Monday Update #105 | Communication

Hello everyone! it's Tuesday, that means time for another Monday Update. But first, I want to thank all new and existing patrons for their support. Without your contribution I would, quite literally, not be able to make this game. So thanks for letting me do my thing : D

Now to more serious matters. Version 0.3.2 brought a lot of changes with it, but I'm not stopping yet. The next thing I'm gonna change is the way I communicate with you. Specifically, the way I do my Monday Updates. Up until now, I always gave you a rough estimate of a release date and then started developing as much content as I could fit into that time window. This was fine, but it always lead to a certain amount of scope creep. Of me trying to fit more and more content into the given window and ultimately failing at the delivery because it got out of hand. I don't want that anymore.

From now on I'm turning things around. At the start of a new update cycle I'll communicate the content that I have planned for the update, no dates. And then in every Monday Update, I'll tell you how far I've gotten and what I did over the past two weeks. I'll also start including the nebulous "Administration" task on the list. Things like doing my taxes, working on promotional graphics, dealing with distributors or organising recording sessions. Things that I never really mentioned before but that are actually taking up a lot of my time and are definitely part of the work. I'll start talking about those as well.

What I have planned for 0.3.3:

0.3.3 will continue where 0.3.2 left off to get you closer to the finish line of the first dungeon but not to the very end of it. The finale of chapter 1 will happen in version 0.4, the one after it.

So 0.3.3 includes:

• The second third of the dungeon.

• A new sex scene for Enna.

• A few new promotional images (Nothing big).

• Some time spent on the drawing board to revisit the plot. (Don't worry, no real changes. I do this all the time, it's necessary to align the current game with the original vision, include learnings and further detail the plot.)

• Two sound recording sessions.

• New animations for the hangout events.

• Doing my taxes for 2023 and preparing everything to hand of my monthly tax reports to my new tax advisor. (Yes I have to do monthly tax reports, it's very annoying.)

That is all. Now, as I'm new to communicating this way, it might happen that I have to scratch a thing or two off the list. The hangout event animations, for example, aren't set in stone. If I deem the idea bad in the end, I'm gonna scratch it. Now this Monday Update is already quite long, but I also got some work done already, as you might be able to see in the loading screen graphic. Let's talk about it.

What I did so far:

• I wrote and animated Ennas new sex scene. It's almost done. I only need to render it and do the sound then it's already finished.

• I started animating the hangout events. Let's see how this idea turns out.

• I started writing more content for the dungeon and finished the first bigger gameplay event featured in 0.3.3.

• I also met my new tax advisor and had to do several hours of book keeping to clean up my mess with her advise. Lot's of Excel.

• I also already did the little revision of the plot and just cleaned up and polished a few things. You learn a lot over time and notice things that work and don't work, so It's important to reflect that in the plot. I do it every update, did the same when I developed MIST.

• I also planned out the rest of the dungeon and all the gameplay mechanics in detail. I now know exactly what awaits me.

What a wall of text. I wonder if anyone made it through : D To those who did, I wish you all a great week. Now I'm gonna continue my work on Covenant of Morn, there's a lot to do.