

Voice acting touch-ups [NOT STARTED, PUSHED TO OCTOBER]

July

First playthrough on test server [NOT STARTED, PUSHED TO AUGUST]

August

Second playthrough on test server

September

Alpha version launch [PUSHED TO OCTOBER]

Third playthrough on test server

October

No milestones

November

Beta version launch [PUSHED TO DECEMBER]

December

No milestones

January

No milestones

February

Game launch