We crossed the 4-digit boundary! And an announcement about costumes.

I'm so happy we managed to reach over $1000 per month! Thank you guys so much! This is a huge benchmark for me, and I honestly am a little surprised we hit it. I had faith we'd hit it eventually, but it wasn't long ago that we just hit $800 (and I was amazed by that, too), so I was thinking it would take at least another update. This update has had a really long tail, though, in terms of people joining up a pretty long time after the update actually came out.

This is an enormous benchmark, not just because we rolled over into a 4-digit long number, but also in terms of what it represents. This $1000 figure puts me into "real job" territory (not that I don't take the game seriously); that's above minimum wage where I live based on the amount of hours I put into this project on a weekly basis. Now, if you've followed this game for a while, you'll know that I actually put almost all the money from the Patreon back into the game's development, buying assets and services, and paying for artwork. While I'll still be spending a significant amount of the money in that way, this level of funding does more or less mean I will to start paying myself, it's more money than I can spend on development, and that's awesome!

Now there is an elephant in the room: if you've been on Patreon for a bit, you'll know that when you hit the end of a month, subscriptions always drop off. So on May 1st, this post will have aged a bit, and we'll probably be well below $1000 for a few weeks at least. That's not really that big of a deal, I just want to address it in this post in case someone is reading it in May so they don't think I'm crazy or that the game is "dying." It is what it is, but we'll gain that ground back easy enough.

An Announcement

I was gonna save this announcement until I had something to show for it, but I want to do it now to mark the occasion. I always consider things to be up in the air until I have deliverables, so don't take this as a promise, and there is no ETA, but one thing I keep getting asked for over and over again is costumes.  

I have commissioned our artist to create a set of cosmetic outfits for the game. Now, these are purely cosmetic, and NPCs will still only react to nudity, and you won't be required to wear outfits for any activities or anything, but you'll be able to change your outfit in the wardrobe, and the player portrait and status images will reflect your choices. You'll also be able to mix and match, with each outfit featuring separate body, leg, and head pieces. If you're not wearing a body piece, the game will consider you naked. As a start there will only be three sets, but if you guys like them, I'll solicit $10 patrons for suggestions for additional outfits. Cosmetics will only apply to the hand-drawn art. I currently have no plans to add any cosmetics to the renders.

These cosmetics will be unique to the patron edition of the game, at least for the foreseeable future. It's the generous support of patrons that makes any of this, not just the art, but the game itself, possible. I love my free edition players and if you can't give, you should never feel pressured to. Hell, if you just don't really want to give, that's okay, too. Succubus Stories will always be a free game, but in this case, I think what amounts to visual-only cosmetics is a good place to draw the line between free and paid content.

I might change my mind, but right now I plan for all cosmetics to just be available in the game from the start, without needing to be unlocked or anything like that.

Another Patch Is Coming

I'm sure many of you are eager to hear about what's coming in v0.13 and for me to start working on it, however, I plan to release one more patch to v0.12. Basically, I want to update the in-game links to point to the new wiki instead of the old game manual, and I don't want to have to wait for the next update to do that. However, I'm already working on some stuff, so what I'm gonna do is finish up a new request, some activity additions, and some additional romance content, and release it all in a patch. It's basically side content that was intended for v0.13 but it's coming early. I have no ETA on this patch except that it'll probably be before the end of the month. I could check out an older version of the game and just change the wiki stuff and release that with no new content, but that's no fun.

Anyway, we'll talk a little more about this upcoming patch and about v0.13 later. Thanks guys! Talk more soon.