I won’t be listing all the stuff here. I see no point in mentioning some small events/edits.
The fully completed part of the game:
1) Events with Ilga (a few different events happening at her house).
2) Random events at the apothecary, armory, brothel, and so on. (Around 10 events)
3) Two new events at the river
4) MC’s room (Training, rest)
5) The purification (a huge event)
6) The alternative branch where you look for Kagera (when you talk to Fuhrim, you’ll have an option whether you want to help him)
7) Events with Fiona (four options)
8) Events at the brothel (two new interactions)
9) New events with Mrisya (three new interactions)
10) Events with Lilina
11) Alternative vampires’ branch (a few new options to kick off the event and to finish it)
12) Two small random events in the town
13) Kilena’s branch fix
It’s around 37000 words.
We’re about to wrap up testing of the current build of the game. Most of the bugs have been found.
Currently, we’re working on technical aspects of the update, catching bugs as well as:
- Tweaking the combat system and game’s balance
- Adding options to use potions from your inventory (before you could only use potions from your belt).
- Amulets
- Sounds, there’ll be a lot more of them. (trying to make the game more atmospheric)
There’s hope that we’ll be able to finish testing the game this week. After that, we’ll send that build for testing on our Patreon, while our coder will start working on the castle part of the update.
There’re events that are finished both in terms of text/renders (castle part):
1) Five events with Sarah. (we’ll add it very fast)
2) Event with Higrith (we’ll add it very fast)
3) Event with Elana (we’ll add it very fast)
Overall, around 6000 of words here.
Events that are still to be made:
1) The first day of the investigation. It requires some small changes in the text. The art for that event is finished. The complexity of adding this to the game is rather high. (Editing is always a difficult thing to pull off, sometimes it’s easier to wipe the slate clean and just write a new event if there’re a lot of edits to be made)
2) The second day of investigation. The text’s ready, as for the art, we might reuse the old art here. The complexity of adding this event is medium.
3) The alternative branch for Sarah. Most likely we’re going to need a few more renders for this event. The complexity of adding this event is medium.
Around 9000 words and 4000 of them will be edits, not new text.
In other words, the part of the update we’re going to keep working on is around 3x smaller, in light of this I see no point in releasing an intermediate update to Steam. We’ll release the finished product once it’s ready.
Once we’re done adding all the stuff I just mentioned above, the game will be released. I don’t know how long it will take us to get there, it depends on how quickly we’ll be able to deal with the hardest parts of the update. We want to make the best out of this update. It’s been a long time since the last update, and I think that one more month or two won’t really change anything for you.
Why’d we decide to rewrite (edit) the first day of the investigation?
Because of the comments I saw. People say that investigation isn’t really a fun part of the game to play and as a tester, I can agree with that statement. Therefore, I asked one of our writers to rewrite some of the questions. Whether we changed it for better or for worse, you’ll see soon enough. However, making changes to the code is an unpleasant process, to say the least (at least when it comes to Ren’py).
I must say there’ll be a lot of gameplay changes and the game will become significantly easier for those who prefer to play on the easiest difficulty, the same goes for medium difficulty. Though we’ve increased the number of coins you get for doing different tasks, simply because there are a lot more activities you have to pay for now.
I like what we’ve achieved with this update. Testers like the update too. However, our testers are the people who’ve grown to like our projects. They thought that the early access was good too, so yeah.
And I guess that’s it about the update. Now let’s talk about some interesting things I ran into on our forum:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1797300/discussions/0/3184614124784484049/?ctp=2
Regarding whether I’m a misogynist or whether I write my MC to be misogynists, I’ve given my answer to these questions here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1797300/announcements/detail/3341121186845160151
I’ll repeat that I don’t agree with that statement. However, it’s not what I wanted to talk about. There are so many scandals in the game industry these days. I won’t be calling names here. Freedom of speech is the best tool our society has ever invented. It reached some truly big heights. Therefore, in public space, I tend to speak with caution and sometimes it’s best not to talk at all. However, I don’t like staying silent.
Anyway, to the point.
Lately, there's been a lot of scandals in the gaming industry like with the company known for its "you guys all have phones, right?" phrase and many other famous companies were crushed by mass media. We all followed the news about the terrible details of working in such places as a woman.
Strikes, lawsuits, investigations.
It’s terrible and we have to fight that. However, there’s one question…
When you enter one famous website (just like I do)… Let’s call it a «laboratory». You get to see some high-quality videos.And you’re just scared of what you see. The things they put in girls there… Sometimes there are two or even three of those things… The only thing I feel is a pity. I’m worried about girls’ health when I see that. When they take a close-up shot you just realize, yeah, she needs to see a doctor. I read a few interviews with such «stars». Hearing the things they say makes me feel uneasy, to say the least. Some of them even said that they have to take a «powerful pain medication» to be able to shoot.
You know what I’m surprised about the most? There are no scandals about this.
I don’t believe that there are double standards in this world. It’s either these girls really enjoy this, or I just made it all up. The gaming industry might be the last stronghold of all misogynists. Or maybe people just don’t know that.
And someone will say, how can you compare? Well, I don't see any difference. Men, women, but first of all people. As long as they don't harm anyone, it doesn't matter where they work.
What are your thoughts?
For my part, I’m ready to face ostracism for the crimes I committed. Provided they were crimes. I decided to speak my mind while not hiding anything from you. If I’m to blame for anything, feel free to throw some stones.
That’s it for now. We keep on working, both on the game and ourselves.
With all due respect.
Novel.