Chapter Two - Teaser (Patreon)

Hey friends, hope you're well!

First the good news: You can download a teaser for Chapter Two of Friends in Need right HERE. Please note that this version is only compatible with save files and patches created with v.0.15.

This teaser features nearly 400 images, two distinct sex paths depending on your choices, multiple sex act options, and three "endings," which will lead into the rest of the chapter, once it's finished. This means it's actually bigger than Chapter One - and it's roughly 1/3 of the final Chapter Two, so there's a lot more to come!

In addition, with this update you'll begin to see your character's personality shift slightly, based on how you behaved in the first chapter. Someone who was benevolent will have generally kinder thoughts and dialogue, and someone who wasn't will tend to be a bit more rude, abrupt, or outright mean. This is an ongoing system - as your character makes choices, he will gain or lose alignment points, further shifting his personality as the game continues. I'd encourage everyone to try light and dark play-throughs, to see little art and dialogue changes. Eventually, you may start to gain or lose certain choice options, depending on your alignment score.

In addition, I changed all the game choice menus, removing the black screens, and simply overlaying the choice menu on top of an image. In trying to debug the game, I quickly realized how annoying it is to find a save file at a choice juncture, when all the choice screens are plain black screens. Since this game has a lot of choices, I imagine a lot of people are saving and rolling back their saves to try different paths. Hopefully that makes things less annoying for you folks.

Now, the bad news: Despite my best efforts, it looks like I'll need another week or so to get the Chapter Two update finished. Believe me when I say nobody's more upset about it than me.

As some people may know, I didn't do the art in the first chapter, instead commissioning Horizontical Studios. But, as of Chapter Two, it's all me. So, in a little over a month I had to learn Daz Studio, rewrite the bulk of the chapter, prep SubscribeStar and Itchio pages, and package the entire thing for distribution. Unfortunately, I screwed some stuff up when it came to rendering some scenes in Chapter Two, meaning I had a lot more post-work to do than I thought.

For an example of what I'm talking about, here's an image where I planned to simply lay a color under the transparent windows, in order to create a simple background. Unfortunately, I failed to account for the reflection and rim light created by the lighting systems, and the whole thing just looks unnatural and goofy. Rookie mistake, made worse by the fact I didn't save a ton of these original files, instead moving the camera around and rendering as I went.

So, now I'm trying to figure out the quickest, most economical way of resolving this.

I know it seems like a minor thing to get tripped up over, but I don't want to do something unless I can do it to my standards, and this simply isn't acceptable to me.

No hard feelings if you feel the need to drop or adjust your pledge until the update materializes! I totally get it, and there's no hard feelings. But, the current plan is to get it out to $5 patrons on June 4th, and release it publicly on the 11th.