Dev Update – Release 5 (?) Plans

First of all I hope you all have enjoyed the R4 content. One thing I’m rather glad to see is a drop in bugs in the new content compared to 3.5, a little extra time spent on testing seemed to do wonders.

I’ve had to hold hold back this post a little longer than I think I typically do after a release. Mainly because I realized what I had in my head prior to R4’s release wasn’t really going to work.

The Change

I may have mentioned this in a post somewhere, but I had originally thought to do another .5 release, so it would have been R4.5. With the content consisting of the gym girl stuff I didn’t really get to finish, and the parts of the sex system that are still not implemented.

On reflection though I think this will make for a rather lackluster update, so instead I’m most likely just going to go ahead with a full one (Release 5) much like how I used to.

One of the core problems is the gym content is pretty slow paced, and something you can typically only do once every in game day. This is perfectly fine if you are a new player just starting from the beginning; it’s something you can just do alongside everything else. But of course many people will be returning with a save at the end of R4, and end up having to sleep the days away in what might be a little bit of a tedious loop.

I don’t really have an elegant solution to this problem aside from doing other content alongside the gym stuff. This is a bit of a quirk of how I’ve been largely focusing on one character at a time. I’ll do my best to make it work, but I wanted to warn ahead of time that it might be a little rough in terms of the sandbox gameplay. Hopefully doing a full Release will give plenty of opportunity to flesh out other things to off-set the slow start.

Gym Girl Content

So the core of R5 will be getting to know this girl at the gym. This is the next “main” character. In terms of scope, you should probably think they’ll land somewhere between Jen and Mel in terms of content once finished. That’s the aim anyway. So you can expect a similar kind of progression to Jen’s story, and I’m still thinking about to what extent they’ll get involved with stuff like the office and stripclub jobs.

This’ll be a pretty slow journey at first, one thing I can hopefully offset with other content for the more established characters available. My goal for this Release is to get her content to at least the stage where her sandbox gameplay is about to be unlocked (Mel is at a similar point). But I’d like to do more if possible.

To start off it’s going to be fairly linear, as I implied earlier. But I’m introducing a small dialog choice system into the progression to make things a bit more interesting and different to the other characters. Basically as it stands now, there will high and low reward choices to make, so pick the correct one and you learn more about what makes her tick, and progress a bit faster. Hopefully this should spice things up a bit.

As you progress further, more options should become available. And ultimately the goal will be to gain access to her outside the gym, where you can start the more typical Jen like gameplay of being able to do stuff at certain times of day. But as I said, I’m not sure if that part will make it into R5.

Sex System Work

I had to cut back a lot of what I wanted to do for this system to get R4 out, so as it currently is, the system is rather basic. So I’ll be dedicating a bit of time to expanding it. This includes adding some depth to the arousal system and new verbal and hand based actions to work alongside the positions.

Of course I’ll be looking to expand the amount of clips, dialog and positions you can partake in ;)

Longer term plans include some kind of system in which you or her can establish dominance. In which whoever comes out on top gets to decide how things proceed. But that’s outside the scope of R5.

Mel or ??? Content

As I mentioned there’s going to be a need for other content to sink your teeth into as you work on the gym stuff. The obvious answer is continuing Mel’s story, though there is another option I really want to get going.

We’re still missing the Mel equivalent in the office job, and now more than ever I actually want to get that ball rolling. Unfortunately this would likely just be another bunch of non sexual content so it doesn’t exactly solve the overall issue. I’m going to think about this one, perhaps I’ll just do a small intro for them just to get it started.

I’ll of course keep you updated as we go, I suspect there might be a lot of plan changes during development.

Time Frame & Final Thoughts

I’d like to have R5 out in early September, so the typical time frame of a full Release of about 6-8 weeks. Hopefully it’ll be worth the wait, and I’ll make sure to keep you updated should the content plan change, or if the vague ideas I mentioned actually do end up being solidified.

I am also looking to drop some polls at some point, mainly as a means to gather some feedback, so keep an eye out for those.

Thank you all for your patience with R4, and of course the very generous support!