Roadmapping 2023: Agents of Heels’ Path Ahead

Hey-ho beWildernauts and beWilder fans/fannettes, who’s got some rowdy raunchy energy all built up and a hankering for hot bods in thigh leathers then? Just us? No, that can’t be at all… It’s not, we know it! Recently we had ourselves a new year milestone, and not just the one on Jan 1 either, but we turned a full 5 years as beWilder! Even more with AoH included too. We’ve yet to swing up a celebration post on that, but what matters is we’re into a whole new year of development too. That sounds like the perfect time to take a step back, run a keen eye over the state of our Nat’s misadventures, and make it known what our intentions are for the next bunch-a months on the horizon. Agreed? Cools. We’ll get to Noemi’s side in a few short days, but for now lets get our Heels on and make some milestones known! Here’s our desires for 2023 and AoH.

2022 – Getting Here

Last year we laid out a guide ahead much like this one, and we made some good steps towards completing it, at least in the first half of the year. We wanted to clear off the remaining Bad Nat pre-Mission lead in content, and we did! We wanted to get rolling on Mission #3, and we did! We wanted progress for all Nat’s… which we did not. We had our first big tripped hurdle with the beginning of Mission #3, which being honest, we’ve not yet really steadied up from. That was the last of AoH’s progress too, in part because Noemi was voted in for a double dose, but that too came with a hangover too (more on that in her own post). Most of our plans for Nat last year could have been summed up in “Get the game as close to the end as possible”, and with still a lot to do there, it’s pretty much what you’d expect for this year too. Get her done as many ways as possible, and get the game closer to finished too.

That’s the quick sum up in a nutshell, but what about the details? What exactly does the path ahead look like? What will we be doing…? Here’s what we mean.

A Change in Practice

First and foremost we have an small announcement, which will likely come as an obvious move given the last year or two. We can no longer expect to be able to handle a 4-week / 1-month dev cycle for either game, even at the best of times, due to all sorts of reasons (higher standards than when we began, older equipment that’s held out since our first release, more attention to life balance, etc… etc.). From this year on we’ll be expecting 6-week cycles for our games, so we can set better expectations for fans, not pull ourselves too thin and deadline stressed, and give ourselves the time we actually need.

Now… Admittedly, based on recent efforts, 6 weeks is still something we’re having trouble meeting, but we want to and aim to get over our troubles and find ourselves back to a new, acceptable normal again as soon as we possibly can, and when we do, 6 weeks is what we’ll need. Hopefully that’ll mean all the fans will be spared a lot more posts of “it’ll be on the Xth of the month” when it ends up being the Yth or the Zth, you know?

Still though, as we want to be doing our best for us, you and the digital girls/world we’ve got, we’re going ahead with this Roadmap with that 6-week cycle in mind. Take all this as good faith aspiration of goals, but temper it with a pinch of realism’s salt, yeah? As things change, so to shall we pivot and make clear as the year comes. Now then, to the actual game development plans!

Top Line Road Map

As we’ve been saying for some time now, “We’re in the endgame of Agents of Heels”, and it’s truer now than ever, right? All that’s left in the game is Mission #3, and to a lesser extent conclusion and game element polish after too. However, with the changes above, needing 50% more time than we used to schedule, even theoretically, that means we get 50% less actual release opportunities, or simpler, we expect 4 AoH releases (v0.26-v0.29) this year rather than 6. Even with 6, getting content complete would possibly be a bit of a stretch at this point, so with 4 we’ll get mostly there but not all.

Where we last left things, we’d just started off Mission #3 for Good Nat, and we’ve gotten her about 50% of the way through it towards the finale section, roughly. This year we plan the same for Corrupt and Bad Nat as our first half of possible content batches, and after that we’ll use the remaining 2 hits to get the other 50% of the way for two of those Nats too. It’s likely we’ll keep to our usual rota of Good/Heels Corrupt->Total Corrupt->Bad Nats then too, especially since that’d mean that all Nats get content this year and that Corrupt Nat (most people’s favourites, would you say?) gets most of the focus. That’s subject to change if better inspiration strikes or circumstances change, but that’s our top line Roadmap then, as it stands now and may it hold true.

