Ah, what a time to be alive! With November’s updates in the bag, we’re now ready to move on to that greatest of endeavours - Act V. We’ve had quite a few questions and speculation about what that involves, which is great; it’s good to see that everyone is as excited as I am.
I’ve spent a fair chunk of the last fortnight adding detail to my plans. Now is an excellent time, I think, to share those plans with you.
What Will It Involve?
Part of my enthusiasm for writing a fantasy saga has been the opportunity to finish it properly. I’m sure we can all think of a beloved series that has a rushed or lacklustre ending; with Ravager, I want you to come away properly satisfied. That means Act V has to cover a lot of ground:
- Finishing the character arcs of all of your harem, including the consequences of Pregnancy and the chance to take them on Dates in your domain.
- Holding Court as a monarch, and making the decisions that will determine the fate of your nation.
- Determining how your relationship with the stranger Powers will evolve, now that you are no longer the underdogs.
- Kingly responsibilities like Coronation and Marriage.
- Deciding the Final Fates of our cast, and their place in the Epilogue.
- ...and I gather some people have something called a Cataclysm to look forward to.
More than enough to keep us busy, I think!
What Won’t It Involve?
One of the hardest things in any project is defining and maintaining your scope. It would be tempting to keep adding and expanding things indefinitely - but I don’t want the game to spend eternity in development, and I don’t think you do either.
Ravager is, at its core, a choice-driven narrative visual novel. We could get deep into the weeds of kingdom management and economics and such, but that would leave us with a weird and slightly ugly chimera of different mechanics and tone. You’ll still have the ability to determine the fate of the Realm, but it’ll be through more familiar methods of making decisions - your minions will take care of the accounting.
More than a few people are interested in the world beyond the nation’s borders. So am I! Far too much, in fact, to cram it hurriedly into the end of the game. There are tales to be told of strange places, beautiful inhabitants, and their inevitable conquest beneath the shadow of a very ambitious dragon. More than enough tales to fill a game by itself, so that’s what I’ll do.
How Will It Be Done?
Most of our Acts follow a familiar pattern: an introduction, then a large open segment, which dovetails into a climax and transition into the next Act. But with Act V I want to have the chance to show the outcomes of your choices (both previous to and within it) over a longer period.
Fortunately, mature dragons have a tendency to slumber - an excellent opportunity to deliver Act V in a series of segments, with the world and cast updating between them. It might be fair to call Act V ‘three smaller Acts in a trenchcoat’, but somebody suggested we should call the segments Chapters and I think that’s more likely to stick.
Each Chapter will be released as a major (main plotline) update, with the first one arriving as v5.0. This also has benefits for you, as you won’t have to twiddle your thumbs for a year while we attempt to get everything done in one go. What you will see is that some updates are smaller than usual (because we’re getting ready for the next Chapter) and some are much, much bigger.
When Will It Be Done?
Anyone who has followed a game in development, least of all one made by a small team, will know that life laughs at the hubris of developers. But I also think that not setting target dates is an act of gross cowardice - so I’ll say that the first instalment of Act V will arrive in early 2022, and I aim to have the main plotline finished before the end of that year. If we continue our current rate of hard work and steady growth, we’ll be able to do that.
And What Happens After That?
Ravager will continue to receive free updates once the main plotline is finished. We want to bring it to full completion, and that means adding some extra features that would slow our progress if we had adopted them too soon. That includes:
- The option to Roam the Realm and see how it, and its inhabitants, reflects your actions.
- A recruitable Centaur faction, and their fierce alpha mare Tuhakka.
- Encounters with the Dream Waifus we’ve created in collaboration with our biggest backers.
- The appearance of Adeline’s younger sister Celia.
But we won’t be resting on our laurels. Our determination to finish Ravager is driven, in part, by our ambitions for games to come. We want to experiment with new genres and themes and technology, and keep on crafting amazing things for as long as the universe will permit. Ravager is just the beginning.