I thought it would be funny if every image in this post is of peaches but then I realize that'll be terrible since I need the game images to explain my process. Still going to post some though.
Oh boy, the big 33 update, where do I start?
Let's go with the core of it all, she'll serve as a good starting point.
1. Shion
You might have noticed something with Shion this route and it's this increasingly play-into her being more of an air head. An adorable air head maybe but still, she's more of a ditz compared to the Bakery route. But it only came off that way if you skipped the Sauna(cursed) dialogues as you never got much of a chance to be with her (exploration-wise) in the Bakery route outside of that. While solving the sauna, she's quite similar to how she is in Beach Bar. I hope there's not much of a whiplash there since I'll argue that her tomboyish and fiery personality took more of a front seat in the Bakery route over her air-headedness.
She also has to share screentime with Erica that appears to be mysterious, so the player has less time to establish Shion as a character. And it's more likely the player's association to her is this bombshell girlfriend that's naive, simple and make stupid decisions. Shion's characterization being diversified by plot elements (another girl, the antagonist) is intentional since you won't have Erica/Jinnie in every other route but Shion exists in every route. Parts of a whole makes up a whole which means that there is this balance where she exists and is prominent, but you also never get the full picture until you experience every route with her.
That, by the way, is also why I went ahead with Jinnie. Your attention being shared/distracted by another character is intentional and deliberate on my part.
Shion will always be your constant so even if you don't get your "deeply focused pure love" bait scenes, you'll never shake off the feeling that she should be right beside you even if you cycle through different characters of different routes.
At least that's what a skilled writer would be able to achieve. Verdict's still out on that.
If Erica was much more mysterious to you and Shion is straightforward to you in the Bakery route, then I'll say my mission is accomplished.
Of course, all of this is an audience size/monetary debuff and a HUGE filter since it needs player to actually care and be invested enough to play through all routes. I can't fuck myself over enough times, it seems.
I also have to, and I admit this with shame, to remember to include the fierce and rebellious aspects of Shion since that is something I want prominent in the early parts of every route. I just tend to forget it because of how the scenes turned out to be and I don't like that she's not as angry and fierce as I want her to be, and how that there's sometimes more reluctancy than there is anger. This is especially crucial in a brothel-like route where you want the girl to be more of a rebel at the start. I honestly think that's because the writing's a little too much that there's little room for it but that's not a problem that cannot be circumvented since why the fuck do Damien need so many lines. I do have an idea to how to balance this that I'll try out in the next update though, we'll see how it goes.
2. Garden
The idea of Peach Garden is that rather than an antagonist corrupting Shion, the place itself corrupts her. That's why time was given to side characters to say somewhat expository stuff that tries to influence her mind. Drex and Peach Garden is inseparable, in the sense that the place is an extension of him. And if he is to corrupt her, the Garden has to feel alive.
By the way, the decision to make it look less of what you expect a brothel in RPGM games to look like and to have it look more like Asian culture Imperial's palaces (China, Korea, Japan) is on purpose. If you read Shion's dialogue and how she perceives/made to perceive the place, it is far from a whorehouse, and characters makes it seem like a luxurious or a place of purpose. Of entertainment and meaningful value.
That's all a facade, of course. Along with the idea that the characters working there actually get along. It's a small moment that slows down the momentum of the game but in the changing room, one of the NPC-girls has a short light bulb moment when the other girl confesses about Bruno and Riley's location and made Jinnie promise not to get her punished. You can infer for yourself what then, that light bulb bubble means. It's going to be difficult to portray and have it in the story, but there's a lot of scheming back in the Imperial palace that Peach Garden draws inference from, I'm not sure how prominent this aspect will be just yet or if it needs to be in the story at all.
3. Jinnie
Jinnie's was this addition that was a should I/shouldn't I. And since I did, there's also the lack for some character consistency that...does feel like an issue. First off, she was admittedly a bitch before this update, so the question is how can you make her less of a bitch without rewriting the earliest parts? The verdict's for you to decide since you've played the update on whether you like her or not. But the answer really is to not retcon that and to make her a gray character but also have traits that makes you consider that there's more to her than meets the eye.