Scenes and Content

We’ve covered the Macro outlook then, so here we’ll touch on the specifics a little, without spoilers we dare to hope. As we’ve said above this year will be all Mission #3 scenes and content, should nothing change for the drastic. We’re all in on that.

Mission #3 comes in 3 parts for each Nat however, as it’s pretty damn big for a finish. There’s a lot of consequences and splits to resolve after all. We’ve already seen what Part 1 is like, at least from Good/Heels Nat’s perspective, and this year we’ll see how Total Corrupt and Bad Nat will tackle the same (or the inverse as it may be) challenges with the decisions they’ve made and the assets (or lack of them) they may have. We won’t say here and now how they’ll do it. We’ll show you between now and Summer time. Until then you’ll just have to live with the teases from the Pre-Mission scenes!

The latter half will see more of the same kind of action, live or die troubles, and sexual interplay as what we’ve seen so far in the Mission #3 content, but in a different environment, and with more of the elements of the game thus far to resolve and tie off. It’s a bridge to get us from where we are to what we’re calling the “finale” section, where the final choices and consequences will come down on Nat and her future will be out of your hands (at least in this game!). The most recent version has even shown us a taste of the sexploits injected into the middle of the action, and that was for the straight and narrow Heels Nat’s take on things, so imagine what Corrupt or Bad Nat might do on their way there? No spoilers!

Ultimately, our goal is to get within one spurt of this “finale” section by the end of the year so that next year we’ll be well within our senses to lay a stake in the ground and set an end date for real. It won’t be an end, but a new beginning… For most Nats, maybe…

Post-Content Completion and Gameplay

Unfortunately, due to last years shortfall, we’re still a way’s away from scene completion, and so it’ll be all of our focus for the versions ahead. We won’t get any real time to clean up and shape out the gameplay and the end of game “American Graffiti” style outro ends where the wider beWilderverse outcomes can be shown off.

We’d like to touch on what we would do if we had time, and what we will likely do next year, so people are aware of what’s on our wider radar… But… Well, since we won’t be acting on it, it’s probably better off left out for now. For those interested, we did actually list a lot in our last Roadmap, which hasn’t changed much at all since then under this heading, so if you have an interest… Here it is for you.

Simply put, we know where the game’s technical shortcomings are and we do intend a good polish, but it’s not the best use of time in 2023. We’ve got ground to catch up on!

Too Long, Didn’t Read

And so, it’s been another big talky post with only a little visual sexy to see. We understand is some skipped parts or all, but then again this is an important, once a year post. Still, there’ll be plenty of time to digest the details, but for those in a rush, here’s the summary for now:

- 2023 will be a year of gaining back ground according to our aims. Between making sure our misadventures with Nat are impactful, action-orientated, and damn sexy as per expectations of us and the hot bods we work with, and accounting for the change to a 6-week over 4-week cycle of production, it’s within reasonable expectations to tackle content-content-content!

- We expect to hit 4 full releases this year, v0.26 through v0.29, all things going smoothly.

- We’re aiming to get 50-60% of the remaining Mission #3 content covered this year, mostly focusing on Corrupt Nat and some content for both Bad and Heels too, so that come this time next year we can realistically lay out the last Roadmap for AoH, as bittersweet as that is.

- We won’t have time for gameplay revamps or engine updates this year as we focus wholly on getting as close to content complete as possible. That’ll come next year. That’s best done post-game anyway, technically speaking and also because who want to wait on that?

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And that, is as they say, that. We’ve laid out our aims as best and as articulate as we can, given all our best efforts and good-faith expectations. Once again we’re in the endgame squeeze, but here’s to taking some dedicated steps forward and delivering the quality expected of our first game and the name “beWilder”! Now you know what’s on our minds for our (sometimes) heroic and (always) hot heroine Natasha for 2023. All that’s left is to do the same for Noemi soon, and get on in there to make it happen! So then…

Be suiting up for some heroic efforts and beWilder!