Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

Here we are again; another week and another progress report. Apparently, this is report number 190, at least according to the tags on Patreon. Time sure flies.

Let's dive into the meat of the progress report, shall we?

Long Live the Princess

I didn't put much work into LLtP this week due to focusing on Supermodel, but I'm back to working on 0.42 now. It's all about writing and coding right now, and things are progressing at a steady rate. The way things are looking, I expect this version to be out in no more than two or three weeks, though don't take that as an absolute promise. Still, saying it will keep me focused, so there's that.

I expect to spend next week only working on LLtP, having found that this is a productive way to apply myself. Staying focused on just one game for a week at a time helps me keep my thoughts gathered while improving the quality of my work.

Supermodel

Oh boy, where to even begin? This game has left the runway and is absolutely soaring right now. 

I've mentioned before that I'm trying to finish up the card game prototype before I move on to the visual novel aspect of the game. This is mainly because the card game is central to Supermodel's design; if I couldn't get that part of it to feel fun and satisfying, I would have to go back to the drawing board. I'm definitely not married to my ideas in case they don't work out.

Luckily, it's working out. This week saw me doing the first full playthrough of a card game match in Supermodel ever, and it was fun! Yes, it was actually fun! I had a full deck of roughly 35 cards, 22 of which were unique. Every single turn had me agonizing (in a good way) over every little choice I had to make, narrowly eking out a win in the penultimate turn. At long last, I'm really starting to feel confident about what I've made here. Much balancing and tweaking remain to be done, but for the first time, I'm seeing the full scope of this game and how it works in practice. I sure like what I see.

The current prototype is at such an advanced stage that I could technically give it a few more days of polish and release it as an "alpha" version. But I won't do that, for you guys and gals deserve better from me. I will polish and balance this as best I can before you get your hands on it so that your initial experience with this aspect of the game will be in as good a light as possible. You won't have to squint and tilt your head to see the magic I see, at least if I have anything to say about it.

If nothing else, I feel reasonably confident that those of you at the $5 level and above will get to play the prototype this year. And that makes me giddy with excitement.

As for the rest of the game... we'll get to that. I'm almost ready to start implementing the actual visual novel, which will be another massive milestone. However, doing so will definitely get in the way of finishing LLtP, which is one of the main reasons why I'm holding back for now. I want you all to be able to download version 1.00 of Long Live the Princess sooner rather than later. To make that happen, it's best if I stay focused on the card game aspect of Supermodel for at least a bit longer. Both games will be better for it.

And that's it for this week. With some luck, I'll have good news about LLtP's development for you by next Sunday. 

Until next time!