Thank you + what's next? (long post!)

First off, thank you so so much to everyone who played my new update and sent me kind words about it. I really hope you enjoyed it... your kindness means the world to me and keeps me going despite all of the difficult things that have happened

Secondly, I want to quickly chat about what my near-future plans are for the game currently.

• Chapter 5 is generally outlined and is currently in the writing stage! Like always, it'll pick up right where chapter 4 left off (but don't worry: it won't be another full nighttime update like chapter 3 xD). Wake will be going back to school, and we will get back to some fun, slice-of-life stuff. He'll be reunited with his bestie Bodhi and get into some shenanigans before heading to the island's Founder's Day festival. Please look forward to it!

Before that, though... I want to be transparent and let everyone know that I plan to dedicate most of my develop time over the next few weeks to a major overhaul of the game's first chapter. I've talked about doing this since chapter 2, and it's just time. I think my game is in a good place currently where I am finally happy with my animations and renders, and I hate knowing that people discover my game and drop it before they see how it has evolved. The early scenes have pretty awful lighting, character models, and pacing, and I'd like to go back and make sure the first chapter is at the same standard as the rest of the game.

What does this entail?

Well, more than anything, it'll include a complete remake of a majority of the first chapter's visuals. When I first started making this game, I had no idea what I was doing, and that is most clear in how blown out every image is. For comparison's sake, I want to show you how Frankie has evolved:

Chapter 1:

Chapter 4:

Quite frankly, I cringe when I see some of my early game's visuals, and I want to upgrade them. Those of you who have been around since the beginning know that I've already kind of started this because I remade the game's opening scene for chapter 3 as something of a test. Here are those comparisons:

Chapter 1 original:

Chapter 1 remake:

Not only do I think the lighting looks better, the water does too, as well as Wake's model (and it actually looks like night time), but look at the MC's hands in the first image (the clipping! wahhh). I don't even think these remade images are particularly incredible or anything, but I think they are more reflective of the tone and visuals I want for the game.

Okay, so new visuals, whatever. That's not a big deal. The main thing I want to discuss is how I plan on actually changing some of the game, as well, as far as story and character interactions go.

As with everything else, I didn't know what I was doing when I first started the game, and I was worried about the wrong things. I think the first half of chapter 1, in particular, has wonky pacing, two many erotic scenes, and some odd characterizations.

These are the changes I want to make:

• Wake isn't nervous enough. I didn't do a good job of selling him as someone who has been cooped up his whole life, afraid of the outside world. His kind and trusting nature is not going away at all, but I do want to rewrite some of his interactions at the beginning to show him to be a little more scared, hesistant, etc.

• I do think there are too many erotic scenes early on, and I want to tone them down, including the removal of some entire H-scenes and characterizations. I think this will be my most controversial change. I plan on almost entirely removing the short scene of June's mom Samantha flashing Wake, as well as the first H-scene with Nora the guidance counselor (which also means I'll have to heavily change or remove the sex scene with her on day 2). Currently on his first day, Wake is flashed, given a boobjob by his guidance counselor, a blowjob by his classmate in the shower, and a foot job by another classmate during club. It's a little much, in my opinion. It feels rushed and forced. I was really worried about player retention back then and I wanted players to know this wasn't a slowburn game, but I overdid it.

• I don't plan on removing the scenes with Lana and Abby, but I will be reanimating them and tweaking the dialogue to have them make more sense. Ms. Reed, though, is trickier. I honestly just don't love how her character has been treated. She's a really sweet woman who seems to have this odd split personality where she's very kind, helpful, and motherly but then also just very quick to fuck Wake in a passionless way, and I don't think it's fair to her as a character. I plan on rewriting her to give her a more romantic, passionate story with Wake that I think will ultimately do her a lot of justice and help the pacing of the game. This means her current H-scenes will become something of lost media... I plan on getting around this by including these scenes as "bonuses" in her character gallery, so they'll continue to exist, just not canonically.

This post has already been super long, so I'll stop it here. That's the gist of my current plans. I'm sure there will be a ton of small changes, but these are the big ones. I'm happy to talk about them at length over on Discord, and I'm more than willing to hear your thoughts and work on this together. I know people have worries when a dev pauses straightforward story progression to fix old things, and I know it can be sketchy when a dev retcons their story. I totally understand. That's why I don't plan on taking more than a few weeks on this (if I can't finish it all in that timeframe, I'll come back to it later) and why I wanted to do this now before it's too late. I'm not interested in ever going back and making changes like this again. I'm happy with my story and characters and I stand by my creative decisions, but I want to feel wholly satisfied with my product and I won't until I take care of the errors I made as a baby game developer.

Thank you for reading this far <3 You guys mean the world to me

~cure