Looking Ahead (Patreon)

I have decided to change things up a bit and am eliminating the weekly Progress Report posts. The public Development Status posts on Mondays will be the only regular status update posts going forward. I am replacing the progress reports with a new series of posts providing a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at what I’m working on and what my plans are for the futures of Unexpected Consequences, Altered Bloodlines, and their shared universe. I plan to make these longer and more detailed posts. I plan to include an assortment of images within these posts as well, including previews of upcoming game images, test renders where I’m playing around with things, shots of work in progress, and more. I probably won’t make one of these posts every week, but I’m aiming to make it at least a biweekly thing.

With that preamble out of the way, I want to start talking about what comes next. With the end of Unexpected Consequences in sight, I’ve been planning what comes next for a little while now. I want to take everything I’ve learned from Unexpected Consequences and Altered Bloodlines to make an even better story and game. I know exactly what story I’m telling, already an improvement over the start of either Unexpected Consequences or Altered Bloodlines, and it will be a direct sequel to Unexpected Consequences. I want to warn you that if you haven’t played through to the end of Chapter 4 with both Violet and Tony alive, there will be minor spoilers ahead.

This sequel is actually going to be a series with each entry following the story of a single case for your private detective agency. I am calling this series Unexpected Case Files, and the first case takes place about a year after the end of the Unexpected Consequences epilogue. I still have some details to work out, but I already know what the first case is, who’s guilty, and some of the suspects. I have the subtitle for this first entry already as well, but I’m saving that reveal for its teaser at the end of Unexpected Consequences.

Pre-production work on Unexpected Case Files has already begun; the images within this post are all test renders of what the girls will look like in the game. The Jamie test also includes an early version of your offices, though I am still working on customizing that set. I have also started working on new customizations to the RenPy engine for Unexpected Case files, providing customized menus and new gameplay features.

I want to assure you that Unexpected Case Files won’t have any negative impact on Unexpected Consequences or Altered Bloodlines. Those games continue to be my priorities, and Unexpected Consequences is still on schedule to be completed by the end of the year. I’m not even going to start working on actual game content for Unexpected Case Files until Unexpected Consequences is finished, and the first release won’t come until after Chapter 2 of Altered Bloodlines is complete.

On the subject of Altered Bloodlines, that will be the focus of the next of these new behind-the-scenes posts. I plan to talk about how that story came about and evolved into a prequel to Unexpected Consequences, and also what the future of the game looks like, including a timeline for its completion as well.