how big is the game right now?
20 some hours in total with patreon content, about 16 hours without (timed by people in our communtiy who have been palytesting, so YMMV since we don't measure it with a hard metric).
I see, it's pretty cool that you guys have dedicated people for different departments. I hope you guys take it easy when you need it.
Burnout can be real, and sometimes it hits hard with this project when other things catch up. Been ripping the siding off my house and cutting out rotted wood, clearing out the old sawdust crap they used to use for insulation, and then stuffing in fibre glass. When it gets hectic like this there's absolutely no free time and I am staring at beige google docs all my free time lol. But it'll be worth it in the end.
The question was if I pay $5 once, will I have access to all futur patreon builds. The answer is no.
Well, no, of course not. I don't know any patreons/subscribestar/itch projects that give you the entire project and future updates for just a one-time tier? If you pledge/sub on the $5 you get that build unlocked period, it won't reject at a later date, it won't invalidate, and that build is yours to play. We do need to incentivise this as a product, period, and this is the only clear way we at the team know how to do it to be honest.
Addressing a little misinformation.
A couple of people have been spreading that the game has "patreon" locked "doors" that bring up a patreon banner. This is completely false, we
do not have a patreon banner ever pop up. This is simply false on the face of it and I'm not sure why people are saying it. There's only a couple of sections where dialogue will have a note "Patreon/Subscriber content" and that's how we've handled it so far. We prefer to not trigger the pledge content at all to avoid the immersion/flow break.
We currently have 26 walkthrough quests with about 6 unlisted side/minor quests, of these 26 quests 10 are subscriber. The free version of the game is,
roughly, 13-16 hours completing all content and talking to NPC's. Personally I'm comfortable that this is an adequate amount of public content, and still, we are opening up more as we go on. We're not anywhere near a spot in our development we feel like having to stop putting out public content and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
The game
will release onto steam, and when we figure out the details (still internally discussing figures) we'll ensure people who stuck with us and helped get us to the goal will get the steam code as well. This will aggregate, so if a $1 pledge has kept with us long enough it'll aggregate enough for the steam code.
Lately, I've been scarce around here as I've had nearly no time to spare between real-life curb-stomping me (dog needed a TPLO which cost $7200, for instance) and having to take on extra work while fixing this old house built by an incompetent idiot back in the 70's. The moron moved a smaller house out here, to build a bigger house... dug a fucking foundation and crawlspace, didn't finish digging it and sealed half the basement away. Then the fucking idiot cut one of the supporting beams for the foundation a quarter of the way off just to feed a fucking duct through the space instead of routing the duct around it. Anywho.
So normally I'd just chill and let talk coast through here, but a few people have alarmingly been posting completely false statements about our game here. I had to speak up about that of course. You yourself can boot the public version up and verify what I've said.
We're going to keep working to make the best damn game this team possibly can with the resources at hand. We thank each and every one of the people who have thrown in support. Whether that support be monetary, sharing the game with friends, or even just taking the time to stop by and say hey, ask a question, or theory/craft with other members of our community. It all helps out, it all means a ton, and we'll keep trying to improve what we're doing within the scope of our capabilities.
Take it easy everyone, and remember, don't knock pumpkin spice until you try it. Shit's pretty good.
EDIT: Meant to respond to this dude too;
I'll be honest, I hope you guys look at things like the combat system at the very end. Imo the priorities for a game like this are always story and smut scenes first to get people hooked. I know it's super hard to say this early but how happy are you guys so far with your progress? I didn't check it out in quite a while because it's a little hard to go from build to build as the save files are often not working for me but this is definitely one of those games I really look forward to the finished product.
Also yes, screw humans as MC...Redic is a hottie and he's here to stay
Yeah for sure, our combat is in a rough spot. I feel we have the working foundation to make a good combat system. A lot of people do end up enjoying it as it is now, or
WANTING to enjoy it, and both are a good sign that we have something working here. We're going to address UI issues first and just try to make it have more feedback for you guys. We've kinda dropped the ball as this is the first time any of us have been at the helm of designing combat like this.
I've actually taken a lot of what we've learned and other games, and I am going to throw my ring in to help with combat systems etc too as it goes forward. Arbuz is actually, unironically, one of the better players in the world for some RTS games and an avid turn-based dude. We have a couple of people like that on the team, but being good at these systems and being able to design them are two different skill sets that take some time to develop. I think we have a good head on us on what direction to go to make this combat system
fun and
as complete as the rest of the game. At the very least I want to drop "hey... can I skip combat?' questions as low as possible.
Especially since some of our narratives are delivered in combat... and people might feel, a little lost, if they skip the combat haha.... not ideal. If you wanna give us feedback or suggestions and be involved, do pop by our discord. There's no required patreon tier and you can drop in and use this channel here to engage with us.
There IS a patreon channel, I think? # Suggestiosn or something, but our discord is slow enough that we're
going to see your chat in the discussion spoilers channel, and we
are going to respond to you in it lol.
Aaaaannny roads this post has been a bit too negative for my taste, I don't like being edged when responding to people just talking about the project and such but there were things I had to address. So here's Hiho swimming and/or fishing, I'll let you decide which;