October 19 Update

Okay, it's finally time... this date doesn't have to be locked in on the technical end, but I'm decided. Let's have Yarra announce it...

This is an unexpected bit of pixel fanart from Annikath. ^-^ The sign is correct: the game will be doing the official 1.0.0 launch on October 24! I have a whole bunch of things to say, so please look through the post for the pieces that are relevant to you.

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Quick one: you're running out of time to fill out the survey! Do vote for your favorite characters if you want to be counted:

https://forms.gle/SimoMjMdQoa5AvcE9

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Valve finally approved the second DLC, the art pack! This one doesn't make much sense for patrons to purchase, since you can get the same content on Patreon, but if you do purchase it to show support or for whatever reason, please leave a review. As I write this, it has six of the ten reviews needed to get a visible rating, which probably doesn't make a real difference, but will look nice and presentable for the release. ^-^

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As another step in the process of making things as smooth as possible, I've uploaded yet another build to Steam. This one is 0.81.5 and you can see the touch-up I've been doing in the version history on the blog. Here's a quick build for those who don't use Steam, though:

Link: https://mega.nz/file/XxdjibaJ#Vd7W2tvwKce6WGWVRpIVuHID7B3IV_rHS-eRAv-KL0A

RTP: https://mega.nz/file/boUiSQzD#_EnWOA2UVI-OloUHnDGzVcNtXpRuTmwYRxMoyIla8Ro

I really hope this is close to fully polished so that there are no problems at launch.

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I'm unsure how impactful this official release will be, truthfully. A large part of release momentum comes from Steam wishlists, but a free game doesn't accumulate those in the same way. Steam (un)helpfully tells me that I have a far higher conversion rate than average, but that just means I won't be getting the same boost from people watching the game.

Still, this will be the last time I get an algorithmic boost, which is why I've been putting so much effort into touching up everything. Soon the game we'll launch and we'll see if TLS can't find some new players.

If you're willing to play TLS on Steam, maybe launch weekend would be a good time for a replay? I'm curious to see just how many simultaneous players the game can achieve.

Now, peak player count is not actually that important, particularly for single-player RPGs, but people think it's important, sometimes including publishers, collaborators, and industry people. So it would be neat if we could see how high that number can go. The previous peak was 128 people back in February, when I launched the achievements... I don't know if we can surpass that, but it wouldn't take that many people!

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Speaking of touching things up, I'm trying to decide what other details I should look into. The number of reviews is the biggest thing, so I'm thankful for all the people who have bumped up the rating lately!

Secondary things... I'm considering updating or just removing the highlighted reviews section. All those quotes are from ancient forums, many of which no longer exist. I'm not sure whether the rest of the page highlights the game well enough, or whether I should find some specific reviews that state that. We're probably dealing with the margins here, because many players won't even look that far down the page. Dunno.

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The absolutely not-fun thing that will happen around release time is promotion. I will be making some posts on Reddit, some of which will have stats or reflections you may find interesting. I'll post these on Discord if you want to follow those.

Speaking of Discord, I intend to join a few channels that allow promotion. Beyond that, though... I'm not sure how much I can really do. Forums and game journalism are dead, and though I'll use social media, I'm bad at it. After making some posts on Friday, I'll have to leave the launch in the hands of the algorithm.

If anyone else makes posts, link me them and I'll signal boost. ^-^

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To throw in a fun one: I have tons of data on the game, this just doesn't seem like a good time to be assembling/presenting it. But I'll give a sample... here are the top ten characters in TLS by most lines of dialogue:

1) Simon - 18,682

2) Yarra - 7571

3) Robin - 5198

4) Aka - 4801

5) Riala - 3963

6) Nalili - 3324

7) Hilstara - 3215

8) Carina - 3110

9) Megail - 2957

10) Qum - 2466

I have a longer list, maybe I'll share that later too. ^-^ Obviously there's an advantage for characters who are introduced early, but all told, there are 27 different characters who have more than 1000 lines of dialogue! This is non-trivial... Hester has 792 and Xerces has 547, but I don't think anyone would say they're a small part of TLS.

(The list of words/character is pretty similar, though the ranking does shift around slightly. Orcent replaces Qum in the top ten, for example, due to being more loquacious.)

Anyway, there will be some more of this sort of thing, but later! First I need to gear up for the launch, because I'm going to do my level best to get TLS as much attention as I can. I've been working on this game for years, after all, I want it to find its audience.

Thank you all for being a part of it. ^-^