The next patch will be available March 14th!
The usual stuff is planned- more main story content and a new guest character (bringing new animations and interactions also.) However, there's a bunch of stuff coming up that wasn't necessarily on the roadmap too, which will be interesting!
All of the writing for Day 7 and the end of the game is more or less done now, however that will not be ready until the Summer as the implementation will take some time- we're planning on doing something unique for the climax of the game. I don't want to hype it up too much, but we are drafting up art assets and gameplay mechanics that show up and are used only for the ending to help add to the "payoff" of the rest of the game's "build up."
Which means that for now, I've been reviewing the existing content in the game to see how I can make things better. We've been collecting and gathering feedback and I've come up with a bunch of changes that I think you guys are gonna like- for instance, before selecting a character to hang out with during "free time" sections, characters will have dialogue. This means you can check in on characters briefly, even if you don't choose to hang out with them. It also means you'll be able to talk to the bartender and minotaur, so they'll have a little bit more of a presence in the story!
We've also re-worked some of the story flow to try and streamline things better, to give you guys more of a chance to interact more often instead of just constantly getting stuck in forced story bits. We also have updated some of the presentation for existing systems so your decisions end up having a bit more of a clear impact on what's going on! Here's a rough overview of everything coming up-
March's Update - (Golden Days)
- Overlewd Crossover- Inge as a Tavern Guest
- BDSM (Stockade) Animations
- Main Story Day 6
- Tavern Interaction Sex
- Cheat Codes (Gallery Unlock)
In the meantime it is probably a good idea to announce some changes to how we want to handle the female protag route, where the story is told from Celeste's POV. We will NOT have this ready in time for launch- HOWEVER, I would like to think that we have a good reason why. The more I've been thinking about it, the more I think it makes sense to do Celeste's story as a post-launch free update, as a sort of 1.5 release. Even when the game enters 1.0, I'm sure there will still be some valuable player feedback and some things we can learn and improve from- having content goals to aim for after the game's "completion" will help us be able to further fine tune it as we grow as developers and artists, even after the main story is completed. Plus, it would allow us to focus on making her campaign larger and more fleshed out- think of it as our own "Shadows of the Erd Tree."
Hopefully any of this made sense. On paper it might not sound like the most enticing update, and it's kind of hard to show off how things look in still images- but I think once you guys have it in your hands you'll enjoy how all of the changes come together! I'm very happy with how things have been shaping up in my own playtesting sessions at least, I just hope you guys find it as fun also!