ViM Studios: Dev Log 10-Jun-2022

It's been a busy week at ViM Studios and we have some very exciting announcements for the future of both of our games!

Playtesting of V0.7 of Prince of Suburbia has gone well without any major issues to be fixed. All that's left now is to build and test the Android version! 

In the past, we have had a 3rd party do our Android port for Prince of Suburbia, but starting with this update we will be creating it ourselves. TheOmega has already created an Android port for Part 1 (V0.55) so we don't anticipate any major delays in creating the port for this update.

Because things have gone more smoothly than we anticipated, we are hopeful we can release V0.7 earlier than planned. We are hopeful that the early release for $40+ Patrons/Subscribers will be in the next few days, putting the official release around next weekend. 

We will post an official announcement once we are sure about the official release schedule for V0.7 of Prince of Suburbia! We can't wait for you to play it. :)

Work has already begun on the next update (V0.75) of Prince of Suburbia which will be a "smaller" update. The update after that was looking pretty big in comparison so it will likely be split into V0.8 and V0.85 in order to minimize the time between releases. 

Overall, we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from our fans about ~2-3 month release cycles, so that will be our goal moving forward, for both games.

With that release wrapping up, Josselyn has been going full-steam on Chapter 2 of A Shot in the Dark. Although it might appear the percentage progress is increasing slowly, please know that lots of work is being done. Chapter 2 currently has 560 still renders and 19,000 words written and it's not even halfway done!

Despite having less scenes than Chapter 1, the scenes in Chapter 2 have significantly more content and it's taking longer to develop than anticipated. Because of this, we have decided to split Chapter 2 into two releases (V0.15 and V0.2). Both releases will stand on their own with ~800 renders, ~20 animations, and ~20,000 words of script.

There are two scenes at the end of Chapter 2 that will have particularly complex renders and animations, and we did not want to rush those scenes for the sake of a faster release cycle. Splitting Chapter 2 into two updates will allow us to stay on track for 2-3 month release cycles without compromising the quality of the content.

We do not anticipate future chapters to be as long as either of these first two chapters. They necessitated more content in order to introduce all the characters and set up the story. While we can't guarantee it won't happen again at some point, Chapter 3 (V0.25) was always planned to be a more "contained" update so we do not anticipate needing to split it up.

With all these changes in mind, here is our tentative release cycle for the rest of 2022. Of course, this is subject to change as issues we haven't anticipated arise! We are committed to getting quality content to you as quickly as our small team can, and being transparent if anything changes.

A Shot in the Dark, 1st half of Chapter 2 (V0.15) - July/August

Prince of Suburbia, V0.75 - August/September

A Shot in the Dark, 2nd half of Chapter 2 (V0.2) - September/October

Prince of Suburbia, V0.8 - October/November

A Shot in the Dark, Chapter 3 (V0.25) - November/December

Prince of Suburbia, V0.85 - December/January

As you can see, it's going to be a busy year, but we are excited! As always, thank you to all of our Patrons, Subscribers, and fans who have made this possible.

-ViM Studios