Hey everybody! It's been a little while since I've updated you on what's going on with my games. The last post I really talked about everything was in the August State of the RJ and Q&A. Things have changed since then, so I want to get you all up to date.
Come Home
First, let's talk about Come Home. The story is finished, but there's still some things that I want to do.
The Free Edition is done. Aside from some bug-fixes, I don't currently plan on adding anything else to it. This is due to the struggle of trying to keep the two file sets separate and updated. It's too much, and it slows me down considerably. I've delivered on my promise of giving the audience the entire story, beginning to end, for free. All the other things I add, including translations, I plan on being part of the Premium Edition only.
I had planned on doing a final Premium-only update with a lot of bonus content, but I've decided to actually split that into multiple updates. Right now, I'm planning on five small updates released every other month, with the first one coming out next week. I'm calling these The Complete Edition updates.
So what's in them?
Well here's what's in the first Complete Edition update that will come out next week:
Changed Brandichat from images to screens.
Changed Polaroid menus to be built in-game instead of pre-made images.
Made Suzy and Lisa's relationship words more specific - you now specify what the relationship is and how you refer to them as separate things.
Changed some phone menus to image menus.
Added sex menus to some characters repeatable sex screens.
Added four new scenes based off Patreon/Subscribestar polls:
Added Lisa TV Doggystyle scene
Added Izzy Anal Missionary scene
Added Reba Anal Cowgirl scene
Added Mi-Cha Facefuck Punishment scene
Fixed some images in the scene where you first have sex with Jez.
Added 16 new possible combinations for the harem orgy scene.
Added Chinese and Spanish translations.
Various bug fixes.
With this small update, I plan on taking the game out of Early Access.
Let's talk about translations for a bit. I've been promising for a long time that I'm going to get translations done after the game is finished. This is my initial test for that. The game has around 750,000 words of text in it that have to be translated. This is far too much for me to pay somebody to do it. It's just too expensive. Which means I have to do machine translations. It's not going to be perfect, by any means.
I've had a lot of people over the years offer to help me with translations, which is amazing, but it's not as easy as just sending a script and letting people translate it. I have to do it in a way that I can extract the dialogue into a shared sheet and then be able to import it back into the game. It's honestly way more complicated than I was expecting. I'm going to do my best with it though. With this first update, I'm adding Chinese (because it's the most asked for language) and Spanish (because it's a language that I have a basic understanding of and can test with). These are by no means the only languages I plan to add, but this is to test how the extraction and importing works and to test how I can crowdsource the fans to help fix translations.
The other four Complete Edition updates will each contain four more scenes each, voted on by patrons, along with more UI improvements and further translations, assuming that all works out well. The plan currently is to come out with an update every other month (April, June, August, October, December). These will not have early beta releases and will just drop onto Premium and Patreon at the same day.
After these five releases are done, I plan to move on from Come Home.
Happy Trails
Happy Trails is in production and I've been working on writing and coding and all of that. It's a 2D game with a single artist at the moment, so art is going to be slow on it. In fact, the entire production is going to be slow. Right now, I don't know when the first release is going to happen and I wouldn't expect the game to be completed for several years. I'll have more to say on this in the future, but it is still being worked on.
Since it is slow going though, it doesn't take all my workday to work on Happy Trails. I've been spending one week a month or so working on it to stay caught up with things with the artist and that has been enough for now. So I do want to have a different project to work on as well, which leads me to the big announcement.
Come Home 2
I said I was going to wait a bit before moving into a sequel for Come Home, but I got a burst of inspiration and I sat down and started writing and the story just came together so easily that I couldn't help myself. I've now written the main plot and most of the character's stories as well. I know there's going to be a lot of questions, so I'm going to tackle some of those now.
Story
Come Home 2 happens in the same town (Skyhill), but a couple of years later, and with a different cast of characters. Our main character is a somewhat popular writer who has hit a writer's block. He's almost 40 and just went through a divorce. Now his father has gone missing and he's going back home to try to figure out what happened. There, he meets a cast of characters... and we kinda know what happens next, I think.
