Joker's Trip Patreon Release - v 0.3.0 The Bar Update [UPDATE: v 0.3.1] (Patreon)

[UPDATE: Hi, LG talking to you. I just put out a hot fix for accessing crowd scenes in the gallery menu, and some other small fixes related to the bar cosmetically, and a few typos. If there are no other major bugs, any other fixes will be in the content patch.]

[P.S. for players using the queen cheat, you need to have already seen the girls at the blackjack table at least once before clicking on the queen in the start screen.]

HOO BOY. It's been a while since I (TT) got to write one of these. You might be wondering "wait a minute, wasn't the promo art supposed to be Halloween themed...?" and you would be correct! But then our internet was out for the entirety of the Halloween weekend, and did not get fixed until Monday. And you can't put out a porn game build on a Monday. That's just not done.

Honestly though, it was for the best. We've got a tendency to misjudge when a build is actually super duper for real ready, and not just "things work pretty good" ready. That extra week made a huge difference for last minute polish, tweaks, and testing. Now we feel pretty confident it's super duper for real actually ready, and we're delighted to share it with you.

WHAT'S NEW!

THE BAR! Welcome to Joker's Pit, an intimate little watering hole surrounded by water and populated by holes. Sit back, watch the fish, and have a chat with the characters!

Here you can have longer, one-on-one conversations, which are (currently) unlocked at random through normal gameplay. When a new conversation is available, you'll see an exclamation point next to the bar on the menu, and over the relevant character. Click her, and you'll enter a conversation!

Every character has a unique introductory conversation, 3-5 casual conversations, and 1 end-of-progression conversation earned the next time she Showtimes after a King. We'll talk more about end-of-progression in a minute, because there's still more to talk about with the bar!

Like drinks! The thing you usually go to a bar for! We've added so many new drinks.

Fifteen, in fact. These will give you a host of new abilities, from extending (or shortening!) the game, changing and swapping hands, inflicting status effects, and more. All of them will be instantly available to you as patrons, either through the Drink Menu within the bar itself, or the Abilities menu on the main screen. Eventually these will be unlocked through conversations and, even later, purchased with points earned through gameplay.

But we love you, so you can play with them all right away. You can also find the real life recipe for five of the original drinks in the Drink Menu, accessed within the bar. You'll also be able to view past bar conversations from this menu.

AWESOME, I LOVE IT! WHAT ELSE?

There's always a what else! The other major addition to this update is a set of new end of progression CGs, which we're calling the Curtain Call! The nature of game development, particularly adult game development like Joker's Trip, is that eventually... you just run out of stuff! But the game is still being made, and we don't want to just loop you endlessly through the existing CGs without some acknowledgement of what you've achieved.

The Curtain Call is unlocked the first time you get a girl to Showtime after you've seen her king scene. What a mess of a sentence--anyway, this will also unlock a brand new conversation at the bar, and will mark the end of the character's first stage of progression. We're still working out the mechanics of a second stage, but consider these our statement of intent!

WHAT'S NEXT?

Well... what's immediately next... is more content! Building and programming the bar itself took up the bulk of this development cycle, and while you're still getting a good amount of new stuff with it... you could always use some more! Most of the asset work for this update was done closer to the beginning, before we could thoroughly test and get a feel for what was missing. But at this point we're tired of making you wait so long for what we already did. Look forward to:

• Even More Bar Conversations

• New Game Dialogue

• Joker Curtain Call (I'm sorry I'm sorry I don't know why I didn't do one in the first place)

• Various cosmetic improvements and polish.

• Fixes for whatever bugs you guys inevitably report.

OKAY THAT'S NICE AND ALL BUT WHAT'S ACTUALLY NEXT?

😏

Oh, You Know.

Anyway, thank you so much for sticking around through this interminably long development cycle. This update was almost entirely Leo toiling alone and they worked so, so hard to make everything play smoothly, which has included several total rewrites of core game code. These past couple months have especially been tough, and I'm very proud of them for sticking with it.

Below you can find a full changelog with more details about what's new. You can report bugs, typos, and send feedback to THIS FORM.

Have fun, and we'll see you soon with that content patch!

--TT

Hey, it's me, Leo G. I feel just awful that we missed the scariest time of year by a few days. Especially since election day comes around only once every 2 years! Oh well.

Jokes aside, thank you for your patience. Job hunting is a job unto itself, and a lot less fun than modeling an entire aquarium and bar. I'm hoping to have a lot more momentum! There's still a bunch I want to do before we add even more sexy, sexy characters and scenes. Like Taylor said, there'll be an additional content patch (for example, bar convos where they're naked and maybe even embarrassed?) later, but I do really want to take a week off after working myself to the bone. We'll see! I usually can't keep myself away from Joker's Trip. Especially since I'll be writing some exhibitionist bar conversations and FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY GETTING TO THE BOYS OH MY GOD YOU GUYS HAVE NO IDEA HOW HOT THE SPRITES ARE TAYLOR DID SOOOOO GOOD.

Ahem. Anyway, here's the various changes we made! I'd like to highlight that I finally made a change to the dialog system, where gamblers won't repeat lines until all other lines of that type have been used. According to playtester feedback, it helps a lot!

VERSION 0.3.0 CHANGE LOG

NEW FEATURES

• Added the bar!

  • As conversations unlock, they can be viewed at the bar.

  • Past conversations can be seen in the past conversations menu.

  • Abilities can be set at the bar.

  • A recipe menu for the original 5 abilities/drinks can be seen at the bar.

• Added 5 new CGs, one per each character, unlocked after getting the Jack, Queen, and King scenes.

• Added 15 new abilities.

  • Existing players will keep the original 5 abilities.

• Added the spotlight effect.

• Added achievement system scaffold. Used for unlocking abilities and conversations.

• Added a recipe menu for the original 5 abilities/drinks.

• Added two new expressions for Joker.

• Added the distracted status.

• Abilities now refund their charge if used but not triggered.

Fixes

• Fixed Joker’s face sprite.

• Fixed glitches related to abilities.

• Fixed numerous typos.

• Fixed graphical bug on Prill’s crowd scene.

• Improved dialog system in game mode.

• Fixed start menu cheat code.

• Changed nudity reaction logic.

Enjoy your Joker's Trip and Joker's Pit!

-Leo G.