Stuff like her flirty nature at times, her occasional fiery attitude and her fake smile are all accessories that give her personality. Except all of them needs to feel like make-up to the player. Not all the time, of course, just a second or two of passing realization that there's something more to her.
There's supposed to be a planned twist that she's really here to manipulate you two and this oh-so-evil scene at the end of either this or the next update but that's so juvenile and in your face that I decide to instead leave it up to the player to make that deduction themselves about what her purpose is and whether she's to be categorized as good or bad and if gray, how gray? I dropped that idea because she's neither evil nor the antagonist.
If nothing else, she's the vehicle that'll move the plot forward. I can't say much about her without spoiling but she's been thought out, that's for sure.
4. Side Characters
Honestly, most of my headaches stem from them this update. And I would say they're both the positive and the negative aspects of this first half. There's just so much decision making here, most of which I'm unsure of.
Originally, the brothel itself is fine to be just "nameless, whatever" side characters that has little to no development. It's your generic middle aged balding guy, it's your generic rich-don guy, that was the plan.
This is useful in two ways: 1. I don't need to write for them as much as I do for others 2. People won't like them as much or get attached to wanting them as their bull, so I don't have people pushing me to push more screentime for x y z side character.
All of which helps the game reach the finish line hopefully before 2096.
But the reason why Damien has that many lines, why Troy has his whole sequence is because the Garden appears early and it has to appear early to serve as a hook for the player. But the problem that this has is then Shion is still early in her stages of corruption, so everyone is essentially a stranger to her, and it makes zero sense for her to falter that much that early. I wanted to abuse the Shion=Alisa=Blackmail angle but I don't want to keep using that either, that feels too cheap for me. This is why you get your faceless/spriteless npcs having expanded dialouge. And why they used different approaches.
I mean, it can still be okay to push out their introduction with zero h scenes and just some smut/low corruption talk but I also want the first step into Peach Garden to have an impact so they must have scenes. While also making sure that their scenes make sense in regard to Shion's current state of corruption. But I obviously can't write a short story for every one of them, so you get some "lower" invested ones like the Changing Room Thug, the Curtain "BJ" thug and the drunk middle aged man.
I don't want to overly emphasize this but I do try to make an attempt at not only slow burn but to make Shion resistant. Even more so than most of the female characters in this genre. In the Masaru route, for instance, even after her first "fall", she still pushed back during the RV. The push back (from her) and the pull (from bull) being this power dynamic that shifts is very important for a good NTR, in my opinion. I think that's why post-RV (Hotel, Beach) can feel a little weak and post-game like for people who want that dynamic to continue. The problem is that players also do want their cake and can be annoyed if that dynamic is still overly present even after the huge and anticipated "fall"
Here's the blueprint/plans for each of the NPCs in the Garden:
SPOILERS.
Troy - F-boy, love bombing.
Damien - Money is everything, corrupts and tempts with money.
Drunk Middle aged man - Alisa=Shion angle with some "my wife left me please pity me" seasoning sprinkled on top.
Changing Room Thug - Doesn't really matter but Alisa=Shion and threatening her because he knows what she did at Drex place works too. The point is he is to the bridge for other thugs to get to Shion.
Upper floor/Curtain Thug: Doesn't matter either, just think of the most generic pervert you can think of.SPOILERS END
Big B/Shivers: They're more involved in the Beach Bar than Peach Garden but I put them here to make them more prominent since if we're talking about side characters (outside of Jords, Drex, Jinnie), they're the closest to being secondary if those 3 are the mains.
I wanted to keep Big B and Shivers separated from Peach Garden but I did not want to introduce two other new guys and it makes no sense for Shion to have some level of trust towards randoms either. And this allows me to give them screentime so it does work... except when I consider their role in the future, it makes me wonder if it really was a good idea to have them be customers in the Garden. It's hard to explain but if/when it works out well in the future, then it is likely me overthinking here.
5. The Imbalance
The upper floor vs the west wing is so terribly imbalanced it's not even funny. You can see the intended version of the VIP area was the upper floor. There was only supposed to be one event in the VIP side and that was Damien. How it blew up to three whole events/side npcs is the case of me having ideas, saying fuck it we ball, and then regretting when I miss 3 deadlines.
