Monday transparency report

Hey guys!  This week I’ve been mainly writing and editing.

I edited four more scenes.  My pace is speeding up – when I looked at the completed list, I had to double check I’d done all of that this week and I wasn’t double counting any scenes.  But yeah, it’s legit!

Starting late in the week, I also completed 90% of a brand new action scene in Malaysia.  There was always a non-sexual way to complete the mission (thanks to a branch contributed entirely by The Lost Engineer, where the heroine can cause enough of a distraction during the dinner date to accomplish the mission without going back to the target’s hotel room).  But now there’s (90% of) a really non-sexual way to do it.

I know, I know, it’s a porn game.  But.  I feel like I’ve done (90% of) something really clever:

• Some players really like the “action girl” path anyway, so I enjoy throwing them a bone (partly because I am one of those players 😬)

• This path has some minor fanservice, and also a few emotional/character development beats that I flatter myself to think some players might really like

• There’s some tradecraft and some peril, which are inherently exciting (if I executed them well enough)

• And, most cleverly: the action path has a bunch of skill checks, each of which acts as a closing door – failure means the action path becomes non-viable, and the heroine has to either (a) abort or (b) switch to the sexy mission solution.

My hope is that:

1. some heroines will do the action path (which has its own emotional rewards, and in a way makes the next episode hotter because of the contrast)

2. some heroines will do the sexy path (which is hotter because it’s no longer railroaded and required – she has to live with the fact she could’ve done the dangerous thing but she decided to put on a dress and high heels and use her feminine wiles instead)

3. some heroines will try to do the action path…but resort to the sexy path because they weren’t lucky or skillful enough to make the James Bond thing work, so now cirumstances have conspired to make her have to be Jane Bond in a silk dress and no bra

All of this is in service of my ultimate goal in the moment, which is:

1. make Malaysia less of a fucking PowerPoint slideshow.  Now not every single playthrough is clicking next…next…next just to get through the fucking dinner scene with Max.

I don’t know if this is going to work, you guys will tell me.  I wouldn’t have had the confidence to even attempt it if the feedback on the action episode, Zero Kate Thirty, hadn’t generally been good.  🤞🏻😬🤞🏻  I’m just gonna go with my gut and hope it works.

Okay, that’s it for the report!  I expect to finish the action scene tomorrow or Wednesday, then I need to get back onto editing the Malaysia dinner & sex scene branches to bring them up to the same standard as the rest of the draft.

This is going to be a significant punch up of the old Malaysia scene, and it’s more like how I want the rest of the game to play out, so I’ll be very interested in your feedback when it drops.  🦀❤️‍🔥