Hello, pirates! It's time for the developer diary. Here we talk about progress, share thoughts, and news.
We'd like to start with something unpleasant for us — criticism. Of course, everyone faces it and reacts differently. For us, the main criterion is: "Does the criticism improve the game or not?" If yes — we listen and fix it regardless of feelings. That's been the case with many things, and it's no surprise — the first experience and first game can't be perfect in principle (though for some reason many think we're a professional team with tons of experience). But anyway. We'd like to recall two topics: the impossibility of getting all content in one playthrough, and the imbalance of choices. The first is bad criticism, because it reflects a personal opinion of a player who expects everything at once and then leave. The second is more interesting. On one hand, a choice between A and B when you don't fully understand the consequences always seems unequal, and in general they don't have to be equal. As a player, you can take a certain path and lose part of the content, which is normal in visual novels or even RPGs. Still, we reviewed several places in the game and decided to change some text so that players who chose the less packed option get a bit more satisfaction.
By the way! We wrote the text for dates with Anna and Lauren back at the beginning of the game (before the island). We still need to draw the scenes for them, and then we realised that there is catastrophically little 16+ content in the game. That is, fanservice, suggestive but not too explicit scenes. We'll gradually fix that.
So, as of mid‑June, we're moving along nicely. While the art is being drawn, other team members are busy with their own tasks — endings are being written, the game is being translated into Chinese, and ideas for the next project are being developed (on paper so far). A bit more detail:
The endings are now outlined, and although we haven't got to them yet, we want to know — would you be satisfied with 1‑2 pieces of art and a description of "what happened next", or would you like something else? So far we have 16 endings and we're already worried whether we'll have enough resources to properly present them all.
The game will most likely get both Traditional and Simplified Chinese in the next update, after which we'll expand to other languages.
Drawing takes the most time, and while some team members have free time, we're thinking about future projects. So far our thoughts are: before finishing Wet Sand, we'd like to make a small spin‑off, and then take on another project in the same setting, but with an independent NSFW module. To be precise, the game will be SFW, but via a patch or some other way you'll be able to add a spicy element to the game. It will definitely not be a visual novel, but most likely 2D.
Regarding plans to implement combat/DLC: if after release everything goes well (sales allow us not to go bankrupt), we plan to add a DLC with a combat system on the map (real piracy) and a story arc for several quests. These are just plans for now, depending on our financial situation. So we're not promising anything.
That's all for now. Thanks for following the news and playing! The update release is coming soon!