About the Steam release

Firstly, thank you to those who've added the game to your wishlist on Steam. This helps promote the game to more players toward a more significant launch.

The game is scheduled to be released into Early Access in January. It is planned to include the fifth playable day. While the college classes are shorter scenes, there are four classes to set up and render. Any single play-through will only play two of the classes.

Game-wise, the Steam version doesn't change much in code or playing terms, at least initially. The biggest change will be the trophies. They will be integrated with Steam's achievement system. The existing trophy system is dynamic, and trophies can be awarded for any character in the game. With Steam, the achievements need to be defined. I will either need to define a version of each trophy for every character or be more generalized and only award an achievement the first time, regardless of character. This does need a Ren'py update, which will be done for v5.

Steam offers different branches, which can be made private. I will explore whether these could be used for Patreon prerelease access or even a unique build for patrons. If such a system does work, the direct download links will still be available for those who don't use Steam.

As mentioned in the announcement on Discord, Steam keys will be made available for patrons. There is no integration between Patreon and Steam, so this will be a manual process. For tiers with a pledge amount less than the Steam price, the key will be available when the total pledge equals or exceeds the Steam price. This is to prevent an exploit of pledging the lowest tier for a single month to get the game cheaply. There may eventually be a tier shakeup to overcome that issue.

I demoed a version of character walkthroughs quite a while ago. I plan to make those into DLCs, and possibly some other special content. As patrons, you can ask for keys to those based on the same criteria as above.

Any questions, comments, or ideas. I'm always open to hearing from you all.