Lifepath situation and reflection

Hey guys!  This week I’ve mainly been writing and it’s both (a) challenging and (b) going great.  The tonal changes I made to the Malaysia branch are helping me a lot going forward.  It’s hard to explain without letting you play it, but I’m really excited.

Lifepath situation

Many people have asked about when the Lifepath will be released, letting you play the heroine's backstory before she became a secret agent.  It’s largely written and coded, currently up to 64,389 words – the equivalent of a novel in its own right – and lots of the artwork is done.

My plan is to release it – in stages – after the next episode.  We’ll aim to release one Lifepath episode a month until it’s finished, so the planned release schedule looks like:

– New Malaysia beta

– New Bangkok episode

– Lifepath in stages

Writing reflection
Some people have asked about it, so I wanted to talk a bit more about the changes I made to the Malaysia episode over the past few weeks, particularly the Max sex scene.

Lots of you know that I’ve been trying for a long time to write better sex scenes in Female Agent.  (A common criticism of the game is that it’s hot right up to the point where characters start having sex.)

I think my attempts at this so far have largely been meh.  I’ve certainly become a better writer… but the sex still just isn’t that hot.

For the restored Max sex scene, I’ve tried something genuinely different.  It’s a little hard to explain: but basically I stopped trying so hard to make sex feel sexy, and focused instead on making the scenario hot.

In the existing sex scenes there are too many sentences telling you touching feels good, Kate is getting aroused, Max is getting aroused, sex is escalating, etc.  After a while it all just blurs into meh.

So I took a lot of that out and just focused on vivid details, state changes, and choices about how to respond as the scenario develops.  (There’s now much less “his hands roam over your body” and much more “Max tugs your dress down, right there on the balcony”.)  Basically each beat tries to deliver some kind of concrete new image or decision point, instead of another paragraph saying everyone is horny.

TLDR: less explaining why the sex feels hot, more events that are hot to imagine.  It’s trusting more to your imagination, but the sex scenes all happen in your mind, really, anyway, so I think you might enjoy it more.  I certainly enjoyed writing it more. It feels really different.

Can’t wait for you guys to play it.  It’s 9.30PM now so I’m gonna wind it up for the day, but I’ll be back to work first thing tomorrow.  🦀❤️‍🔥