Post prologue roadmap (for great success!)

First, I'd like to thank all the backers for taking the time to make suggestions yesterday, I appreciate it. And like I said, I'm still here plugging away at it. I worked on it yesterday, I'll do some more today, and I'll be working on it this weekend when most of you are playing No Man's Sky, no doubt. 

So, the prologue is done, and some of you have seen what the game looks like afterwards, so I thought now would be a good time to talk about the plans for development from here.

In terms of major coding jobs, there is just the shops left to do. All the castle mechanics, event system, player stats, equipment, etc. coding is done and dusted, and while it might need some adjustment at a later point, it won't require major work. This is mostly invisible work, because it takes up time and players don't really notice because it doesn't add length to the game, but there is now a solid framework in place which will help a lot going forward (even simple things, like functions that perform DC skill checks).

Moving on to the game itself, I have been listening to what a lot of you have been saying, and as result I have decided to focus on first making a simpler version of the game that can be completed, and then adding additional features if the interest continues. To that end, I've decided to collapse the six explorable lands into one general explore option. You'll still visit each one, you just won't have the choice which as planned. By doing this, it vastly reduces the amount of events the game needs in order to facilitate a full playthrough, and obviously also lowers the amount of work (and development time) needed as a result. Once that is done, if people are still enjoying the game, we can look at adding things like even more events, extra ending paths, dungeons, nemesis', other PCs, etc.

Asset priority is currently new sprites and backgrounds to round out the castle (currently being worked on), and then sex scenes for the new characters.  Once those are done, I'll look at adding some new locations/characters, probably gauge interest in which character backers want more scenes for, etc. If funding does eventually improve to the point I can hire Hikari, then I'll start adding illustrations for equipment, and non-sex CGs for events. 

My main focus at the moment is to work on events until there is a good chunk (an hour or so) of post prologue game to play. As I'm doing that, I'll also be adding story elements as I go, hopefully rounding things out a bit. If I can add a few a week, which shouldn't be a problem, it won't take too long to get to that point. 

Anyway, no rest for the wicked.