Big Picture, goals and ambitions

So, quick update on the game, hard at work on the next update. Still a little too soon to talk about it in more detail, hope I can do that soon, but I've included a preview image up above. Here we see Sarah at night, dressed in a new (optional) outfit, meeting with Razaphel the spirit.

Bigger picture

The main thing that I wanted to talk about with this post is talking about the bigger picture development for TSSR. This year feels like it has gone by in a flash, and while it's still a few weeks away, we're rapidly approaching the end of the year.

In the past I've spoken a bit about my plans for the development of TSSR, and specifically that one of my goals is to not make it drag on forever. A lot of games turn into these endless projects to keep people engaged, but my goal has always been to keep offering people a concrete path to development, and a reasonable timeline for completing the game. I think that is both the best way to develop a quality product, and I also think it's the most fair towards you, the fans/players of the game.

So, right now, my writing on the game has been incredibly productive this year. I've managed to build up a solid amount of writing work and have managed to hit my target and even go beyond it. To give you a little insight, I have about 400.000 words of what I call 'unproduced writing'. That's story that has been written, but isn't in the game because there isn't any art for it. This goes along all the main storylines, as well as along some of the medium and small storylines of the game. To give you an idea, the average novel is about 80.000 words, so we're talking 5 books worth.

The unproduced writing takes Sarah's story for each main storyline up to the start of what I consider the last act. That means right now my priority is mainly aimed at writing the final act of each of these storylines. A rough estimate would be that it might take me another 200-300k words to write all the final acts, bringing the main stories to their conclusion. With my current pace, I think I should be hitting that target around early next year.

However, as I continue to develop the game, I've come to accept that the obstacles to the speed of the game's production likely isn't writing. The chokepoint right now is more art. This isn't a dig at my artist, who does incredible work at an incredible pace. It's simply a reality that TSSR has always and will continue to be a very art-heavy game.

Taking all of this into account, I feel very confident that I will be able to finish up the main stories next year, but that producing them to the standard of quality that I want, will take some more time. My ideal goal would be to produce and release all the main stories by next year, but I'll be honest that it will be a challenge. An exciting one, but still a challenge.

I hope this larger than usual update gives you all a little insight on how the production is going. It's mostly good news, but I always want to be open and honest with you all on what you can expect in the coming year.

Broad outlines and goals

These are my goals in order of importance:

- Write and produce the art for all the main stories (princess, warrior, mage)
- Write and produce medium/small stories (Crime, Sailor, Life in Rahayal)
- Have the main artist do a pass-over on all existing art, to create a unified feel and style, while also expanding on the art-per-scene
- Finding someone that can do audio for the entire game, appropriate scene music etc
- Final quality of life additions, such as a working gallery and possibly a scene-replayer, and an in-game guide to the story.

The first goal clearly has the highest priority, but this also shows that even when I've fully completed the game, I still intend to keep slowly improving it on other areas as well. Over time, the game can slowly shape into what I hope it always could have been, an attempt at creating a game that takes serious the balance between the erotic component and the story component.