Actually you can come up with the lore as the game advances, I see two upsides to this:
- you leave it up to the player to imagine how it works while also making it consistent (or not, if you want it to be a silly eroge heh)
- that won't delay you if you suddenly get stuck because of the lore making something inconsistent
Glad to see how Eden Crest progresses Zion. I've really enjoyed SC even though I'm not a fan of male protagonists or phallic content (well, mostly *because of the lore* but the game building *and* kainkout's art really did contribute a lot to it).
It was also a great idea to have your own specialized beta testers, it's really important to have every aspect tested so the game isn't dead on arrival and too many developers neglect this part when there are many people willing to playtest and report bugs (and even how to fix them) for free nowadays. In the 80s and 90s you had to *pay* people to test your games (and some games were so horribly broken no one would be willing to test them, not even if they got paid to do it).
Keep it up! And happy holidays in advance while I'm at it.