Summing up the latest update (Patreon)

Hey guys!

This is the first post after the latest update, and I wanted to take a moment to sum things up.

This update was honestly pretty challenging. Between GPU crashes and having to rework my draft completely, it took a lot more time than I originally planned, but I’m glad it’s finally out.

I always read comments and listen to constructive criticism, and there’s one point I wanted to address properly.

The main complaint I saw was that the update felt short. Putting technical issues aside, the game has reached a point where it includes a lot of paths and conditions to check. A single scene that might take you five minutes to play can take me days to write and another few days just to test. As the project grows, the underlying story logic has become increasingly complex, which naturally slows things down.

I’m not saying this as an excuse. This is how I chose to build the game, and I don’t regret it. I genuinely think this is part of what makes LSS special.

That said, there are things I could change if the goal was to speed things up.

For example, in the last update there were three scenes with two clothing variations each:

Ann at the park, with different outfits depending on corruption

Emily’s room

Emily at the bar

Each variation means rendering everything twice. That’s not just hitting render again. It’s adjusting clothing morphs, fixing clipping, and making sure everything still looks right. The same goes for animations. The Ann park animations had to be rendered twice as well, which alone took quite a bit of time.

As for paths, in the past I released updates more focused on specific characters. That made those updates feel longer if you were following that character, but it also meant waiting a lot if you weren’t. I switched to a structure where every update has something for everyone, but that naturally makes each individual path feel shorter.

So this brings me to the actual question.

If you had to choose, would you rather I focus more on overall content length, even if that means fewer variations like clothing options or unique path differences?Or would you prefer I keep things as they are now?

This doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily change direction. I do have a clear vision for the game. But I care about your experience, and I want to hear your thoughts.

Next update news:

I’m currently working on the bar scene. I really want it to be impactful and meaningful, with a lot of options. At the moment, most of the main characters are there. I’d also like to create some scenes with characters we haven’t seen in a while, like Amber, although she isn’t part of the initial draft yet.

If you think about it, the bar night scene can act almost like a free-roam section, and when I wrote the main draft for it, that’s how I approached it.

That said, there are two issues:

LSS never really had free roam, and after all this time, it might feel off

LSS was designed to be played multiple times, exploring different paths and options, and I’m worried that a free-roam structure could feel like a chore on second or later playthroughs

Right now, I’m coding it using the regular choice system you already know, while also experimenting with something new, so it feels like free roam without actually being one. It’s hard to explain, but it should make more sense once you get to play it.

Hopefully, you’ll like it.

As always, I'd like to hear your feedback on everything I wrote!

Cheers 🍻TTrick