Hi there!
As some of you have noticed, Lunar's Chosen recently changed name to Lunar's Chosen Episode 1. I know some people hate when games go episodic, but there are good reasons for me doing so and I want to take some time to explain to you the reasoning behind it. This is going to be a long wall of text, so strap in!
First of all, the code is a mess. I started this game originally as a learning project. It was never meant to be something that was out and about in public as a real game. As such, it's extremely poorly coded and that poor code prevents me from doing a lot of cool things I want to do, which I'll get to later. Could I recode it and tidy everything up? Sure, but it'd be a huge project and take a long time. If this was the only reason to go episodic, I wouldn't bother and would take that time to recode it, but there are other reasons too.
Build size. This is a weird point to have and doesn't apply to you guys on Steam, but I also release the game on other platforms and one of the main complaints I have from them is that the game is growing big to download. Certain hosts have a limit to the amount of data you can download in a day and many users hit that cap and can't download the game. This isn't a huge problem, until you look at the android build. I already crunch the hell out of it and it's starting reach the file size limit. Going episodic helps relieve both of these issues.
Speaking of the size of the game, it has grown far beyond what I originally planned. As I said above, this game was originally a learning project. It was meant to be short, teach me the basic and then left alone. Somewhere along the way people started really enjoying it and asking for more, so I obliged. Then I was told to put it on Steam and I did, but I didn't think the quality or the quantity was worth charging for so it was free. Then people said they'd pay for it and I added a load more content, so it gained a price.
It was still intended to be finished long ago, but as I kept working on it, kept going back and improving the quality of older content and just had more and more to add so it's still going. Which is one of the reasons why I'm okay with making the game episodic. I don't personally feel like I'm cheating anyone out of content with episode 1, since there's already way more content than originally planned. That said, all of the above isn't enough reason alone for me to go episodic, there's also some huge benefits which I'll talk about now.
First, we have the code. As I mentioned, it's a mess and wasn't set up in a smart way. Neither were the scenes or the content flags. One of the main complains I get about content choices is how often the game asks you if you want to do something you've already said yes or no to. Another is if you play with futanari on, suddenly the game is filled with them. What if you wanted more control?
That's where being able to build episode 2 from scratch comes in. I can create preferences where players can control exactly what content they see far more than they do now. Want Amy to be the only futanari character? You can do that. What about if you want Amy and Leanne to be futanari, but not Meg? Sure you can do that too. What about gender swapping? Not into you're character being turned female, but you're fine with body swapping with one of the female characters? You can do that too.
On top of that, tidying up the code makes the game far easier to manage. Right now I waste a lot of time trying to figure out where, how and why I wrote something the way I did and then figuring out how I need to write something new to make it work with what I created before. It's just a mess.
This would also allow me to implement some changes to the game that I've been wanting to do, but would complicate the code even more if it were added into the current code. So I'd be able to add new things that are currently too tricky for me to spend time on.
Next is translations. I get a lot of requests for translations of the game, but since I'm still working on this version, constantly adding, changing and fixing things, any translation would would also need to be changed or those players would get a lesser version. So right now, I'm not getting them done. If the came is complete though and going to be unchanged, it would be much easier to get translations created.
Achievements! Everyone loves achievements, but most also hate when achievements are taken away from them or changed. As it is right now, I can't put any "final" achievements into the game such as "sleep with every character" because what if I add a new character you can sleep with? Going episodic gives me an end point for the episode and allows final achievements to be added, which is much more satisfying for players.
Finally, let's talk about money. "Aha! See! It's just greed! I knew it!" Let me just stop you there and say no, it's not greed, if it were, then every side character who isn't important to the main story, such as Fran, Hillda, Ellie, etc would have all been DLC you had to buy. Hell, I've just recently told players in my discord I won't add more content for them as DLC as, if I'm making episode 2, new content for them would go into that as it'd feel scummy to take content that should be part of the main game and purposefully leave it out to sell as DLC.
I am looking into if it's possible to give players who bought Episode 1 a steep discount on Episode 2. No idea if it's possible, but it's an avenue I'm looking into.
So hopefully this has given you some insight into the major reasons why the game is becoming episodic and shown you that it's not just some greedy cash grab. I know some of you won't be convinced and that's fine, frankly before I started doing this and learning what was involved, I'd have likely thought the same thing so I don't blame you. But hopefully most of you reading this can see the huge benefits of an episode 2.
Oh and don't worry, Episode 1 isn't ending just yet, there's still content to come!
If you made it this far, thank you for reading this wall of text and I hope you continue to enjoy playing the game as much as I enjoy making it!
PTGames.