End of 2023 Dev Update (Patreon)

Hi folks,

I just wanted to thank ALL of you, say happy holidays and to wish you all a Happy New Year.  Thanks so much for your support throughout the year, it was very much appreciated.

And I also wanted to give you a quick  update to let you know where we are at from a development perspective. Season 1 (covering episodes 1-10) re-do remains our number 1 focus and will continue to be our primary focus as we go into January. So once again, if the re-do is of no interest to you, please consider this when making any decisions on renewing / cancelling your patronage.

I will be releasing a sizeable demo of Season 1 in January, so you can see exactly how the re-do looks/plays.  As soon as Season 1 re-do is complete, we will switch our focus back to episode 25.  I expect Episode 25 to be quite large and the thoughts of continuing on at the current rate of work throughout 2024 is daunting, so to help alleviate this, I am planning / hoping to expand the team as we go into the New Year. I have previously mentioned that we hired an animator to help us out with the re-do. We will continue working with him on the re-do and we will also avail of his services for episode 25 too.

I will also be looking to hire another artist to work alongside Cell and I. I have been spending the vast majority of my time on art over the past couple of months, but I want to switch my focus back to writing, so a second artist will help with that. My primary focus should be on writing, but as anyone who develops games knows, there is so much other shit to do (and that takes a LOT of time), but for 2024, my aim is to spend the vast majority of my time on writing only. 

I am also going to look to hire a second writer / coder. However, with one episode left, I don't want people to be concerned that a new writer will bring a completely new style. I have auditioned over a hundred writers over the past few years and only one of them was a match, so I don't expect to find someone who can just jump in and write huge chunks of the game.  Even if we find someone, the plan is that I will still be the primary owner for the story and write the vast majority of the dialog. I just need an extra pair of hands to help out with  episode 25 and the re-do. Some of the items I spend a LOT of time on is variable tracking and  managing the multi-verse (i.e. making sure all choices make sense, all different paths merge at the right spots and that we have resolved all of the different options), and tweaking the script to add the images / animations in the right spots, check timings, etc. So that would be the primary ask for the second writer, so renpy knowledge is probably more important than writing skills.

So if any of you are familiar with DAZ or renpy and would like to become part of the team (paid position), please let me know via DM as it would be perfect if any new members of the team are already fans of the game.

And if the search for an artist and coder/writer becomes fruitless, then I will look to hire someone who can at least help out in other areas that take time (e.g. photoshop / music selection / adobe premiere, etc.)... Basically any areas where I spend a LOT of time but that I could / should sub-contract out to allow me to focus primarily on writing.

And just to finish up with some teaser images, below are some samples from a NEW scene that we're currently working on for the re-do. It's a new date with Lily.  (Ignore the fact that the sky is missing... this will be fixed in the final images).

Please add any questions or comments below (or send me a DM) and I'll get back to ALL of you.

Thanks a lot,

CG