Looking back ... and forward

It's been an extremely busy year.  We committed to delivering a game episode every month and, like clockwork we released one on the 1st of each month from March until December.  I also delivered a text-only short story in the middle of each month over the same period of time.  It was hard work to juggle three different storylines in my head throughout the year, and, when my day job picked up, doing so became really stressful.  But I'm proud of the results.  I like how Coming to Grips with Christine, Darkness Falls Season 1, and AAA turned out, despite people's misgivings with episodic content.

That said, I can't keep this pace up.  

So, we're going to mix things up a bit in 2019.  First, let me announce that I'm going to release Darkness Falls Season 1 and AAA for free to the public in the middle of January.  

But let's talk about what you really want to hear.  Our next major game will be the sequel to Pandora.  It'll take place on the ship with the same cast, but you'll play as Farik and have the choice to pursue (and have sex with) multiple characters, including everyone's favorite, Rita.  

Mortze and I haven't quite worked out all the details of how we're going to do this yet.  It's going to follow his plot and overall story, but I'll likely handle most of the actual writing of the words (though he'll undoubtedly help me with the non-English phrases so many of these characters use).  He'll definitely do all the art, and I'll do the programming.

The new game will not be episodic.  We're going back to our old school, "Go dark until it's done" development style that we used in all of our previous games before this year.  (Although all patrons will get weekly progress reports, as they do now.)  I have no idea when it'll be complete.  We'll see.

We're not completely done with episodic content, though.  In parallel with Pandora, we are going to do Darkness Falls Season 2 as episodes.  They'll go to patrons throughout the year, and we'll release the entire season for free to the public after it's done.  My plan is to deliver a Darkness Falls episode every other month, in the middle of the month.  I'm not sure whether the first one will start in February or March yet.  I'm currently too burnt out to think about it.

I'm also going to continue the text-only short stories, though probably not one long overarching one like with AAA.  They will come out in the middle of the month on the months that we don't release a DF episode.  I haven't actually planned any of these stories out yet.  I need to recharge first.

And we'll continue the weekly images.  Those are too much fun to stop.

So, you get the Pandora game you've been asking for.  I get to keep writing Darkness Falls, but at an overall lower production rate than this year.  And Mortze gets to keep posing naked models.  Win, win, win.

I also wanted to express my heartfelt gratitude for your enthusiasm and support this year.  You don't know how many times I was stressed out about an upcoming deadline, saw a kind word from a patron, smiled, took a deep breath, and continued on.  I have said before that we couldn't do this without you, but I really mean it.  Thank you.

Tlaero