Greetings everyone! The final major content update for Episode 1 is out! I hope everyone who has had a chance to play it enjoys it.
But this train doesn't stop, so let's talk about what is happening next month and what we are releasing on August 4th!
What is v0.15.5?
There will be no new scenes or lewd scenes in this update. This update is designed to do 2 things.
Cleanup Episode 1.
Prep Episode 2.
Cleanup Episode 1
Because we were releasing content monthly, we obviously fell behind on what we could deliver. When we released v0.15.0, we treated it like our previous builds and didn't ship until we were ready. But we need to put something out monthly to retain a paying audience, so the game can keep getting made.
Animated Special Moments
One thing that fell by the wayside was our goal of animating every special moment. Our animator was finishing up school and could not work as often as we would have liked. So one thing we want to do is animate as many special moments as possible, but this might be hindered since our part-time animator is moving, and Koth is working on Episode 2 scenes.
The Gallery
Now that the episode is pretty much done, we are going to finally implement the gallery! Where players can replay lewd scenes, view special moments, and view unlockable art.
However, due to these additions and other improvements we want to make to the visual novel code:
You Will Need To Restart Your Game!
This sort of sucks, I know. But now you will be able to unlock stuff for the gallery AND our finale point.
Final Script Revision
Our new writer, Frisbee, has been going through the script, making adjustments, improving the flow/word choice, and, in some cases, rewriting whole scenes. I am going to go over the last of those revisions this week. Then, we are going to do one final table read where we do a big, out-loud reading of the whole episode to finalize it and ensure everything sounds good. We are going to do this one-third of the script a week, so we can really dial it in.
At the moment, the revised script is 9,000+ words longer than the current Ep 1 script. There is a chance it grows after our last 2 edits. So while v0.15.5 won't have any new drawings, it will be our second-largest update in terms of word count for this episode.
We hope that with new special moments being animated, a gallery to unlock, and 9k+ words being added, v0.15.5 will be a worthwhile update!
Preparing for Episode 2
But not everyone is working on Episode 1 cleanup! Some of the team is looking ahead toward Episode 2.
We already have some special moments and lewd scenes drawn. We also have one background done, with another well underway. Koth is currently working on the first lewd scene animation. The script has a solid draft done that we are hoping to start cleaning up while working on Episode 1 cleanup. Not to mention, I am 7k words into Episode 3.
Translations When?
After v0.15.5, once the script is finalized, I will start figuring out how the community-run translation will work. For those who don't know, we will have the game's translations run by the community. This is because hiring a localization team would be insanely expensive, and using Gen AI runs counter to our principles.
So stay tuned!
Free Update When?
This will happen either in September with the first Ep 2 release or in October.
I really want to get all the special moments animated for the free demo so we can have the best possible outing. A lot of people have been waiting for this to see whether the whole Unity revamp was a good idea, so I want to make a good impression.
However, if it goes past October, I may just need to pull the trigger and do it.
Wrap Up
It's going to be a fun month! I am excited to see the reactions to the end of episode 1, especially regarding a certain character.
The team is going to be a bit spread thin, but it's going to be really exciting to finally finish this episode and move on to the next part of the story.
Hopefully, if all goes well, we can start paying people to work more hours :D
Thank you all so much for your continued support! You are keeping this studio alive.
Be kind to each other, and Stay Rad!