Progress Update & Changes to Public Release & New Patreon Tier

Hey everyone,

I'll be pushing the new update to next month. It'll include a short portion of the story, but will mostly focus on new gameplay features like events that give players positive or negative status (an improvement from the old system).

Mercenaries will also make a comeback possibly allowing players to engage in fights themselves.

I am presently creating scenarios in addition to the preexisting 5-8 ones we had before I disabled that feature.

I probably disable the experience gained from the fights as it makes it hard to control the narrative-based exploration maps.

Maybe I will replace this with alternate rewards.

Currently, I'm testing how to combine mercenaries mechanics with player versus NPC battles, so we will see what works best.

Kaede might also have her own event related to working as an oiran while Mei and Fudeyo have to wait a bit longer.

Also, multiple difficulty settings will be available.

In addition, I'm making some adjustments to public releases. When I began creating Wicked Rouge I just did it without much thought into my plans. With no prior knowledge of coding or game design, I was driven purely by my enthusiasm for the project and creation cycle. I loved showing people what I made.

Developing a message textbox with the option for hiding, saving, and loading was a big accomplishment for me considering that few games had on this engine as it wasn't built for that.

It started as a hobby with no expectation of success. The javascript of the RPGM MV engine posed a great challenge, I tried to extend its functionalities beyond basic top-down RPG capabilities.

I was having a hard time resolving bugs with RPGM MV, like animations stuttering, because the game engine had been abandoned by its development team, leaving it stuck with obsolete nw.js with multiple issues.

Even so, I'm proud of what I managed to build with the help and encouragement from many people. It's not perfect but it's still something I created.

My game was both accepted and praised as well as criticized but throughout the entire Refine rework, I feel things with some communities have gone for the worse.

Whenever Wicked Rouge is released to the public for free, a huge wave of criticism follows. It's strange that there are so many worse games out there that don't get this much negativity.

No matter how much I/we improve the game, my/our efforts are disregarded. Instead, every little detail is scrutinized and used to explain why my/our work is bad.

I wasn't able to achieve some of my goals due to limited funds or a lack of technical proficiency.

Despite this, I gave it my all and still did the best I could do.

It's disheartening to work on the game for so many hours and then has certain communities simply gripe, nag, and whine about the free update.

I know I'm not perfect, I know the game is not perfect. But we're just a couple of people working on a very very tight budget. Some features may be present in the final version, while others will be scrapped due to financial constraints or lack of coding experience.

Every time after the free release, I never fail to hear those complaints.

Regrettably, we don't have the resources to create a top-notch gaming experience like those of professional studios.

I would love for us to be able to produce games comparable to top developers like “Alice Soft”, whom I had tried to imitate in the early days of my game design, but we are not a studio on their level yet.

For a while, I always wanted to be open and share my game with anyone who was interested. However, after much thought, I have decided to change my approach.

It is simply draining, so I decided to limit my interactions with certain communities.

Going forward, we will not be releasing any new free public versions. This will apply to our future projects as well.

But, for those who like our work and would like to play our game, we will offer a reasonable-priced option of only ~2.5-3$, which will grant you access to patron releases that are slightly delayed compared to the higher tiers.

I hope this isn't too much of an issue.

I'm discontinuing the $1 tier of support, though anyone who's at this level will still remain as "Copper Hearts" with its tiny bonuses, it just won't be visible on Patreon anymore.

$1 tiers are most useful for outside parties. Many creators disable this kind of tier, due to the amount of money that supporters waste on additional costs to third parties that we creators don't actually benefit from.

Anyways...

I need to reexamine many things I neglected in the past and plan out how I will move forward with video game development, but work on Wicked Rogue is still going on and I want to guarantee you all that I will do my best.

That's it for now,

Thank you for listening.

-fidless