Heyho!
It's already been nearly two months since the game's 1.0 release, sheesh, time flies by fast.
Post-1.0 Roadmap
Those who have been following the game's development on other social media sites, probably already know on my post-release plans. In this post I want to summarize the main important points for the Steam audience including a roadmap of future updates and a sneak-peak on what we have been up to over the past month (besides bugfixing).
For the 1.0 release I largely focused on producing a coherent, complete game within the scope of my available resources in terms of budget and development time. As such, I focused on features that would ultimately always serve the purpose of bringing the player closer towards the Corruption Ending or the Victory Ending.
Since our resources are limited, my artist can only produce art so fast, that of course means focusing on certain aspects, while having to cut out other nice-to-have options. The focus of the post 1.0 development (or "2.0 development") is to focus on those aspects that I had to cut. I based this development approach a bit on how Larian Games developed the games Divinity: Original Sin 1/2. In a similar way, you can think of the end of the development road of 2.0 to be a sort of Enhanced version.
Don't expect a lot of new content in terms of new main storylines. The main story is definitely finished. The focus of 2.0 will be on:
- More choices - Different costume choices.
- More reactivity - Better reflection of Aura's current corruption status, more ending variations.
- More replayability - New game modes.
- Longer lewd event chains - Various characters will receive more events for their event chain so you aren't forced to pick ones you don't like to further Aura's corruption and can instead focus on the ones you do like.
Besides working on Star Knightess Aura, I am also currently in the process of starting up my next game. The plan is to work 50% on SKA and 50% on that new game. That in particular allows my artist (I will be using different artists for the different games) to produce content at a faster pace than I expand the game. This would allow us to increase the art density in the existing game.
Currently I am working on the first post-1.0 major update (Version 1.1 "Maid Bad End") and expect that it will need about 3-4 months of work (with the first one done in March). Due to the 50% time investment, I expect it to finish in about 4-6 months, so about August - October.
For the roadmap over roughly the next two years, I have roughly planned to put the following updates:
- 1.1 "Maid Bad End"
- 1.2 "Roland Bad End"
- 1.3 "Hermann & Other Repeatables"
- 1.4 "Companions"
I have focused the planning around the extra lewd chain event expansions, but that doesn't mean they are the only thing that will be worked on for them. To give a better idea, I would like to talk for the rest of this post on the work we have done in March for the 1.1 update.
Major Update 1.1.0 - Maid Bad End
As the name suggests. the main focus on the update is adding an extra option for going to the Festival.
Full-Time Maid Job
in this case by asking Arwin for a full-time job opportunity so you can join the Festival as a working maid. The event is planned to take 3 full days of working as his maid until you can then join the Festival. Last month, I implemented the first day.
The plan is that depending on your choices during those three days you can make the Festival event easier at the risk of triggering the titular bad end if you go too far in pretending to be a good maid.
Alternate Earth Costumes
We added three alternate costumes for Earth Aura that Alicia can pick from when she performs the Clothing Mental Change.
They have minimal impact on the gameplay in form of trading in more Corruption and gaining secondary stats in exchange. However, to unlock them you will need to pass some Exhib checks.
New Game Minus
New Game Plus (NG+) bonuses allow you to make your life easier in exchange for Score. New Game Minus (NG-) is the opposite concept of that: Invest Score to gain modifiers that make Aura's life more difficult but gain extra multipliers for the score evaluation in return.
The NG- modifiers can make Aura initially weaker or add an Ironman/Honormode, but the most impactful one is probably "Hidden Alicia". In this mode, Alicia will be automated and inject mental changes without your control. This happens in a hidden way where you have no idea what she's currently up to. The mode is particularly intended for those want a more immersive experience for role playing Aura's corruption without her knowledge of what's happening to her and for those who didn't like the 2 player protagnist nature of the game and would rather focus on just one protagonist.
Since this mode has a big score multiplier it also doubles as a challenge mode for those who want to race Alicia so she can only make a minimum number of mental changes.
Community Translations
Finally, we have been working on expanding our infrastucture so that we can support translations in the game. Sadly, since the game is very story-heavy, hiring dedicated translators isn't feasable. Based on my research, creating a translation into even a single language would require me to blow every USD I earned from the release. So instead I decided to go down the route of enabling community translations. If you are interested in participating, join us in the game's Discord .
Aaaand that's most of what's new. There are some other things, such as improved reactivity for Aura in Chapter 3 where a lot of "I'm sorry, George" texts are now skipped to better reflect their change in relationship.
I hope the past gave you a decent overview of what's to come. For more details, check out my other social media channels.