Female Agent Year One in review

A little over a year ago, I released version 1.0 of Female Agent.  I had no idea if people would like it or see the potential in it.  I’ve been blown away by how much interest and love and support the game has attracted since then – to all Patrons past and present, thank you so much for making it possible for me to put so many hours into the game in 2018.

The story so far

We’ve been through three major versions so far.  Version 1.1 added a face to the avatar, and the ability to customise your character instead of having her randomly created.

Version 1.2 added the Sex Engine, which powers the sex scenes.  This was really, really fucking difficult to code and I would definitely have given up on the project at this stage if I hadn’t been accountable to the patrons.

Version 1.3 added Operation Lioness, the training exercise in Scotland which sees your agent nightclubbing and seducing civilians in order to get ready for the main mission.

Next steps

Version 1.4 will drop very soon.  It will turn the game into a working RPG with attributes, skills, dice rolls, experience points, and an interactive character backstory generator.

What I’ve learned this year

I’ve worked hard on the game this year, but the progress has been much slower than expected.  During the year I’ve experimented with new ways of improving productivity, but everything still feels frustratingly gradual to me.

I’m going to try two big things in early 2019:

• I’m going to quit my real job and focus full-time on Female Agent.  This is a little trickier than just handing in my notice (because I’m in senior management), but I’ve let them know I’m exiting and that I’ll be delivering a transition plan.  This will mean my mind is fully focused on game dev.
• I’m also going to experiment with the Scrum of One technique invented by Alex Andrews.  Scrum is a widely-used development framework designed to help small dev teams deliver smaller updates faster; Alex has adapted it for use by indie developers.  You can read more about it here.

(The game is no longer a one-crab project: Victoria draws artwork, Hyneman writes code, Dissonant Soundtrack, esclavage and The Scribbler write scenes & snippets, and Locke Kosta gives me project advice and tells me when I’m having terrible ideas*.

In addition, several fans have also contributed content that’s in the game – including but not limited to Falloutbabe, Abbi, and Lara.  However, I don’t have the budget to get them all to work on the game full-time, so improving my own personal productivity is the best way to speed up game delivery.)

* actually, Diss does that a lot too, now I think about it

What I want to achieve in 2019

The main objective in 2019 is to move the action to Bangkok and continue the agent’s story.  My vision for Bangkok is repeatable, open-world gameplay to which we continually add new scenes, outfits and story content.  There’ll be a repeatable gameplay loop that’s fun/sexy (working in the brothel), plus a continually growing number of side quests and activities that your agent can experience – from buzzing around the Gulf of Thailand on a jet ski, to becoming a Muay Thai champ, to using your spy skills to investigate international organised crime.

Before we get there, we need to build a few things:

• Improved avatar system including avatar rear view and customisable facial features.  We need to do this before Bangkok because it requires redrawing all existing artwork – the sooner we do this, the smaller the task is.
• Improved Sex Engine including options like anal, girl/girl, rough sex, etc.  We need to do this before Bangkok so that sex scenes (which are going to be used a lot) are more interesting.
• Improved random NPC generator creating more distinct and memorable NPCs, with different sexual behaviours and likes/dislikes.  We need to do this before Bangkok because randomly generated NPCs are going to be used heavily.

The year ahead

2018 saw the game go from zero to 1.3 – the year ahead is going to see an even bigger transformation in the game.  I’m so excited about it!

None of this would have been possible without the generous financial and moral support of the game’s amazing Patrons, so I would like to take the opportunity to thank you all.  Nobody in my real life knows what I’m doing, so I will have to toast you silently, but tonight I will drink a secret toast to you all.

To everybody – I wish you a healthy, happy and prosperous 2019.  Tomorrow I am intending to do little more than recover from a monstrous hangover, but I’ll be back at work on the game on Wednesday.