3/22 Status Update

It's a new week and we now like in a post Netoria-Tactics-On-Steam world. How has this changed things here at Apollo Seven Games?

Netoria Tactics has performed pretty far above my expectations on Steam. I was making this as a sort of tip jar and expected around 500 units sold lifetime. Well that's not what happened. Instead it has performed more like an actual game release. Way more people are willing to pay $10 for some bonus content in this otherwise free game than I expected. The game sold over 550 copies in the first week, let alone lifetime.

Based on this and some other recent events I'm going to change my plans a bit. For around two years now my pipeline has been use Patreon funds to make NSFW game, make a SFW conversion of that game, sell it on Steam. Well that seems completely unnecessary at this point. Netoria Tactics sold better in week one than The Monster Within did and The Monster Within was waaaaaaaay more time intensive and expensive to produce. New plan is just make NSFW games with Patreon funds, sell it on Steam.

Unfortunately AtMoF has been a casualty of the old model. Lots has been said about the lack of integration of the sexual content into the gameplay compared to Netoria Tactics and a large part of that was an intentional design choice. The game has an option to remove anything naughty in the settings and everything. I'll still make the SFW Steam version, because it'll be very easy to do. The integration of the autobattler gameplay and the more visual novel storytelling ended up being less than the sum of its parts.

Maybe the solution is to just separate them. Make a visual novel based on the existing writing and art and have the autobattler be a separate thing with the same characters. I thought that the fact that players were able to choose what scenes to watch or not would let people play with all the characters, but that's not what happened. The actual play pattern ended up with people never choosing the characters who had fetishes they didn't like. This caused big problems with the gameplay. I think the game will honestly play a lot better without any of that content at all. Without the scenes it would flow better, and there'd be no incentive to not use certain characters. On the visual novel side, with the autobattler gone there can be a lot more writing content with less breaks to let you get to know the characters. So I think splitting the two components into their own separate things might actually be a good idea. The resulting games would be much easier and faster to make than producing a whole new game from scratch.

Here are my priorities right now:

• Make more Netoria content and continue work on Netoria Tactics 2. Netoria 2 will now be my main project with the most time and resources devoted to it.

• Finish Naked Ambition, probably put it on Steam as is. No more Clothed Ambition. Maybe a Naked Ambition Gold though?

• Finish the last few updates for AtMoF, then put a SFW version up on Steam under the same GMO Free Games label as The Monster Within.

• Visual Novel with AtMoF characters?

• Come up with a new game to come out when all of the above is done and Netoria Tactics 2 is the only project I have left.

It's an interesting time here at Apollo Seven Games because on one hand, some stuff I invested a lot into pretty much flopped. But out of nowhere the little side thing I made playing around in a terrible engine ended up being a big hit. I'm not so egotistical that I won't listen to the people and what they enjoy. And the people want Netoria Tactics, fine with me.

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