While Come Home leaned into sci-fi a bit with it's main plot, Come Home 2 is going to lean into horror. Think Poe and Lovecraft. Gothic, supernatural, cosmic horror. Like Come Home, most of the game is going to be slice-of-life, real people dealing with real things, but in the background there will be an underlying horror vibe.
I know that people are going to want to know if characters from the first game will make an appearance - the answer is probably, but I don't have any specific plans at the moment. If they show up, it will likely be as cameos, or because the game takes place in the same town, so you'll probably see locations like Java Lava and Jackson Burger again and characters like Suzy, Tammy, Izzy, and Pete McGee are still likely working in those places.
Gameplay
The gameplay is going to be pretty close to the first game, except I'm planning to add an option to play the game linearly if you don't like the sandbox. So basically a button that you press that takes you from one scene to the next in an order that I feel like tells the best story. Most of the features of the first game will still be there - choose the order that you do things, turn off characters you're uninterested in, dates, conversations, different sex positions, all of that will be back in some form or another.
Characters
I don't plan to have 20 love interests, like the first game. In this promo image, I'm revealing 8. I have 3 more already written. And I'll probably round the cast out with 12 total. Our main character in this game is nearly 40 years old. He's been out of school for a long time. Most of the cast are going to be older because of this, but variety is still the goal here. While most of the love interests are women, there will be a male love interest and a transgender woman as well.
Tags/kinks/flavors
Don't ask me about tags. If you played the first game, you know what I'm into. I'm not going to suddenly put a bunch of feet stuff or BDSM into the game. There will be tastes here and there, when I feel like they're appropriate, but I'm not looking to cater to any particular kinks and I make no promises about what kinks will be included. Nobody's getting pregnant in this game, so don't even ask.
Scope
This is likely going to be a smaller game than Come Home. It's still going to be big, but a more manageable big, I hope. I don't want to spend another 5-6 years on it. I'd rather be done in 2-3. I also want it to be a little better paced and less sprawling and aimless than the first one.
Price / Release Structure
Right now, I'm planning to release the game in something like 12 episodes. Each episode will further the character's stories and also further the main plot. Each episode will have a definitive ending as well. So, the story is a little more structured than the first game.
Come Home 2 will not be free like the first one was. I plan on releasing the game at $19.99, which will give you access to the entire story as it's released. No DLC, no seasons / chapters whatever. $19.99 gives you the full game. I'll likely release a free demo as well, which will just contain the first episode.
On Patreon and Subscribestar, you will continue getting access to the most recent update with a $3+ membership.
Episodes will be released much like the first game was, with high paying Patreon members getting access a week early, then Steam/Itch/Patreon/Subscribestar all getting access at the same time. I don't plan on changing anything else with the releases at the moment.
So when is the first release going to happen? Probably sooner than you'd expect. I've already made significant process on it, just in a couple of weeks. I'm fairly certain I'll be able to release it before the end of the year.
Other Questions
Translations - I'm hoping to translate as I go this time and have several languages available from the start.
Voice Acting - I'm hoping to have voice acting for major scenes all the way through the game. I learned a lot in the making of the first game - sometimes voice actors aren't around when you need them later in production. The way I've structured this game should mitigate that. If I have to change voice actors in the middle of the game for some reason, I'm more okay with it here than I was in Come Home, because of the episodic structure.
Visuals - I'm still using Daz Studio to render the images and animations, but I've upgraded quite a bit. I'm using newer models. I'm using my new graphics card. I'm rendering in 4k now instead of HD. I'm never going to claim to be amazing at making realistic renders, but I think they look pretty damn good and a significant step up from the first game.
Soul Purpose?
You might remember back in August, I announced the game Soul Purpose. I've decided to put that on the back-burner for now for a few reasons. Firstly, I wanted to do something different with the visuals for Soul Purpose and I couldn't ever get to the point where I was satisfied with it. Secondly was a sort of business decision - I feel like Come Home 2 will sell better than Soul Purpose and I need that money to make Happy Trails, which is a more expensive game to produce, because of the hand-drawn art. Lastly, I'm just more hyped about the story in Come Home 2 at the moment than Soul Purpose.
Conclusion
Thanks, as always for all the support that you've given me. I hope that you're as excited as I am about the stories to come. Love ya!