9/27 Status Update

Today was supposed to be when I put out the second Netoria 2 demo, but that's been delayed a day due to some bugs found during playtesting that I need a little extra time to finish fixing.

Overall development is ahead of schedule. Yes, that's right, ahead. Has that ever happened before? I can't think of another instance. Usually it's pushing timelines further and further back due to some delay or another. But so far things are going really well. Will the game launch before my January target date? That I'm not so sure about. It's often the last bits of work that take the longest. Maybe I'll get all the levels and scenes done by December, but fixing things and editing and polish might take all of that last month.

Or maybe not! Who knows. What I do know is I've got art, I've got writing, I've got game design, and it's all packaged together in a way that seems to be working pretty well. With demo 2 almost done, I'm thinking I might as well do a demo 3 as well. Push it forward another three levels and let people play up until 9. Then after that I can make the final batch of 3 to bring act 1 to its conclusion and have that be the first public release. Nice and symmetrical. Does symmetry make for good decision making? Probably not, but it makes my brain feel nice.

 Look at that, it's a grope! Yes, all the grope art is now in the game. A word of warning though, the groping system is not as much of a focus of Netoria 2 as it was in Netoria 1. There's still systems to incentivize it, and it's what determines what routes happen, but not every system and character is designed around it this time. I rarely do sequels at all, and I don't really see the point of them if I'm just dong the same thing again. Well, I see it from the perspective of giving people more of what they already like, but it's not all that fun. Even if I am making a slight profit this year, these games are still mostly made for my personal enjoyment. And I personally enjoy exploring new design space and trying new things.

 And speaking of exploring new things, that's what Zaman is doing in this scene. This happens after the demo 2 cutoff unfortunately, but still in act 1. TF is a much bigger focus this time around. It was kind of a side-note in Netoria 1 and in the sequel it's a significant focus of some POVs. And Zaman's not the only one doing some exploring...

 Shahrazad is giving her genderbent form a test-drive as well. She's less gungho on touching her new naughty-bits though. This one takes place after level 7, one level after the new demo ends. But based on the pace I've been on, you won't have to wait too much longer for these scenes and more.

The above are both POV scenes, so you only get them if you're playing on that character's POV. This means I have to do a lot less "quarantining" like I did in Netoria 1. In that game female Carywn had very limited interactions because it was too complex and would requite too much writing to reflect how other routes might change with Carwyn as a girl. But because of the POV system I don't have to worry about how boy Shahrazad interacts with girl Zaman for example. This does limit the number of routes in each POV, but we're already talking four POVs, each with a few main routes in them, that's a lot of possibilities already. There's a lot of systems to encourage replayability, but are people really going to care if there's 12 outcomes instead of 20? I don't think limited resources should really be devoted towards making that 15th playthrough being better.

That's all for this week. As always, thank you for your continued support.