1.12 Release Target is April 30th

Hey guys!  Next release target is April 30th.  (I know making Female Agent looks easy, but 2.5 weeks between releases just isn't enough.)

Thinking about MFAGA
Late last year, we made a big change to the way we were working – the MFAGA plan.  Adopting it led to some big improvements, most notably content release every 1-2 months, not every 6 months.

In the last five months, we dropped four chunks of story content:

• 1.8 (October) introduced childhood and teens

• 1.9 (November) introduced adulthood, and the first sex scene (the blowbang with her guy friends)

• 1.10 (December) introduced three foreign adventures (Corfu, Switzerland and Namibia)

• 1.11 (February) introduced year one of university

It's obvious that MFAGA has improved things, but there are still some problems that need to be addressed.

It's still not easy for the team & the community to contribute scenes and story content, which means that I'm personally planning, storyboarding and writing the scenes and dialogue, while also trying to layer in the multiple branching choices and dice rolls that transform it from a visual novel to a game.

Thinking about 1.11
I'm not crazy about how 1.11 turned out.  I feel like the content could have been much more engaging and sexy if there were more decision points and alternative choices; the whole sequence feels much more "on rails" than I wanted it to be.

I wanted to do a lot more with Simon and the Professor (and some other options, who never made it to the screen).  But the outcome feels rushed.  

There are some good individual parts, but overall I feel like 1.11 was a bit "meh".  And I don't want to make a game that's meh.  So, this week I focused on some things I want to experiment with in 1.12:

• Simplifying the mechanics.  All the mechanics are there for a reason...but there's no point in having them if we don't have time to make use of them.  It's time to trim some fat, so we can get story content out quicker.

• Team writing.  We're working on a new method of content creation, where team writers focus on adding "width" (new options) to key scenes.  This should add novelty and unpredictability back into the story content – I feel that 1.11 lacked both.

More details to follow as we nail them down: things have been in flux this week, so we should have a clearer picture of what's going on next week, but I wanted to put out a report sharing what I see the problems as.  Stay tuned for an update on the proposed solutions.