Game Dev Update! 06-28-2021

Hello everyone!

The secret route is about to be concluded and I would like to take this time to thank everyone for continuing to support us. It means a lot to us and we would like to express our sincerest gratitude.

This post is also about another thing - a clarification of how we're releasing chapters since the global health emergency begun last year, and we hope to clear up any misunderstandings.

Schedule Compromise, Ramen, and Content

Since the pandemic began, our schedules have been thrown into turmoil. These games we had been doing are our sidelines and we still had a lot of things to sort out and deal with in real life, like, jobs. We're both quite busy IRL, but more so for Sharkie, who got very sick and is still recuperating, which is why we had to stagger Ren's route for some months. It was also why we decided to release new updates of Godhood during this time to try and compensate. On my side, the games were getting more complicated as were the animated assets.

In lieu of having chapters one at a time for the secret route to give Sharkie more breathing room, I've also been putting in many updates to the game that wasn't supposed to happen yet. These are sprite and special scenes upgrades while I create the updated V3 routes. The special scenes using the genderbender code come in 3s, they're almost all new and there are 50-60 scenes in the game, so just imagine having to do 150 to 180 of these - all animated, all scripted - and putting them in the game. I can usually only do about 1 a week. The last artist I hired to do the work in the way I do mine that's split into body parts took 5 weeks to just get artwork in the right format.

What happens next will be flipping between the Omake Scenarios releases and the V3 route updates once Ren's route is completed in the next months. I can't say how this'll be done because the V3 updates are quite daunting to do in itself. It's almost a re-do of Ramen no Oujisama.

Runicca

After Summer in Springtime I wanted something new and refreshing, a playground for some new ideas before I put them in Ramen no Oujisama (you may have already seen some of these!). Enter Runicca. With this game, I encountered my limit where I can only put up one chapter with the kind of content it has within a month. I'm still evaluating this one, and see if there's enough interest in it for now.

Ren's Story

Some may be thinking that Ren's story is a given, that she's part of the main game. Ren's route was never part of the original 10 characters designed. She wasn't even supposed to be playable. But we did think about it, and eventually made plans for it, because she turned out to be pretty popular. Pushing through with her route was dependent on how the game did as we finished up the 10th character route. We decided to give it a go, and it was supposed to be a special surprise. But given the situation, we then decided to let everyone access it while still a work-in-progress. The idea for Ren's route had to be the last route, specifically because we wanted to add in all the other characters in her route to make it a much more proper send off and ending, so putting all the girls together and making their routes compatible with Ren's has been a challenge.

Because we wanted it to be a very special route, Ren's chapters are about 1.5x - 2x longer than the usual routes. I think we've gotten to about 350,000 words in total - that's as long as 4 published books!

I'm thankful Sharkie is still here and healthier now to finish Ren's route. We're doing what we can to make it worth your while, including more non-story updates and upgrades coming from me. But it really pains us to hear about some people throwing negative things about the game just because Ren's route is a secret route, or that hers is taking awhile to finish, even despite knowing Sharkie's ongoing health problems. Sharkie had been initially adamant about being quiet about his health, but did acknowledge that people needed to know to explain what had happened and why. There have been a lot of obstacles and juggling going about of this hobby of ours vs our real life stuff going on, what I'd like to say is that while we're doing what we can and adapting to our situation, we're doing so in a realistic pace to avoid burning out which is a real pain to have to deal with. 

While we know we can't really do much when it comes to misconceptions and misinformations thrown about the game, we hope this helps to clear things up a little - to give everyone an update regarding where we stand and what we intend for the future.  

Once again, thank you for your patience, understanding and continued support!

xoxo,

BeerBrew