So Version 0.8 of New Hayven 365 is coming soon. I'm just currently finishing up on the unique dialogue for Nicole and Kennedy, and the animations for Kennedy but I figured I had a lot to say about this update and some other stuff about New Hayven.

What You Probably Want To Know

Originally I had planned on launching v0.8 with both Nicole and Kennedy but because this will be introducing so many moving parts similar to the v0.7 update, I'm instead releasing just Kennedy for now while I finish up on Nicole's animations and dialogue. Dates will still use the same dialogue as Sabrina FOR NOW but I do plan on changing that in the future.

The Version 0.8 update will add a whole ton of new economy updates and changes including Business Trips, upgrade items and more! Originally this update was planned to occur June 1st. So what happened? Well I fucked up, obviously.

What Happened? And Upcoming Changes

As it turns out, 365 days is A LOT of in game days, and during all the testing I was doing, I never accounted for this. A huge integral part of this game is hitting 365 days so you can get an ending.

So obviously the first major change that would need to happen is the economy. Some people might be surprised to hear this, but you're really not supposed to immediately start fattening up your Girlfriend. The game was designed in mind with taking care of yourself > taking care of economy sinks > and then taking care of Girlfriend.

Version 0.8 was originally going to add something that in hindsight I think would have pissed off a lot of people. Since part of the premise of New Hayven 365 involves the player being sick, there was going to be multiple ways for your time in New Hayven to come to an end even faster than a couple of in game months. And for each end you encountered whether early or not would introduce upgrades that would make your time in New Hayven last longer, speed up progress, etc. Again, I think this would have just made players angry so I scrapped the whole idea and am currently trying to figure out if I can rework what I had already done into some other mechanic that isn't as invasive. If anything it would have made the whole 365 days problem even more complicated.

That mechanic itself is what took up a lot of my time the past couple weeks. It just became so intuitive and required so many prerequisites to operate properly, I kept losing sight of the fact people are playing to watch a lady get fat. I just need to reel in the creative liberties I'm making a little bit.

At the end of the day there needs to be balance between the amount of gameplay the player must endure to experience the reward. For a visual novel styled game, there's only so much you can do with that. Story is the only thing that realistically can increase the longevity of the game in a meaningful way and I didn't really create New Hayven 365 with that in mind. It's gotten to the point where I'm almost like "You know what, finish up this game, then create a Redux version that's actually more Girlfriend Simulator/Visual Novel instead of, whatever the hell New Hayven 365 actually is right now."

Recent Poll Results

We had 350 votes on the recent poll! That's like so insane to me. Y'all crazy I love it.

Aside from the obvious Number 1 choices, the Number 1 chosen response for what players were looking forward to most about New Hayven 365 was...

"More dateable characters and more content in the future" with 32 votes!

Can't lie, did not plan on New Hayven 365 being that kinda game. Seeing how much support the idea got, well shit I guess I'm making more dateable babes in the future.

Our runner up picks were...

"The Story of Each Girlfriend" at 25 votes!

And "I'm hoping for more visual novel than game" at 20 votes!

Again, not something I really expected people to want and doing so could require a bit of a game rework. Still, finally nice to have some kind of direction I know I need to take.

In Retrospect

With all those poll results, it's almost certain to say the future of New Hayven has definitely changed shape a bit. However I would still say that new version of New Hayven might end up becoming a follow up game because of how much retooling everything would take to make it function in that other way.

For example if I were to redo New Hayven 365 all over from the start again, I'd have all ladies dateable at the same time but new ones only show up every so often or only after prerequisites were made. I'd try to create a more open world like map instead of the linear paths that exist now, that way the Girlfriends would have a chance to be in all these different places at different times. I mean there's a lot I would like to change about the game but I would feel more comfortable coming back to that idea in the future after I've gotten more experience under my belt.

The End

It's been one helluva Devlog, I mean seriously are these things supposed to be this long? Version 0.8 of New Hayven 365 IS COMING SOON! Maybe not "soon soon" but definitely in the Coming Soon area, a respectable amount of time to make some new animations and write new dialogue.

I am working on New Hayven almost daily and when I'm not working on it I'm working on all the other stuff going on here at the Big Lady Emporium. So with that being said as always thank you all so much for your patience. Whether you're waiting on the usual new animations or anticipating the newest New Hayven 365 update, I am genuinely grateful for both your patience and your generosity in supporting me and this wild project I've taken on. Thank you all so much and I hope to get you that update as soon as I can!