Incoming Changes

Hi folks !

How's early May for you all ?

For me, it’s been a pretty busy time. I had to run around like a headless chicken just to establish my company. I was meeting with tax advisors, looking for accountants, contacting the tax office and the bank, and handling several other tasks. I was supposed to create my company in April, but that wasn’t possible due to my tax advisor’s advice. Now, the accounting firm I hired is working on my books to legalize the company. Probably in a week or two, I will finally be able to rest a bit from all this stuff, which I frankly hate doing.

V0.94.00

In the few "free" days since the release of V0.93.50, I’ve been working on transforming the rough script for the next ending into something more concise. I’ve also started working on the script and initial renders. Right now, I’m targeting May 16th for the release of V0.94.00! :)

Endings

As you might have already seen, the "Endings" part of my game is where most of the sex scenes take place. Frankly, the Endings are as big as the rest of the game combined, if not bigger in terms of content. That’s why it’s taking so much time to develop !

There are 13 endings planned, with the possibility of more if I feel an extra ending would enhance the 'roleplaying aspect' of the game. I want each playthrough to finish differently for everyone! :) That's the main reason why they are not connected yet to main story.

Regarding Public Version

As mentioned earlier, I’ve decided to revise how I operate for two main reasons:

• Full-Time Development: I resigned from my job at the start of April to focus on game development full-time. This means your support is now my sole source of income, and I am insanely grateful for it.

• Tax Regulations: Since I quit my job to work on games, I am required to register a company in my country. This means I can no longer receive your support tax-free; I now have to pay taxes. (This is why I’ve been consulting with tax advisors and accountants—they are helping me navigate the complex tax laws to find the best way forward.)

This means I had to reconsider the benefits for everyone. There won’t be any major changes to the tiers for existing supporters (I’m currently preparing new graphics and minor updates). However, I’ve been thinking about the public version.

In the past, the difference between the public release and what supporters received varied—sometimes the gap was small, and other times it was large. With additional taxes to account for, I’ve had to rethink this strategy and have a few ideas in mind:

• Go with supporter-only versions. No public version at all. This was advice from several other devs, but that didn’t jive with me well. In the end, I am doing it because I want my game to be seen. The more, the better, as they say. This also has other problems, like a lot of people being fans from places that can’t support me due to their nation’s laws/frameworks. Even if they have the means to do so, their cards don’t work with supporting platforms.

• Occasional public release. It’s very similar to no public version. Every few months, there would be a new public version that would combine a few updates. Same story as no public version in my mind. It’s limiting a lot and has similar issues.

• "Premium version." Some devs choose to have a public version but limit the amount of content in such a game with obvious "unlock in full supporter version" hints. Frankly, I am not a fan of that type of scheme. I am mostly a single-player gamer, and I never liked such things in my games. It smells a bit of phone gaming, where people sell you vehicles to extract money rather than for good experiences. There are obviously various degrees to it. Like... say, from 3 POVs to all POVs. If I were to do something like that, I would limit it to 2–3 POVs locked in free version. A prod more like a requirement to enjoy the game.

• Tipper/Fan Tier paywall. Same as no official release with the difference of a small $1–$2 pay to get an older version of the game. Again, not a fan of it, and it has the same issues.

As you can see, it wasn't really a fun exercise. I was poor in my life once, and I know exactly how it feels when you have no money or can't get what you like. Some fans, even with money, wouldn't be able to follow my work at all.

After some more thinking, I think I found a better way. And it all comes down to what I did in April. Because I work full-time for you guys now, my work rate increased a lot. In April, I was able to effectively deliver about 2.5 months of work in just 1 month. Instead of 4.5 updates needed to finish 2 endings, we got them in 2 updates.

So that gave me an idea. What if the public version were the normal rate at which I worked up until I quit my job, and the supporter version were the extra stuff I deliver to supporters because they are now my sole bosses?

So, in this idea, the public version would be published as normal with every new update release. The only difference is that supporters would have a "bump" of content I am able to produce extra because they keep me afloat.

So, with the next update, V0.94.00, for supporters, the V0.92.50 version will be published instead of V0.93.00. Effectively, the supporter version will grow with every update ahead of the public version, while the public version will be released at the same exact pace and content as if I were still working at my day job until I quit. After a few updates, the supporter version will be a lot larger than the public version.

Thus, that’s what I plan for the next release. With the V0.94.00 release, the V0.92.50 version will be published as the public version. It will still be a pretty large update considering the old work rate, and then after that, V0.93.00 will be released when V0.94.50 comes out, and so on.

What do you think about this approach ? Do you have any other ideas ? Let me know down in the comments your feelings about it.