Except...not really because there can be a justification here. And that is instead of introducing them slowly throughout later events, I chose to do it here.
PG being the brothel part of the game meant that..you'll get a number of customers. What if those customers aren't just your faceless NPCs and have their own little characteristics to them and what if instead of "oh your girl is a hooker now so she'll be sleeping with x y z" it'll be, your girl is slowly doing weird stuff with customers x y z and so that naturally transits over to her being a hooker and they're now all her loyal customers that YOU have engaged with and know.
That's not to say that there won't be some faceless (you've never seen them before) customers in the future, but that everyone introduced in this arc serves as the foundation.
And that every scene you see here paired with the respective NPC will get progressively more corrupted. I do think that there's an appeal in that approach.
But my god is it going to be a filter since it's not only 3-4 hours long-long, people might hate it since it detracts from Jords and even Drex.
But the truth of it all might as well be it's just all a justification just so I can draw Riley getting pounded while the curtain behind her catches you by surprise. Maybe you weren't surprised, but I liked that idea. That idea, by the way, was one of the reasons for the delay. I wanted to go for pixel art and pixel art only at first but man, it was too hard to pass up an actual CG where the background changes and there's two things happening at once.
Minigames are probably the weakest part of this, it's just fetch quest and some memory elements and depending on whether I want to go all in and do a Brothel Minigame the equivalent of Beach Bar (which I likely will but if I don't), it'll...be more fetch quests. Now, you have your pitch fork ready (for how boring it sounds) and I get it but remember the heart icon at the top right? It's important for a future mechanic/minigame outside of its use here. The whole reason why it even appears here is to introduce the player to the heart icon/system so that when it reappears, and when it REALLY is used, the player has already been introduced to it.
It'll either be a fetch quest sort of game or an overly complicated sort of game. Maybe something in between. I have the ideas in mind and also the medication for the headaches that'll result from trying to implement it. (I'm kidding here, my only medication is coffee and sugar.)
The real reason why I didn't do a minigame here is while BEACH BAR and OBSERVATION (Drex place) will continue to progress and re-appear down the route, I'm not entirely sure about coming up ANOTHER new one that I'm not 100% sure it'll be used again. That's why it had to be a little underwhelming.
6. Update End point
I didn't like the end point, at all. But my burnout meter has far broken beyond it's, well, meter. And the deadlines was pushed by 3x so there was no way it was going to come out before End of the Year if I stuck to my intended amount of content to be released. It's the part I disliked most about this update because it left out one character that should have his own screentime in this little arc. You know, the guy you came into Peach Garden with. You'll get it in the next update, but the intended content was such a nice fucking bow and a nice desert at the end of the meal. This route has and will always be about Jordan which is why it's truly a shame.
And it does affect the experience too because the momentum was slowed and halted and I'll have to try and bring it up the next update that it is recommended for people to replay the arc again from the start. Except I don't like having people do that.
But, you know, you lose some, you gain some. At least I'm glad I made some of your holidays slightly better by releasing it. And it made mine better too since I got to rest.
I think that's about it, really. Anymore and it'll be too spoilery and I'll just be repeating myself like an old man. Being real here, this update was a lot of things. The crap ton of stuff that came at me in real life so as to pay the bills, the sickness and fatigue, the creeping burnout and the ballooning of an arc that wanted to do too much. It's not all that bad and I'm sure it was enjoyable and felt different but with how long Peach Garden is and how linear the Beach Bar has been, I'm not sure whether people will stick around long enough.
If you compare Masaru with Beach bar, you can see how ridiculously different this route is. You only get arcs in Masaru route after the fall (bakery night). Before, it was a bunch of small quests happening in the overworld one after the other while the corruption happens in the background, in the bakery. You don't get shit like Drex's place and Peach Garden either pre-RV.
It's...different. I'm not sure if it's good-different or bad-different which is why I am so dying to get back to free-roam and simple item collecting/fetch quests while shit happens in the background mode soon. I also hate this feeling I can't shake off that Beach Bar felt like something you should play after Masaru because it shouldn't be the case.
Okay, that's really it. Thanks if you've read so far, if not, I'm just happy to vent and have a place to write things down for me to look back/refer to.