Post Tai's Route Development Plans + Plans for 0.59

Howdy Patrons!

Hope you all enjoyed the conclusion of Tai's Route! Apologies again that it took so long to wrap up. I'm dropping in today to give you all a semi-brief rundown on what our plans are going forward and to give you an idea of what to expect from our upcoming releases.

At this point in time, we've narrowed down our focus to three specific chunks of new content. These aren't all we have planned mind you, we're just focusing on the most important things for the time being before we get distracted on any more sidequests.

1) The Polyamorous Route

The first of these 'chunks' is of course the Polyamorous Route featuring Axel, Dom and Russell as romantic options. This route will be receiving the lion's share of attention and content additions in the immediate future, though we'll be working on all three of these things more or less in tandem. The specifics of this route have grown and changed over time as the specific aspects of it took shape, and I know not everyone is on the same page in terms of what exactly it's going to be. So, what better time than now to share those details and, with any luck, generate some juicy juicy hype?

As its name implies, this is a route where a polyamorous relationship is possible. At this point in time, selecting either Dom or Axel at the route selection will send you down this path and introduce you to Russell, the third romantic option in this route. Note my use of terms such as 'possible' and 'option.' Those are deliberate! The Polyamorous Route will be the first of Sileo's routes to utilize and branching narrative with a variety of different paths and ultimate conclusions. Significant portions of the route have multiple chapters running simultaneously meaning repeat playthroughs may result in a significantly different experience where as much as 50% of the route is comprised of scenes you've never seen before! Furthermore, many scenes will include altered events, dialogue and more besides based on the choices you've made and how each of the three love interests feel about those decisions!

Speaking of endings, I know there are plenty of people out there who are interested in one or more of these characters but are not interested in the polyamorous component of this route. Good news! It will be possible to pursue each of these characters (Axel, Dom, or Russell) alone with each character having their own ending under these circumstances!

Do be aware however that a large chunk of this route's content revolves around a polyamorous relationship, and as such, pursuing a character in isolation will result in an earlier conclusion. Not a bad ending mind you, just a quicker one. Seeing the 'true' ending will hinge heavily on the choices you've made along the way, and, of course, will run through to Day 20.

Now, with this route being complex and branching with a ton of unique content you won't see on a single run, the scale and scope of the route have been adjusted accordingly to ensure it remains manageable and doesn't take nearly four god damn years to finish... *cough.* On a typical playthrough, you can expect to see 2 - 4 chapters for each in-game day, however most days will have one or more alternative chapters based on choices you've made that you won't see until you play through once again making different choices. The overall route is much more focused on the specific story unfolding between this quartet of characters with background stories like those populating Tai's Route being kept to a minimum. This route will also lack the kind of lore exposition featured in Tai's Route. Once again, the focus is squarely on these characters - everything else takes a backseat. Overall, our hope is that the overall pacing and story breadth in this route more closely mirrors that of Diego's Route, albeit with dramatically better writing and storytelling.

2) Intro Remake

The second thing we're focusing on will be the Intro Remake which we began work on quite some time ago now. As of right now, Day 1 is fully playable via the 'Tales from Woodcrest' screen on the main menu, however it is our intention that eventually all five days of the intro will have been remade to this same standard and will replace the existing introduction as the standard New Game experience.

One of the plans we have for the completed intro remake is that the current granular route selection method will instead be replaced by a more diegetic system that determines your route based on a myriad of choices made during the introduction. This of course is a tentative plan, because we'd rather have a granular system than one that might not always give the intended result, and with characters being introduced across different days, it may require some experimentation to get it working as well as we'd like, but all going well, we'll be able to make this a reality.

At this point in time, we're still hashing out the specifics for each of the remaining days of the intro remake as while we had plenty of great ideas and interesting material for Day 1, we have considerably less so for the remaining days. We want to ensure that Days 2 - 5 maintain a similar level of quality and excitement as the first day, so it might be a little bit before new chapters in the intro remake are released.

3) Lukas' Route

Lukas' route is in an interesting situation at the moment, and this is as good a time as any to talk about it.

There was a point in time where Lukas' route was fairly well planned out and largely ready for work to begin on it. A number of the ideas this route was built around have existed since the development of Diego's route, and a lot of the supplementary details that fill it out into a comprehensive and complete feeling route are things such a plot threads and characters that were introduced or at least hinted at in numerous points throughout Tai's Route. Many of the most critical details however long predate Tai's Route and thus have served as a foundation that subsequent ideas have been built upon. Back when these initial bricks were first laid, Lukas' route was intended to revolve around a very dark and challenging topic.

However, the more time that passes, the more I feel it's something left well enough alone. It's a topic for which some number of readers will no doubt have their own experiences and trauma, but I'm not among their number. It isn't my place to touch on such a topic, especially as someone from the outside looking in. Best case scenario, it'll be a subpar yet inoffensive take on the topic. Worst case? I dunno. Probably get cancelled or something. Lol. No, but seriously... It's not my place to comment on such a topic. I don't have the right.

Unfortunately, that topic was at the core of the entire route, and excising it leaves a directionless and muddled series of events with confusing motivations. It's a shame too, because there's a lot of good stuff there.

