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Hey hey, friends! After my month away, I’m officially back! Hope everyone had a great holiday season! My little vacation was fairly uneventful. I did some just-for-fun art over on the Discord, got a little writing done, and mostly just vegetated. I'd hoped to get more done, but I was put out of commission for a week due to some weird stomach bug/exhaustion thing, and then the holidays rolled around, and then.. The month was over!
But, I’m honestly glad to be back to the dev grind. For the first few days of December I actually felt kind of pouty and depressed. "Listless" would be a good word for it. Over the last couple years, I’ve gotten used to having my life organized around a schedule, with dev work being a significant chunk of my free time. With that block of time no longer occupied, I mostly just took a lot of walks and listened to audiobooks, rather than be productive. But, I’m told that’s the point of a vacation. >_>
I'd fully intended to put out a little mini-sode for Christmas, but after getting sick, and then caught up in the holiday rush, my plans fell by the wayside. But, I'd workshopped and partially written several ideas, in more-or-less this order.
- Sapphire's Christmas Webcam Show: Short and sweet! This was to put the player in the role of an observer during Spicy Sapphire's holiday-themed Christmas cam show. But, it just didn't really feel like a meaty enough idea, and it's something we'd already seen quite a bit of, within the game.
- Brittani's Christmas Photoshoot: In the photoset I put up last Christmas, I showed how several of the love interests spent the Christmas prior to our story beginning. Brittani's was spent working on a photoshoot, with Isabella barking orders at her. I thought that could be kind of fun, putting the player in the role of the unnamed photographer, forced to work around Isabella's interference. But, it ultimately didn't seem like it'd add much, besides giving players another glimpse at Brittani and Isabella's contentious relationship. I spun my wheels on the script for a while, but ultimately didn't get anywhere.
- The Student Loan - Winter Break: Some of you might have played my mini-game, The Student Loan, wherein a college student becomes an escort, only to find her professor as her first client. This would've built on that initial premise, with the two spending their winter break together. But, I'd actually like to do more with this concept, which would require more time than I had available to me. So, I scrapped it, with a mind to return later.
- A Young Guy: A flashback to Guy's early days, this would've seen him keep his landlady company, after coming to her hat-in-hand on Christmas Eve, looking for an extension on his rent. I kind of liked the idea of seeing Guy after he'd just moved to the big city, young and full of optimism. Seeing Young Guy in a flashback could still be fun, but I'd need a better reason to do it than this.
- Christmas with the Chens: This would've seen Guy visiting Chen's Convenience on Christmas Eve, looking for a frozen pizza. Taking note of the attractive owner, he'd have worked out a deal to buy into the place, with the option for a little romance. I still like this idea, but I can do it at any time, so I back-burnered it for later. We'll see if I get to it before next Christmas..
- Brazilian Christmas: A more recent flashback, we'd find Guy in Brazil, with his friends Oliver and Marina (referenced during Brittani's photoshoot in Chapter 4), enjoying a balmy, tropical Christmas. There'd be a little sexy action here, which would inform present-day interactions with these characters. Like the stuff with Mrs. Chen, I still want to do this, buuuut it doesn't really need to be tied to Christmas, and I think it deserves a little more time than I had to devote to it.
- Lost and Found: You're vacationing at your remote cabin, when a young woman arrives at your door, dressed like an elf. Wait, she is just dressed like an elf, right..?
- You're My Present: At this point I started to get a little loopy, and thought about doing an homage to the classic coffee commercial, with a guy returning from a trip abroad, and having a cup of coffee with a friend, followed by a splash of.. Cream. I wrote a good portion of this, and it would've had a tenuous connection to our main story, in that he was working for a charity organization that had been given a grant by Guy. I'm going to finish writing this and put it out next year, just because I think it's a sweet little story, and kind of funny.
So, after much hemming and hawing, I did several character designs, designed a few sets, got so sick I couldn't get off the couch, and watched the month slip away from me. But, I finally decided to just do the Sapphire one, because I realized I could do something pretty cool with it, while minimizing my time away from working on Chapter 1's remake. So, that mini-sode is written and partially rendered. I'm going to finish it up this week, and put it out.
Speaking of Chapter 1's remake, I’ve got the first 1/3 of it written, and I’ll be spending the next couple weeks knocking out the rest. My goal is to get the script finished, before I get deep into the rendering. But, until then I can still set up some scenes and do test renders, as you see up above. It's the return of unflattering haircut Guy!
Huzzah!
Finally, I
was able to do one useful thing over my vacation, and build up a small buffer of Wanton Weekends material. My plan is to transition that to a weekly feature, with a new name, in the first quarter of this year.
That's it for me, today! Thanks for sticking with me while I paused updates and took a little time to relax and recuperate! Be sure to check back this weekend for an all-new mini-sode, but until then: take care of yourselves, and thank you for your support!
Happy New Year!