Looking back at 2019 in the rearview, and plans for 2020 (Patreon)

Maybe this isn’t the expression I should use, but Audrey looks real damn cute with this one, doesn’t she?) 

 Tl:dr version of this post: 

(Putting the important part right up front for those who don't want to sift through my upcoming rant:)
The direction I’m considering for the Little Black Bestiary series this year, is to complete two new episodes that are much longer and content-packed than the previous episodes, while bridging the gap between ‘big’ releases with primarily text-based content, like short stories and possible text-based ‘side episodes’ in a ‘choose your adventure’ sort of format.
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 I might hold a couple of new polls about the particulars, but for now if you agree/disagree with that potential direction feel free to make your opinions known in the comments (or message us on twitter, discord or wherever.)

More details, explanations and reasoning below:

A bit belated, but Happy New Year, everyone! And a slightly less belated happy Lunar/Chinese New Year!

Anyway, New Years is a often a time for reflection and blah, blah blah to get to the point: Looking back at 2019 I’m both a bit proud and very disappointed. Proud because I’ve always dreamed of being a game dev and that dream is finally coming together, but disappointed because just the production speed and sheer amount of content is not at ALL what I’d hoped to accomplish.

I was fully expecting to complete 2, maybe 3 episodes of the Little Black Bestiary (AND another side-game) last year but I only managed to actually finish one. (While Amaryllis's episode is roughly half-done) I had planned the whole series expecting to do a bunch of short and sweet minigames, and build up a team and my personal skills to work my way up towards releasing an episode every few months. Now I realize even short minigames and VNs take more time and work than I expected and being able to produce content at the pace I’d originally wanted is a goal that’s further away than I thought. The team size, funds, and my own skills as a director just aren’t there yet. So I’ve spent a lot of time January month rethinking my plans, trying to figure out better ways to go about things.

I feel like I should try to do things a little differently this year. I would like to put out content more regularly and be able to actually deliver on more frequent Patreon rewards. But I feel like scrambling to ‘make up for lost time’ would be a mistake and rather than rushing the next couple episodes out the door as fast as possible, I should instead focus on quality over quantity to make them worth the wait. Based on the feedback I’ve been getting it seems people would rather see longer and more detailed episodes than for us to machine gun out a bunch of quickies? (Feel free to argue that in the comments if you disagree)

So first off, I intend to double down on making Amaryllis's and Noire’s upcoming episodes as high quality as possible. I am 100% committed to finishing both of them this year, but that also means I’m going to focus on those two rather than rushing to squeeze in a 3rd “Full” episode. Each of them will have more content than the first two episodes combined, for the record. I am considering putting both of them on Steam as well, to help broaden our audience.

This year, what I would like to focus on the most is on our writing. I want to expand our writing team and establish a collaborative workflow where multiple writers can work together more closely, rather than relying on a single writer to do nearly the entire script for an episode, as was the case for Isabel and Tainara’s episodes. While the next two episodes are in active production, I’d like to also start work on the scripts for the season two episodes, so that once we get to 2021, we’ll already have a complete script or two to work with. Hopefully that approach will help us become better equipped to speed up to the pace I had originally wanted once 2021 rolls around. (3-4 episodes per year)

When I started this Patreon, I was afraid to offer side content that might detract from the budget and effort going into the main episodes. With a renewed focus on writing however, that means I can have additional writers making things like short stories with the LBB characters, or maybe even some text-based side episodes. I think investing in some text-based content is a good strategy because it:

• Provides a lower investment, lower risk way to demo new writers, and give less experienced writers on the team something to practice with  
   
• Will allow for some more content updates/releases between full episodes,  
   
• Allows for some content of characters that aren’t the focus of the currently in-production episodes sooner. (So, for example, we could write some stories starring Isabel, so those interested in seeing more of her won’t need to wait until we can get around to making a sequel/follow up episode for her)  
   
• In general, It’s also kind of a good way of being able to show ‘deleted scenes’ that couldn’t fit in the story of a main episode.  
  
  

But really, the series in general was meant to focus on interesting, well written characters, so I think it makes sense to reinforce that by building up the writing team as much as possible as the main focus of improvement rather than potentially spreading our resources too thin. 

While we’re rethinking these things there may be some adjustments to the Patreon Tiers and stretch goals. Mostly minor ones. Like since the character previews have slowed down now that we have a decent cast the early preview tier would be getting early access to those short stories. Things like that. 

Aside from that, this month was spent working on Amaryllis’s episode and the next Takkyu Tournament update. Both that update and a new playable demo build where you’ll finally get to meet Amaryllis are coming up soon. I’ve got my eye set on Valentine’s Day as an arbitrary deadline, though it seems a bit against the spirit of what I spent most of this post rambling about to put a date on it, but I think that’s a good goal to shoot for.

At any rate, expect to see some more info about the upcoming content once these fiddly details are worked out.