2022 Year End Dev Update
Wow, what a year! This year has gone by fast for me and I'm humbled and inspired by the growth we've seen. We peaked membership in July, but have maintained a good rate since. Right after releasing Euryale's Gambit 1.0, members voted on the next project. They selected Tragedy of Medusa prequel to Euryale's Gambit followed closely by the sequel, Athena's Revenge. Here's a little overview of how each project has done this year and how development will continue.
Euryale's Gambit
EG 1.0 was released during the summer and has received several patches and updates since. Music and sound effects were added to various scenes including voice acting during the climactic Stheno vs Euryale scene. Performances of our voice actors was amazing. An extra scene was added to the epilogue specifically for Ceraphina. While this doesn't bring closure to her story, it does open up the possibility for separate Ceraphina title sometime in the future which would bring her story to a satisfying ending. Aside from fixes, there will probably be no further development on this title.
EG has seen good success with over 6k downloads on itch, and over 3k downloads on steam. Euryale was also voted as best female protagonist and even made the best characters list on Spicygaming.net.
Tragedy of Medusa
Tragedy part 1 was released back in October to patrons and to steam in November. It's off to a good start with mostly positive reviews so far. Most of the next release is written and renders have started. I expect the next update to land in January and the fateful conclusion to be wrapped up in February or March. There's only 7 more scenes after this next update.
Warlord
Warlord started out as an idea I dreamt up while taking an afternoon nap (I love naps). The concept was a text-heavy VN with a hybrid approach to visual content: AI + Traditional renders. This technique is much less resource intensive and allows us to work on Warlord without taking a lot of time away from resource-heavy titles like Tragedy of Medusa. Right now, monthly allocation of resources is 25% Warlord, 75% Tragedy.
Reviews for Warlord have been extremely positive and download numbers have been incredible. In the first week, Warlord surpassed over 1k downloads on itch.io and driven downloads of Euryale's Gambit and Tragedy of Medusa. To illustrate, here's the numbers for Euryale's Gambit downloads right after Warlord was released on Nov 25th:
Given its reception, we are considering upgrading Warlord resource allocation to 50%. This will certainly delay other projects, so we'll have a patron vote later to help us decide.
Athena's Revenge
The sequel to Euryale's Gambit is still in planning, but work has begun on some of the characters and concept art. I'm excited to announce the character Lilith:
More characters will be developed in the coming months as development of Tragedy tapers off.
Conclusion
I'm pleased at where we are, but am hoping for more growth in 2023. At some point, I hope to have the option of making this a full-time thing. One can always dream, right?
I wish you all a great ending to the year, health and success. Thank you all for your support and for helping make my dreams a reality.
-Deepglugs