I have a few ideas on how to proceed. One idea that I'm toying with is working the entire "it isn't my place" element into the story and keeping the topic in without commenting on it, turning it all into a meta narrative about how damaging and insensitive it can be to clumsily weigh in on trauma you have no experience with. There's a few question marks about how exactly certain sections of the plot will be adapted in order to fit with this new approach, but it's a promising idea at the very least. The alternative ideas all involve doing something different entirely, but finding ideas that I like enough to elaborate on in the context of Lukas as a character has proven challenging.

Anyway. It is our hope that in the coming weeks and months, we can nail down exactly what we're going to do here. I know a lot of people are really looking forward to Lukas' route, and I for one am looking forward to it to. We've got some really interesting elements planned for this route (non-problematic ones, I assure you) which will really help the romance with him stand apart as something unique and different compared to all the others. Just bear with!

The Next Few Updates and Beyond

So, with all that laid out, what can you expect in the next few releases? Speaking broadly, both Lukas' Route and the Intro Remake need more time dedicated to their planning and brainstorming before we'll be in a position to push ahead with them. The Poly Route however has no such problems and just needs a final plan developed and finalized. With that said however, a plan doesn't need to be completely set in stone before you can begin, hell, four chapters of the poly route have been playable for almost a year now! With that said, we already know what our next additions are going to be, so this month we've opted to push back the rest of the planning into the next updates development cycle in order to get one more build out the door by the end of the year and to finally deliver an update to the poly route which we hope will get people excited!

So, the 0.59 update will focus primarily on Day 5 of the Poly Route. "Wait!" I hear you say, "I thought day 5 was done in that route!" Sure it is... at least, one possible outcome is.

We'll be adding a number of choices (roughly 3) to the first two chapters which will result in different dialogue, a completely different scene, or a combination of both! Notably, it will now be possible to decline going back to Russell's house, instead choosing to return home to Diego's. And if you do go along with Russell, whether drugs are involved and/or a sexual encounter occurs will be entirely up to you!

I'm also loosely planning to re-edit the Day 5 Poly Route scripts using my new tools to give them the shiniest coat of paint possible, as well as the Day 1 Intro Remake for good measure.

These plans do not currently require any new artwork, so CurryCatz is focused on replacing more stock backgrounds this month. There's only about 6 left in the game, so I'm really hoping we can just be done with them entirely before too long!

As for subsequent updates, we'll ultimately follow the path of least resistance in terms of choosing what content to add. This moreso means that we'll work on whatever thing we have the best ideas for and feel most passionate about. Ideas tend to ripen as we're working on other things, and keeping our workload varied helps to avoid burnout. I expect the poly route will likely see the lion's share of the content additions in the next few updates, but we'll be quietly working on all three behind the scenes. 

I may regret saying this, but there's a part of me that'd really love to debut Lukas' Route in 0.60 as the first update of 2024, but given the uncertain state of that routes plan, that could be a tall order. I dunno. If it doesn't happen, you never saw me say this! If it does, then, uhh... t-told you so! Hah!

The only other thing I should quickly discuss is the other content we've previously discussed but not acknowledged here, notably Diego's Tale and the possibility of his route receiving a remake. The latter is not something I particularly want to focus too much time and energy on until the current crop of content is done. I really want to be able to look back at Sileo with all four of it's routes finished and assess a remake from that perspective. Simply comparing Tai's Route to Diego's, it's easy to see the quality difference, but who's to say the same won't happen with the remaining two? Who's to say that each route won't end up being wildly inconsistent in terms of approach, scale, writing skill, editing style, gameplay or lack thereof, etc etc? I've grown a lot as a writer working on Sileo, and that growth continues, sometimes in ways you might not immediately notice. As a consequence, it's entirely possible no two routes will be anything alike. And if that's the case, is there really a point in redoing one, even if it's the shittiest one? The Intro Remake is different because that's the entire onboarding process for the game as a whole, if that sucks and people bail before they even begin on a route, then the superior quality of those routes is entirely meaningless. A strong and engaging start that puts our best foot forward is a worthwhile pursuit. But remaking Diego's Route? I'm not so sure. That's not me saying we won't do it though, but I'm also not saying we will. Rather we'll assess that once all four routes are done and accessed by a swanky remade intro. 

As for Diego's Tale, that's another thing we've been sitting on for a while and for a variety of reasons. Primarily, with how long Tai's Route took and with the burnout we experienced trying to wrap it up, we put additional content such as Diego's Tale on the backburner to try and make progress on the main stuff and not non-essential fluff. With that said, some development has been done on it with several chapters planned out, sprites for Diego's two brothers and his dad all either finished or very close to finished and more besides. There are some nice ideas here, stuff that would be fairly fun to write... so, I guess I'm keeping it as an ace up my sleeve. If we reach a point where progress just isn't happening on the main content we're focused on and we desperately need to pivot to something different (something that is now more possible with Tai's Route finally done), we might just surprise you by dropping some of it!

...aaand I think that covers everything mostly. If there's anything anyone isn't sure about or whatever, just drop a reply below and I'll let you know what's what. As I said before, we're aiming for 0.59 to release this month, so brace yourselves for one last build in 2023!