8/9 Status Update

You might notice that I changed the banner for the page this week. That's because my page got banned for having a banner that was too sexy and I had to make an emergency change. Patreon has a pretty tense relationship with its NSFW creators. Their terms of service changes fairly often and while I don't think I break them at the moment, who knows when that will change. So this platform is a bit of a ticking time-bomb.

With that said, I'd like to draw attention again to my Subscribestar page. The same content gets posted there as does here. If you're willing, I'd like as many people as possible to transfer their pledges over to that platform. I know it's a bit of a hassle, but who knows when the gaze of the mods will slide over this page again and the ban will be permanent? Again, nothing I do now should warrant such a ban, but the contract with Patreon is one sided. They can change their terms at anytime and their is nothing I can do about it.

So again: GO HERE

You'll find the same post there minus all this stuff about switching platforms. And now to our regularly scheduled update...

The small demo I talked about is getting pretty close to being ready. That three level chunk is fully playable, but there's still work to do before I show it to people. Since this is the beginning of the game, getting the pacing and characterization right is very important. That means lots of editing and rewriting chunks. As you may have noticed, the further into games I get, the less editing I tend to do. That's not exactly a good trend, but it is what ends up happening.

There's also the matter of finding the right numbers to make the gameplay fun. Once baselines are established, it's all about making tweaks to make things a little stronger or weaker. But at the start like this, numbers are up in the air. Around how much HP should characters have? 20? 50? I already have a pattern established with Netoria 1, but I'm trying not to let that constrain me too much. With no levels the pattern of starting with small numbers growing into large numbers is broken. In theory, large numbers at the beginning mean more room to tweak things and have differences between different enemies and different characters. We'll see, that stuff needs to be worked out with playtesting and time.

Another thing I need to get right at the start of the game is the first few scenes between characters. These establish the whole nature of their relationship, so getting that foundation right is important. For example, I've re-written the first few Shahrazad-Azar scenes multiple times. This is a rather tricky one as it's the central NTR plotline in a game named after NTR. This isn't a "haha, I'm gonna steal your girl, I have big penis" kind of game. It needs to be more grounded and believable that Shah would break off the relationship she already has for this guy. And in the same vein Azar needs to act in sympathetic ways, he's not the villain of the story he can even be the hero if you choose. It's all a balancing act that takes time to perfect.

As for other characters, Zaman has been the easiest to write. The baseline quest is mostly about him after-all. The depth to his character is about how he reacts to future situations. At the start he's in the best place of all the characters, despite being kicked out of the royal family. That just means he gets to go on a fun road trip with his friends to get his title back. The real meat of his character is going to be breaking him down later in the story and exploring his insecurities.

In terms of writing, Vashti has been the biggest surprise. She was the least fleshed out at the start of the process, but I've had lots of fun writing her. Usually in my writing process I don't give the characters lots of detail before I start, that all comes out when they start talking to each other. For example, in Netoria 1 Gwen was a much more straightforward NTR girlfriend at the start, all the promiscuity and her bandit past came out in the writing process. I'd say so far Vashti has had the most benefits from this. I think she will probably turn out as the most interesting character of the main four.

As for how Vashti manages to wrestle Zaman away from Shahrazad...

She got big boobies. Of course it's not as simple as that, but the initial setup is much more straightforward than Shah-Azar. We're talking about a guy here and a woman who's much more confident in her actions than Azar is. Less emotion mumbo-jumbo and more making him think with his dick. At least at the start, things get more complected with them later. But we're still talking the first three levels here. Big boobies is about as far as we get with those.

I think I can have the demo ready in a few weeks, and then I need to think about how I release it. It will almost certainly be a Patreon/Subscribestar exclusive. Maybe do a $10 release and a $5 release a week later with a little more polish? I still need to be giving out some kind of higher tier rewards during the development process, I want people to get their money's worth. If I really want people to switch to Subscribestar, I could even put the demo only on there. But since this is the very first look at the game and this is the most malleable it will ever be I want to get as many eyeballs on it and as much feedback as possible, which means releasing it on Patreon too. I'm not sure, we'll see.

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