Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and that you and your families are healthy and well.
I wanted to make a post detailing my plans with Because I Love Her and go over some changes coming soon as well as my plans for the next updates.
First, I want to start off by thanking you all for your support. I would like to believe the launch was a success and that the responses I've gotten from the community were very helpful when it comes to where I want to go with the game.
I will try and avoid spoiling story and such, and instead will detail what paths are to come and how the Steam Community has effected my future writing and plans.
First, in response to some helpful criticism, here are a few Quality of Life improvements coming with the next release:
- Added in a new mostly transparent text box with an opacity slider in the "Preferences" menu
- Deleted empty periods used to transition to the next scenes. Ex: "..." ".." "." "New scene"
- New animations will be produced in 60 fps and at higher quality to help smooth them out
Next, one of the most common questions I received are in regards to the next "Episode" and whether or not this purchase includes all future content.
I originally called the game "Episode 1" as my own way of avoiding the term "Season" and whatever else people use. The reality is, it is simply one game in Early Access that will contain ALL future content.
So, to fix this issue, the games title on the store page will now just be "Because I Love Her" as it is in every other area. Hopefully, this will lower the number of users who think the game is in a completed state and will need to purchase future episodes for more content. It is all included in your initial purchase, no matter how large the game becomes.
Roadmap
Because I Love Her has two main paths, what I would consider to be a "Love" path and a "Sharing" path per say. The sharing path was released with more content as I gathered more information on where the love path should go. I believe I have enough ideas from the community, and have already began writing in much more content for the next love release.
The plan is to release the first minor update near valentines day for the love route, and then the first major dual path update around 2-3 months after, depending on how much content is deemed enough for a major release. My idea of a large update would be around 8,000 lines of script between the two paths combined, over 1500 renders most likely, and around 30-40 animations. That is, to me, what a "Major" update would look like. What do you guys think? Would that be a considerable amount of content? Please remember, as of now I am still a one man team, but plan to seek help starting in February from a friend of mine who I am teaching the programs I use to render. Until then I still haven't seen a single penny haha.
So, the next release will be the Love Update and will focus on the MC's relationships with both Claire and Zoey, and will begin a whole new form of content between our two love interests, opening up the path to many more possibilities, including the introduction of more of Claire's family into the picture.
Another thing I am doing is investing in a new PC build in February to help with new render times of these larger animations and render queue's. It wont be a super computer just yet, but a 4090 will speed up times by around 30-40 percent compared to my 3090 I currently have, and with it being a full PC build I can continue building scenes on my old one as I render them on the new.
So, the year should include 4-5 major updates placing the game near completion, unless the Community decides the story and character growth are moving along too quickly. With paths splitting more and more as time goes, once can only assume writing will only become more complex. We will see how the first two updates go, and hopefully be able to better predict and plan the rest of 2024 out.
Finally, thank you all for your support!
I never would have thought my game would be as well received as it has been so far, and seeing the Steam Community posts every day and reading all the feedback I've gotten, the discord messages I've received, I could not be happier. I read every single message, I consider every bit of feedback I get, and I still have much to learn in order to grow with you guys. So, thank you.
- John, aka The Typist