SLARPG: General update April 2022 (Patreon)

Hi everyone! It's that time again. Last month, I reported that Act IV of Super Lesbian Animal RPG had reached Alpha, meaning that only the final act of the story stands between us and having the full game playable.

I'll keep the description of our progress brief because I'd like to dedicate most of this post to looking ahead to the coming months. So! I jumped straight into work on the final dungeon, and the actual Dungeon stuff is already nearly done. Once that's finished, all that remains for me before the game hits Alpha is, well. The ending. The climactic story scenes that the whole game has been building towards, the final battle(s), and the epilogue. On Bee's end, she's working on the last remaining songs for the soundtrack. We went over our list of final "if there's time at the end" tracks, and Bee knocked out the ones we decided to keep with record speed before returning to the music for the ending. She's now working on the last two songs in this massive 70+ song soundtrack, after which it'll all be ready for one final coat of polish.

I've said this many times now, but we really are nearing the end of production after all this time. What does that mean for the near future? Well, the roadmap to launch looks something like this:

Phase 1 - Finishing the Alpha

This is what we're working on now! Getting Act V done at long last so that the whole game is playable from start to finish. Should nothing go catastrophically wrong, this should be done in a month or two.

Phase 2 - Private Alpha playtesting and final polish

Once the whole game reaches Alpha, it's time for one of the most exciting parts: having friends and family playtest it! The completed game will be somewhere roughly around the 10-15 hour mark, depending on your playstyle, so this will obviously take some time. The first two acts of the game were playtested by a handful of friends around the end of 2020, but no one outside of the team has seen the rest, and I've been dying to share it.

While this is happening, I'll be running down the remaining list of small polish tasks that weren't necessary for the private Alpha. Minor NPCs who still need proper mugshots, little bits of optional flavor dialogue that were missing, a few extra bells and whistles here and there, that sort of thing. Bee will also be working on the final mixing and mastering for the soundtrack to get everything juuuuuust right.

Phase 3 - The Beta

Once the game is Content Complete, we hit the moment that many of y'all have been waiting for: the Patreon Beta. As promised, everyone who's pledged at the $5 tier or higher before will be able to playtest this early Beta build of the game. (The final release will cost $15, but since most people pledge for multiple months I'd say it evens out.)

This will, ideally, be as close to the final release as possible, both in terms of content and timing. I don't intend to let my Patreon supporters hoard the game to themselves for months while everyone else has to wait. The Beta will be in a state where, in a perfect world where nobody found any bugs, I would release the exact same build for sale as the 1.0 release. Obviously, there will be bugs, balance issues, and other things that should be tweaked, because that's the reality of game development, but I want the game to already be in as good a state as possible following the friends and family playtesting. I don't exactly expect Patrons to play through the whole game for the Beta and then immediately play through the final release as well.

I'm still working out the details for how exactly the Beta will be distributed to y'all and how I'll gather playtesting feedback, but I'll be sure to keep everyone posted.

And after making any necessary adjustments following the Patreon Beta, naturally...

Phase 4 - Release

Super Lesbian Animal RPG will finally be released to the world.

We now have a specific month we're aiming for, but, again, we're keeping that to ourselves just to try and make sure we don't have to announce one last delay. Rest assured, though, the game will be released this year. I know it's been a very, very, very long wait for this game, but it'll be here before we know it.

And that's it for this month! Exciting things are on the horizon. As always, thank you for your continued support, everyone, and stay safe out there.