Update development status #3.

Hey everyone.

Nothing new. I'm posing characters and rendering scenes. See you next time.

...

Alright, for those of you who actually came here to read something—hello!

Today I want to talk about one specific character. Maybe some of you will find it interesting.

As you probably guessed, in the new episode we're finally going to meet Shannon—Mona's sister. Why should you have guessed that? Well... the game literally mentioned it. You do remember, right?

Anyway, I've been thinking for a long time about how I want to write her. Not her appearance—that part was easy—but her personality. And that's where I ran into a problem, because writing Shannon has become a real challenge. I honestly had no idea what kind of person I wanted her to be.

A long time ago, I used to base my female characters on girls I actually knew in real life. That made writing much easier because I could simply adapt their personalities for the story. That was in my old game, though. With this project, I deliberately moved away from that approach because it's much more interesting for me to create characters from scratch. Putting myself in their shoes and imagining how they'd react in different situations has become a unique creative exercise.

Why am I talking about this? Because the more female characters there are, the harder it becomes to make each of them feel unique instead of just another background doll.

Sure, Shannon is Mona's sister, so it's perfectly natural for them to share some personality traits as well as physical similarities. The problem is that Mona's character is already so well-defined that it's surprisingly easy either to turn Shannon into a weaker copy of her or to accidentally make her outshine Mona completely.

(By the way... Shannon's boobs are much bigger.)

At the moment, this is probably the most tedious and difficult part of developing the episode—but we'll figure it out.

Besides working on the game, I've also been dealing with plenty of real-life problems: relationships, repairing my car, work... basically all the usual things life likes to throw at us.

To keep myself in a good mental state, I've been going to the gym quite often. It helps me clear my head and forget about all the crap that's been happening lately—both in my own life and in the world in general.

I also started noticing that the scenes and dialogue I was writing had become much darker and more depressing than I originally intended. Because of that, I decided to take a short break and spend some time focusing on myself.

Things are finally starting to settle down, and my car is now in great shape as well.

My plan for the near future is pretty simple: grab a camping chair, bring some food, drive somewhere far away from everything, open the entire script for the episode, and read it from start to finish. I have a feeling there will be quite a few changes after that.

If you'd be interested in reading about how I develop my characters or which real-life situations inspire certain parts of the game, I could start a small series of posts dedicated to each character.

If that's not something you'd enjoy, then nothing will really change—we'll stick to the usual custom renders, exclusive content for paid supporters, and development logs.

At the moment, two full scenes are finished. I haven't added them to the game yet, so I can't say how long they'll take to read, but I'll post a small preview below here and on Discord.

Thank you all for your support and for sticking with the project, ladies and gentlemen.

Don't let this summer pass you by.

Take care, everyone