There's a bit of a lull in my work, and I'm not happy about it. I knew there would be a lull, and I've put in serious effort over many months to try to prepare to keep myself happily busy during this time.
Instead, lots of wheels are spinning in place. DStP isn't moving as quickly as I'd like, though I hasten to say that Annikath has been doing consistently great. There's some book stuff that's still churning unproductively. I've been speaking to a programmer that could be promising for future work, but nothing is coming of that in the short term. Kali is doing good work for Slave Rehabilitator, but I'm not quite ready to launch into major development on that yet.
So this, which should be an ideal moment to pour energy into something that really inspires me, is instead unproductive time. =/ I'm not entirely idle, instead putting in a lot more work on TLS, getting it much closer to release. Seems like version 0.81.x will have almost my entire list of potential/considered changes, and then we're within sight of the 1.0.0 release.
That's exciting, but as I've said it's also scary to be moving beyond the project that has occupied so much of my time for so many years. I had hoped that more big things would be in place by now, but instead they idle mostly beyond my control.
DLC Questions
I've overcome the roadblocks for DLC. I've actually submitted an image pack DLC to Valve, hoping to get it solidly in place before the release. That is another major step to making the overall timing work out well, and gives TLS a second DLC.
As mentioned there will be another DLC as a capstone, several years in the future, but I'm considering if we need one more. On one hand, I worry about the "value" of each being diluted, but there are arguments to offer a lower price point as well as a different type of bonus content (and the technical side of it has been completely figured out).
I think the basic idea of "Broom DLC" for $5 is funny, even though it would be mostly pointless. I'm less certain about how it would actually affect the game, as I think the broom jokes work fine as they are. I had considered giving the player a broom item in the endgame and letting them hand it to people. Even more absurd, it could introduce "Broom-chan" as an optional harem member with no content.
I don't know, is $5 for a joke reasonable? My goal with the DLC is to offer Steam players optional ways to support the game, so they don't need to be "worth it" in a strict sense, but I want to maintain a good vibe overall.
For Your Consideration
Alright, let's take this in a moderately more positive direction. Being less productive does mean I've had some time to try other games, and I want to highlight one called Quartet:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1307960/Quartet/
The developers made a little game called Shadows of Adam that was fun but I never mentioned. They scaled up for their next game, which is a more ambitious RPG aiming for the FF6 era: it begins with four stories, each featuring two characters, that become increasingly intertwined. It's solid stuff, a classic-feeling plot with modern combat design. Also, there is an Oxford comma toggle in the options menu. ^-^
I don't want to make assumptions about the developers or their situation, but based on rough estimates, this game probably sold less than they had hoped. Me mentioning it won't do much good, but check it out if you're into this sort of thing. It isn't all that much like TLS, but I think there are a fair number of classic JRPG fans here.
Okay, that's all for this week. We get ever closer to the next TLS build and perhaps even the big release. Next weekend will be details of the next update, if it isn't the update itself. Could go either way right now.