Reflections on 1.12

1.12, released last week, was an experiment: here are my thots on how it went.

The situation
1.11 (the university intro) took around 60 days to produce, and still felt rushed. Nearly every scenario was intended to set up some hot optional scenes (like Army cadet heroine getting shagged by half her platoon, office temp heroine flirting with and getting hit on by older colleagues, barmaid heroine being hit on non-stop at work, etc). 

But building them all in would probably have taken another month, so in the end 1.11 was mainly setup without payoff.

I felt that concluding the university experience in 1.12 would likely take another 60 days - more if we wanted to develop the scenarios instead of rushing through them – and after that, we’d still be at least one major release away from getting started on the main mission.

The experiment
I wanted to try jumping ahead to the main quest in 1.12 instead. Behind the scenes, this was not my most popular decision, and lots of people argued against it. But I decided to do it anyway because I’m stupid and I don’t listen to advice.

So I got started on a new vision for 1.12. My original intent was to create a new version of Operation Lioness from 1.6 (the scenes where the heroine has to seduce random civilians in order to prove she’s capable of the main mission).

The first draft of anything is shit
For most of April – while Victoria and Hyneman were working on technical features (like the new avatar rear view), I wrote this new section. I built up a playable demo, set in Scotland, where the heroine seduces and fucks a random civilian.

There were some good parts to it, but as I reported on May 2nd there were parts that were just falling flat. So I took the difficult decision to totally rethink the content, and that led us to…

May-laysia!
In May I did a total rewrite, moving the action from Scotland to Malaysia, and building the sex scene around a genuine spy mission (not just a training exercise).

It’s based heavily on the Dubai quest from 1.6, with some key changes that changed the structure and feel of the quest and the sex scene. Mainly this took the form of streamlining out unnecessary complexity: the 1.6 scene had branches and dice rolls everywhere, which were trimmed and rewritten to achieve a better pace and feel.

Outcome
Positively, we achieved the following:

• Moved the narrative forward, so the next release can be Bangkok
• Restored the US, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand origins
• Delivered a release more firmly in the “sexpionage” genre, as opposed to the life sim/backstory stuff that’s been the focus up to now

The cost of that was:

• Losing the Lifepath, which I think cuts a lot of the connection people have with the heroine
• And also makes the whole scene a bit more generic.  It would have been nice to tailor the heroine's observations and thoughts based on her unique past

Mixed feedback
What do you think? Some players welcome the change of pace, others really miss the detailed backstory they were crafting up to 1.11. Let me know your thots.

1.13 progress
We’re working on some new avatar features (related to skin and hair colour). I’ve mainly been working on the storyboard for 1.13, “Amateur Night at the Hard Cock Cafe”, which is the largest storyboard so far! 

I’m aiming to finish it next week, so will give you a more detailed 1.13 report next weekend.  Have a great week everybody and if you do have thoughts or opinions on 1.12 please do let me know, here or on Discord, I'm really not sure yet if the experiment was a success or a misstep.