Update - A Shizu message

tl;dr - I'll be trying a release strategy involving having bigger "major" releases and smaller "minor" releases in order to better tackle big tasks that take longer.

This week's image

Here's another phone message picture. I've enhanced this to 4K so click on it for the full detail. If you're a keen observer and you've been following my previous comments about my method, you might have guessed that this is Shizu's alternative Genesis 8 character model, which I use for certain specific poses and close ups where her main Aiko 4 model won't work well.

The nice thing about these phone message pictures is that they're pretty quick and easy to make, for the most part. They're not the most impressive images in the game, but I think they still work pretty well in context. I know as update images they're not always the most impressive either, but don't worry, I'm still making more fancy ones too. I'm just not up to the point of showing anything like that right this minute.

Trying out a slightly more sophisticated release strategy

My general approach so far in developing PAT and PAL before it is that I've just put out a monthly release with whatever work in it that I've been able to finish that month. This year I've taken also to setting content I've got ready to go aside for future months if I think a release already has enough in it, because that buys me time later to work on stuff that might be less interesting as a release feature (bugs, other technical things or scenes that are necessary but not particularly exciting as such).

I'll note I've always tried to make it clear that I don't exactly promise to put out a release each month - I just try to. That's because I want to keep the option open to just take a month off if I have to spend extra time on something really tricky, although I've only actually done that a couple of times. Even so, I did see patron numbers drop a bit after those and at least one survey that noted "releases aren't that frequent" even though I'd only skipped the one month and been transparent in updates in advance about why I was going to do it.

The problem, though, is that some features really don't lend themselves very well to a monthly cycle. It's quite hard to tackle the task of some of the major breakthrough releases without taking some extra time on them. It's not always clear that game development is best served by having to show some kind of playable results every month.

Major releases and minor releases

What I'm planning, therefore, is to allow myself to make "major releases" and "minor releases". I'll try a pattern of one major then one minor for now. Major releases will include the bigger stuff, new features or characters, for example, while minor releases will just include a modest update of easier to produce (but fun) smaller content bites. This could be stuff like phone messages, cards, new conversation options or maybe short new scenes - enough to make the release feel satisfying but nothing very ambitious, because I'll still be focusing mainly on the next month's release.

I don't actually expect this to mean less content for you overall - it's just a more managed way for me to roll it out, because it gives me more breathing room and is a little more organised.

EDIT: So since writing this up I've actually mostly finished the content I've got planned for the December release and... well, it's not all that minor. It's actually a pretty solid, normal release. So yay? I guess you might not see much difference for now, but I do still plan to start following this approach sooner or later.

What do you think about the new release strategy idea? Let me know in the comments!