v0.3.5 update: xenobiology, new encounters and art updates

Hello cadets!

We're making really good progress on the next update and this week we're sharing some additional news on what's coming with it.

Xenobiology with Zara

As we're introducing exotic transformations, we're also adding context on how they come to be. A new quest stage will be available with Zara that will allow you to help Zara figure out what is going on with these mods.

We've designed this quest update as a way to give a first experience with exotic transformations in a controlled environment before they become fully available in version 0.3.6 as further consequences of the rebel hack.

We also hope it will show clearly our intent with exotic transformations, which is that we are not going to limit them to the main character. You will have opportunities to cause other characters to undergo exotic transformations, be it willingly or unwillingly.

Rest assured, there are also other exotic transformations to see in this patch that aren't on this questline :)

Curie's Choice

Ever wondered the purpose of Curie's necklace?

Curie has been somewhat neglected in the past few patches as we focused on adding content to characters that had not much yet. With this patch, she will receive some much needed love!

We'll be introducing more content on her submissive and dominant branches and you'll have the opportunity to take things a step further with her. You'll also get to experience the first scenes of public submissiveness or dominance, whom will continue to become more and more daring as time goes on.

As you may have seen in Curie's recent scenes, the relationship isn't fully submissive or fully dominant right away, rather it provides additional nuances and opportunities to your otherwise normal relationship with Curie.

Although things will naturally escalate as you make progress on these branches, we do not plan for the progress on her submissive and dominant branches to fully and irrevocably change all aspects of the relationship and cause the "normal" content to become locked away.

We feel like getting locked out of content is frustrating more than anything and therefore we're looking to strike the right balance in the way we implement Curie's content so players whom want that content can have it and those who prefer a more traditional but occasionally kinky relationship can have that as well.

We hope that makes sense, but if you have any doubt or concerns please feel free to reach out on Discord and we'll happily have a discussion with you about this.

Art Updates

Thomas Before / After

The game looks very different these days compared to how it looked in the beginning. After all, it's been more than a year since we released the very first version 0.1.0!

During that time, we got to welcome Flaxede into the team and watch him improve his art over time. We feel it's now the right time to start rolling out new art updates into the game and also begin to implement character expressions.

With the next update, we've updated the first day of orientation week to feature character expressions and some areas of free roam, such as Ann's office. It takes a fair amount of time to review and update all past content, so expect the rollout to be progressive and done over the course of the next few patches.

Along with the hint system we added in your apartment, this character expression system is an additional answer to your feedback on being able to easily identify if a character is here or not.

If we take Ann's office as an example, previously only the text and options would change. With the character expressions system, she will now be visible in the image when physically present. We do feel this change adds significantly to the visuals of the game, so we're pretty excited to get your feedback on it as we continue to roll it out!

Final Word

As you can see there's a lot going on with this update! We're looking forward to putting it in your hands and go through your feedback. There are a few more things coming with the update and we'll talk about some of them next week, but also give you some news about Starwatch Disavowed.

Have fun out there!