Hello friends! It is Friday, and time for another dev diary.
Once again this week has been about writing event after event! Bartending has a bit of a different vibe than being a server, and my aim has been to capture those bartender tropes like being an ear to people working through some stuff, having a bit more freedom to speak your mind, and, absent the owner, the buck stopping with you.
This is reflected in events like this one: a server asking you to speak to a problem customer on their behalf. A situation nobody involved likes to be in! Except, sometimes, the customer.
Of course, being a bartender may also afford you special opportunities and greater trust from the owner, helping to pave your way toward a proper management position.
Progress has been good and by the end of today I expect to finish up what I had outlined so far. I do think the set needs a bit more filling out, though, especially compared to how much exists for servers, so I would like to do another round of events for it.
Other than that, what's left for the River Rat expansion is getting the promotion mechanics and passages in, balancing, finalizing the upgrade system and writing some upgrade-specific stuff, and then internal playtesting. In other words, we're just about in the home stretch — however, I think it'll also be a bit too much to cram into a week and a half. So I'm planning on first delivering 0.5.5, another monthly update, but the update after that is very likely to be 0.6, the River Rat expansion.
As to monthly updates, here are some of the things I'm thinking of prioritizing over the next few, mostly based on player suggestions:
Anonymous streaming: A common request, and one we can approach now that masks exist. I may also attempt to scope in V-tubing, but that almost requires its own event set, so we'll see what I have time for.
Extending encounters with NPC preferences: Currently, NPCs often know what they want to do to you but rarely have an opinion about what you do to them. This should change sooner or later, and they should be able to decide how much they enjoyed an encounter, affecting attitude shifts.
Secret dates/relationships: Mostly intended to allow you to date faculty, which is technically against university policy and can't be done as openly. This will probably tie into cheating too. Seeing someone secretly has its own considerations, and discovery should come with consequences.
Condoms, or possibly birth control in general: NPCs already sometimes care about where you finish, so this would be a next logical step. For the time being, this would simulate risk assessment but without actual consequences, but it would lay quite a bit of groundwork for a certain future roadmap item.
Starting personality traits: Perhaps you want to play a character who's shy or insecure from the start, or one with confidence, or one who struggles to resist peer pressure, or one who just tends to be lucky or unlucky. This would enable select inclinations (including some new ones) from the start, and give some mechanical effects to each.
Creating books, sketches, and photographs: Another common request. We'd do some work on secondary skills to enable your character to create things.
There are also a large number of smaller miscellaneous tasks on my monthly update shortlist, but these are the larger additions I've been thinking about. Do you have your own ideas? Let me know! Over the weekend I'll create a poll so you can help me decide which to prioritize.
I appreciate everyone's patience with the River Rat update. Devoting half of each month to monthly updates definitely extends the time that major updates take — but the upside, of course, is a guaranteed update every month, and I think that tradeoff is worth it.
That's all for this week! Another progress report will come next Friday. Until then, have a good weekend, and thank you for your support! This project wouldn't be possible without you!