DevTalk #3: Developing Themba (Patreon)

DevTalk #3 time, baby! We're gonna be talking about our favorite grootslang, Themba!

First we'll go over how we first came up with the idea for him — what the game was like back then, the thought process leading us to a grootslang character, the research that went into it, how we planned his character arc and how we wrote his introduction. You should consider this a never-before-seen behind-the-scenes retrospective about Themba.

After that we'll fast forward to the present and take a look at what has been written so far for his hangouts. We'll discuss how Themba's character and placement in the story has evolved over the years, take a look at his content, discuss his relations with other characters of the cast and more!

Our 3rd DevTalk will happen tomorrow, Saturday. It'll happen at 7PM UTC, or 2PM EST, but you can find the exact time in your time zone on our Discord server, on the Events tab, where you can also opt-in to get notified when it starts. Hope to see you tomorrow!

In other news, you may have noticed a little change in our Patreon. Recently we've been approved to test out a new feature, the ability to "sell" access to specific posts. This addition will not be particularly relevant to current patrons, as we have no intention of changing how our rewards work, but it may be useful to a number of patrons we've observed who want to contribute to the game's development and gain access to perks, but are uncomfortable with automatic monthly payments on their credit cards. I hope this method will be more comfortable for them.

Additionally, it may prove useful to patrons subscribed to the Tip Jar tier who want to gain access to specific higher-level perks for particular reasons — let's say you want to check out one of dil's Art Streams, or gain access to the King of Longing or Io and His Panoptes, but are uncomfortable with pledging to a higher tier.

In short, this is a new way to gain access to rewards, but it does not really change how we'll be running things.

—Mino.

EDIT: Thanks to everyone who attended! The archived recording of this DevTalk is available here for our patrons in the Dear Guest tier or above, and here as a standalone purchase containing all DevTalks and Art Streams from 2025.