Development Update - August 2024

Hi all. Dev update time again… more sane this time!

We’re slowly approaching the release of Chapter 5. I’ve done all the work I need to on it and it will be going to testers & proof-readers very soon!

So, I wanted to take this time to dispel something I’ve seen floating around about the reason for the larger gap between chapter releases this time. I’ve seen a few comments from various people all stating that this release has taken longer because this chapter is “significantly bigger” than previous chapters. This is not true and I don’t want you to have these expectations and then be disappointed upon release.

I haven’t officially timed it yet but at a guess I would say Chapter 5 is more or less the same time as Chapter 4, shorter than 2, longer than 3. As I have previously alluded to, in this chapter you will also have the option to opt out of certain girls’ paths (Evelyn, Amber & Moonsong). You will also be presented with an optional path for Lucía. If you decline any or all of these, your game is going to be significantly shorter in the coming chapters.

So just to be clear here are the girls who will have some form of content (not necessarily sexual) that could be missed by opting out of them.

Chapter 5:

Moonsong
Evelyn
Lucía

Chapter 6:

Evelyn
Amber
Lucía

Chapter 7:

Evelyn
Lucía

Honestly, without going into too much detail for fear of spoilers, at this point I would encourage the “manwhore” playthrough. Yes, that even includes not declining Moonsong and sacrificing the hot scene that comes after (because the emotional Evelyn scene you get in Chapter 3 instead is one of my faves).

Origin Story will ultimately be a harem game… kinda. Do with that as you will.

Now, to address the truth behind the increase in gap between releases. Thanks to some sage advice I received at the very start, I held off on releasing the first chapter until I had a few other chapters already locked and loaded. I was already finishing work on Chapter 3 when Chapter 1 was released. By the time Chapter 5 comes around, I will have finished Chapter 6 and will be working on Chapter 7. I do this because I want to give myself a buffer to be able to keep releasing content consistently.

However, the work is catching up with me, slowly but surely. If I keep releasing every 2 months there will come a time in the future, where the game will have completely caught up on me. If that becomes the case, the ETA for future release dates will no longer be in “2-3 months’ time”, it will be “when it’s ready”. I really don’t want to become George R R Martin.

I would much rather increase the gap between releases a month to give myself that extra buffer to stay on top of it all, so I can keep releasing each chapter at a consistent rate. The difference between 2 and 3 months is significantly smaller than what it may become when the game catches up on me. I would prefer 3 months between releases over 6 months, and I’m sure you guys would to.

I hope that all makes sense. Having seen the shit that some games’ communities and fanbases go through (me included), I just want to be an honest and reliable developer.

Other updates: Chapter 6 is also all fully posed and rendered now, and I’m already almost halfway through all the postwork too. I have not touched the audio or music on this chapter at all yet, so there’s that left to do too. After that it will be the adjustments to the special render galleries and I have 24 weeks of specials locked and loaded ready to fill these with already.

Soon, I will start work on posing Chapter 7. This is the chapter I previously mentioned that I had fucked up on the timeline and somehow missed a day in MC's life, so I have written the content for it more recently than the rest of the story. Some of it is new, some of it is stuff I already had written and pushed forward with some adjustments.

One thing I really wanted to do here was have some more Emerald content because she's been out of play for a while, but the "getting to know you" session with her spoils too much so I'm going to keep it further in the story, where I had originally intended it. And content without getting to know her first now feels unnatural.

I can’t believe I’ve made it this far already. I couldn’t have done it without all your support. Thanks and keep an eye out for Chapter 5 release date updates soon.