JUNE SHOWCASE

Hello all, it’s time for your end of month masterpost! November’s content has taken me a while to complete (as already known by those on tumblr/patreon who get weekly updates, but perhaps not the people on itch.io etc). This is finally done and will be made available for patrons to download via Patreon (which I am having some issues with, but as soon as those clear up we should be fine).

I thought when I started work on November that it’d be a breeze, as I’d already done most of the writing. However the game has changed pretty significantly from the first draft (Leith originally had next to no contact with his knight until December, until I realised how unsatisfying that was for the player) and the scenes had to be heavily revisited. In addition now that Leith has picked a “route” the scenes themselves are all quite different without recycling much dialogue (which saves time). This is only likely to become more apparent as the game goes on and the three routes become increasingly diverse.

To digress however, let’s have a look at November’s content. You should already know that it centres around a mini-contest, in which it’s possible to not only do well enough to get through to the next stage, but actually come first and receive an extra prize as a result:

It’s also possible to lose and be kicked out of the squire competition altogether. I was a little worried that, because the mini-contest focuses on one theme (e.g. horsemanship for Areli), that players would ostensibly focus on that skill to the exclusion of all others, and thus end up losing the game.

To avoid this there’s a mid-November date scene of sorts with the knight which as well as being more romantic content with them (always a good thing)

…Will also change depending on Leith’s skills and give the players a hint as to what they still need to focus on.

This will hopefully save some frustration down the line! I hope to sprinkle this sort of dialogue throughout the game going forward.

Alright, what now?

December’s content of course! And hoo boy, there’s a lot of it. New costumes, new backgrounds, new scenes and perhaps most importantly, new rated scenes. I think December will take a little while to complete, but once that’s done I should be in a position to start releasing public content as well as patron-only, which I’m looking forward to.

So I’d better get started! For those following weekly updates, I’ll see you next week with the usual progress report.