Our Plans for 2024
Hello, Futariuum’s Gate players!
We’re wrapping up our 2023 and setting out our roadmap for v0.30 of the game. This new release will focus on social sim gameplay and breaking out of the linear format the game has followed so far. Alongside that, we’re also making changes and overhauling a few things about how we develop the game and operate our funding and hosting platforms. As developers, we figured we should have more tangible plans going into 2024, which we wanna talk about with you all now.
Regarding communication and information about releases, we’ll be releasing weekly devlogs to those on any paid tier that give an insight into the development process and what we’re working on. Transparency is key here - you’ll get to see many strange and wonderful things in these, including stuff we’re excited for, challenges we’ve faced, or maybe even things we screwed up on and had to fix.
Those on The Hardcore Fan tier and above will receive more frequent beta builds from now on as well. Something we wanted to address is how previous releases had beta builds only a few days before the regular release. This will no longer be the case - Hardcore Fans will get earlier, rougher, less finished builds to really see how the sausage is made, which we’re sure is more in line with what subscribers are expecting for that tier.
We’ll also be adding new tiers for extra benefits and more control over how funding is given and received. One is a low cost tier, while others are premium options that involve intensive work on the game’s characters and scenes.
We’ll be launching a $2 tier, The Tippster, which is basically a funded contribution to the game. It doesn’t include the game itself, but does include our development logs, which helps us receive a small sum of income in exchange for total transparency on how development is going. It adds funding control to our subscribers while opening additional channels for us.
A $50 tier, The Adventurer will be added, which has access to a few neat goodies. These include separate episodes, called Adventures, featuring Maya and other characters, with their own plots not connected to the main game, that this tier will get before others. We will also be taking suggestions for character outfits and other content from this tier.
We’ll also be looking into a tier called The Oracle for $100 USD per month, and is limited to 3 patrons per month. The reason this one is up there on cost, is that Nethuum will draw a CG for each subscriber on this tier involving characters from Futariuum’s Gate. TeraWatt will either integrate these into the plot, or have them exist as bonus scenes not connected to the story at her discretion. This may also even change over time - a CG that started life in a build as a bonus, may end up also being integrated into the plot later.
Finally, a little later down the line, we’ll be introducing a tier called The Divinity, the amount and patron limit of which we’ll be deciding at a later date. These subscribers will be able to add a character to the game, a process that involves consultation with us as to what we’re willing or able to draw, write and implement. Again, more details will be available once we commit to this tier.
Finally, as an additional benefit for patrons, the next builds of the game may include bonus CGs as an extra flavor or eye candy. They can appear in a variety of contexts, such as new and additional routes, short bonus content related to seasonal events such as holidays, or just ideas we had that we thought would be interesting and wanted to act on now, instead of waiting for the right time in the plot to add them.
In short, we have a lot of plans and changes for 2024, and we really hope these are exciting for you. Futariuum’s Gate’s development is not ending any time soon, in fact quite the opposite. We’ll be aiming for denser, meatier updates as we work out the kinks of independent game development. We’re really looking forward to how far we can take this project and we can’t state enough how much we appreciate you all for coming along on the journey, no matter how you decide to contribute!
Love, the Gloomy Washer team - Nethuum, AB and TeraWatt.