August 17 Update (Patreon)

Okay, let's talk about TLS 1.0.0: the work I've been doing and will need to complete before I officially call the game done and do the big launch on Steam. I've seen some misunderstandings spreading about exactly what that will entail, so I wanted to give some more information.

I have a huge list of things I intend to work on, some very small and a few larger. They include but are not limited to:

1) Modifying the Chapter 2 section so that recruiting Altina is required. This is the one everyone knows, and I think it's a necessary tweak, because too many people miss her.

2) Adding investments that "rubber band" ProN returns a little: these will not appear for optimized saves, but will reduce how far behind unoptimized players fall. I will make a whole post about this later.

3) Some tweaks, like making the Yarra X Orcs scene easier to skip. Yes, I'm caving to pressure, but I'm tired of people shrieking about NTR.

4) In theory, I would like to have another DLC option available on Steam before the launch. Unfortunately, I still haven't come up with any ideas that I think work well: I would like to give players something to distinguish it from the donation option, but it needs to be something that wouldn't consume a lot of my or Annikath's time.

5) On that note, I would like to make some key art tweaks to prepare the game to make the best possible impression. Maybe finish all of the Chapter 4 scenes as well, though that would take a couple rounds.

6) Misc stuff I won't list out here. If anyone has complaints or suggestions for polish, this is the period I'll be trying to do everything.

Beyond that, there's a major question of picking a good window for the launch. This is the last time that I can control any meaningful attention from Steam, so I need to pick a good one: not during a holiday or Steam sale, obviously, but ideally I'd like to avoid a period of time with lots of other RPG releases. This is an open-ended one because the exact timing remains unclear.

I think I've completely finished updating the page itself. New art, new trailers, updated text... I don't think there's anything else I can do there.

Though on that note, everyone remember how TLS fell below Overwhelmingly Positive, then there was a huge burst of reviews from fans that got it back there? I remain grateful for that, but unfortunately...

The game probably can't recover its percentage after two negative reviews in succession. =/ Even bigger shame is that one of those players might enjoy the game but didn't make it through the prologue. While it would be nice if TLS could hit launch with the highest rating, to get more attention, I think it doesn't have a chance of maintaining that post-launch, so maybe it doesn't make that much difference.

Anyway, I hope this has added clarity. I'll wait to do the official launch until I'm ready, but I feel like that should really be in 2025. The only likely reason for delay would be if a combination of extra polishing and bad release windows means there's no good time, as I don't want to throw away this chance to reach new players. But from the perspective of patrons, you should see basically all the concluding details this year.