8/4 Status Update

It's been a few weeks since the last real one of these so I have a lot to talk about. My battle with Covid is over and I'm back to full game making capacity. Last week I released the new Naked Ambition update making the hiatus time just over a year. So let's start off with that.

The next update will finally be the update to .9. This will expand the timeline to the end of the game, meaning you'll be able to play through the entire thing to the very end. We'll finally get to see if the Princess becomes queen or not! This update contains three major things: the end game crises. the final festival and vote, and Ulric's endings. I'm only doing one path because I want at least one of them to have the full experience and the rest of the stuff is going to be a lot of work. 

After .9, I'll make updates with endings for all the other paths until the game is finally complete. When will that be? I'm not really sure. But I'm committed to it happening without another hiatus. I'm going to slim things down slightly from my original plan to make things easier to actually get done. The end game crises in particular I plan to make more straightforward. They'll be a series of checks and such that have a big effect on the Princess's reputations with minor variations but not that much. What route you're on will give unique options and ways to approach the problem, but won't be radically different. And then once that's done, you'll talk to each of the regency council members in turn, who will have their opinion boosted/lowered based on your reputations, then they vote, and if the Princess gets at least 4/7, she's the queen! If she doesn't, what happens varies wildly between routes.

In general,  each route has two different endings based on if the Princess wins the throne or is disinherited. In Ulric's case, if she loses, she becomes his sex slave. And if she wins the throne, well  let's just say Ulric isn't very happy with the results.  With this system there should be almost 40 endings. They're not super in depth though. The vote happens, there's some dialogue. and then a little bit of epilogue text and some art showing what kind of queen/what kind of life the Princess had as a result. Anything from being the greatest ruler the kingdom has every known, to a paranoid bloodthirsty tyrant, to a revolutionary, to a legendary demon hunter is possible.

Next let's talk about Netoria. Because I've been working so hard on At the Mountains of Friendship, the epilogue update is still a ways off. But that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything for the game or there's not an update coming up. Right now I'm working on a grope update that will contain new gropes. new art for those gropes, and a new replay room just for gropes so you can replay them easily without trying to set up specific conditions in game.

I also managed to make character sprite changes with class changes work finally, so Gwen will now have different art if she's an erotic dancer or a whore.

The new grope art is a mix of old art redrawn to have Gwen specifically as the target, and some new stuff. For example, her skills as an erotic dancer will have specific art for them rather than just being a mix of grope art. 

I also plan to add some gropes between Carwyn and Gwen/Vivian when they're on romantic routes. Just little playful stuff like giving each other quick little kisses in combat or a quick slap on the butt. Overall the idea is to add more variety and consistency to the grope system.

The last game to talk about today is At the Mountains of Friendship. I've been working really hard on this game trying to get it done by this month. And it's looking maybe possible? I'd say the writing is maybe 90% done at this point. I'm trying to polish things up and make the new player experience better. There's a good amount of work to do with things like music, teaching the player how the game works, and small UI issues. I'm also in the process of hiring the final voice actors for the starting 10 girls.

But overall it actually feels like the end is in sight. One thing I might do is launch with girl 12 unavailable. Instead of having it be $10 patrons have girls 12 and 11, $5 patrons have girl 11, and the free version having the starting 10, I might bump things up a tier so $10 patrons have girl 11 and everyone else has to wait. Then after a few weeks, I'll release girl 12 and bump everything down a tier as normal, starting the planned update cycle. This will give me more time to finish girl 12, and also let the poll for girl 13 run without delaying work on her.

I'm really excited to finally get this game in people's hands, I think it's a pretty good one. The sex scenes in particular make me kind of aroused while writing them, which is pretty rare. So I'm taking that as a good sign. I also think it's still fun to play after working on it for over a year which is another good sign. The biggest thing I'm worried about is the tutorial and new player experience. So if I can get that worked out maybe it'll be a hit? Who knows.

That's all for this week. It was a bit of a long one but I had a lot to talk about. As always, thank you for your continued support.