Chapter 13 Update + My Decision/Games Future! (Patreon)

Well, it's time for an update, I think. Normally I'd wait until a little closer to the end of the month for one of these, but in light of my last post, I thought I should come out and address things quicker. The poll is still technically live, but there's no way the winner is going to change. Thank you for all your votes btw!

But more on that later! First of all, I want to talk about Chapter 13 and where that currently stands. So, I dedicated this entire month to the development of Chapter 13, and the goal was to essentially have it finished and ready so that in October I could release another update to the early access build that would include the full story.

That is not happening. And it has nothing to do with last week's poll, or thoughts on updating the game. That was just NEVER going to work out. And it's because I honestly got majorly overzealous. I need you to read this, and understand what kind of an insane person I am. Even if I was drawing one full CG per day, I would not have completed the amount of artwork I set out to include for chapter 13.

The final boss fight alone, accounts for, get this, 30 individual CG's, and if you've played my game, you know that "one" CG may account for 2 or even 3 individual frames. So, the boss fight alone has taken up pretty much this ENTIRE month. That's without getting into artwork that is needed for Ending E or Ending U which are both allocated to 13's workload. Nor does it account for the Epilogue to the game. Nor does it account for the end credits. All of this is to say that, quite simply, Chapter 13 was never going to release in the window I was intending it would.

With that said, I do still want to actually show off what I've been working on with you. So, I'll be sharing screenshots of unfinished gameplay (as I still haven't added the lighting to the maps....orz) as well as some snippets of CG's that I feel comfortable sharing. If you'd like to skip over all that to see the final decisions I've made and what the plans are for the game, feel free to scroll past to the headings that interest you!

Let's talk about Chapter 13: Project Red

Okay, Chapter 13, this is probably the most ambitious section of game I have made in this entire project. I won't be sharing a huge amount, since the maps themselves don't have correct lighting, but I'll share a bit to give you an idea of what to expect.

To access Chapter 13, you will have to successfully make your way into the mysterious mansion that you may have found while exploring earlier in the game. Though simply knowing where this place is, will not be enough to get you in the door.

For players that do meet all of the requirements though, chapter 13 awaits beyond these doors. Being so associated with the "truth" there's obviously a lot I have to leave hidden behind the curtain, but I do want to warn you about one thing right here!

Unlike prior dungeons, stepping foot inside the mansion is a point of no return. And sure, you might have gotten stuck in the tentacle cave, but I can't stress this enough. There are no party members to rely on. There is no masked salesman or Cheshire to sell you infinite healing items. No mirrors to hop into and go anywhere. You will be completely cut off from the outside world. This place is your final challenge, and will test you on everything, and expect some level of mastery, if you wish to clear it. So be prepared to work for those answers.

Once locked inside you'll be met with one of the largest explorable areas in the entire game. The mansion is honestly massive, featuring two explorable floors and a basement. The atmosphere here is unlike anything else, seriously, I finally played with HikariKami's bgm to get these screen grabs and it was spine chilling. Red is not kidding about the voices, and you'll be hearing them too.

Aside from enemy encounters (which I will not be showing off here) you'll spend a lot of time finding clues and solving puzzles. There is extra lore here covering just about every concept in the game, so I highly advise you to interact with anything that looks interesting. Even if it's not information to solving a puzzle or a hidden key it may just be some crucial information that transformers your understanding of the narrative.

Puzzles meanwhile will be a sort of "greatest hits" montage covering everything from pushing objects to pressure plates, to solving riddles, to just bringing a specific item to a specific object. I've tried to include just about every mechanic you've learned and place it into this final dungeon to act as one last test for you the player.

As for those 30 CG's I've been working on, there's few I intend to actually share. And if you hang out in my discord you've already seen all of these. But yeah, all 30 currently in production are connected directly to the games true final boss. There's pre battle arts, post battle arts, dead ends and things like that.

A peak Orihime reference was added at the ultra last second because I just couldn't help myself lol. There's a lot of themeing to this entire setpiece that I can't wait to gush about, but it's here where I think i can pretty naturally segue into our next topic.

What happened to make you consider delaying the game?

This would be the big one! I was quite intentionally vague about this on purpose, but with the votes cast and no room for my statements to come across as holding content hostage or anything weird now, I would like to clarify what exactly happened.

It was this frame in particular really. See while I was sketching out the scene, according to the original script, I took a break to take a shower. And idk about you, but something about showers makes my brain go into overdrive. And it sorta just came up with an idea that was way too good to pass up. So, I immediately set out to sketch it all down. And yeah, the idea was just, incredible.

Crucially, it also did not require a single new line of dialogue to make me hesitate about the change. BUT it did alter the context of some of Red's dialogue. And that alone got me thinking that I might need to get SultryLamp back in the booth to redo this sequence. And as if she was psychically alerted by new Red content, she shot me a message the next day letting me know she would be available this month if I had anything else the game needed.

Now to me, this was basically the world confirming to me that I SHOULD redo these lines. Not that they were bad before, but just, the changes would absolutely have resulted in a different performance from Sultry. They just would have. But for those of you who don't commission actors ever, let me tell you a little something. A lot of actors have minimum fees. That is it say, if you wanted to order just a few short lines of dialogue, you would have to pay for more than that. And it's a totally reasonable rule of course, I have no issues with that. But that was exactly where my "opportunity" was born.

Because if my order was below the minimum fee, then I might as well expand the order and get my money's worth, right? So, I started thinking of ways to reach that threshold. And one good choice was our Masked Salesman. He was clearly a later NPC and Red had no voiced lines directed at him. So yeah easy, expand that. Only, that too was just, very little.

And while exploring other things I could do, my mind pretty naturally ended up on cut content. Now, the cut content wouldn't just get me to the minimum threshold, it would shoot me well over the line. And i didn't necessarily want to spend that much...but once the idea was in my head, it was there. And realizing this would effectively be my last possible chance to include anything else in the game, well it was a lot to think about.

I decided to offer that choice to you guys. And so I did. And the result was pretty overwhelmingly one way, even on day one.

How have plans changed? What was my decision

To start, let's talk about the original plans. The original assumption was that chapter 13s art would be finished this month. As mentioned above, that fell through. But it was supposed to lead into another Early Access Update in October that would add chapters 11, 12 and 13 to the game. This would be followed up with what was planned to be a November 13th update, taking the game fully out of Early Access and into full release, with bug fixes and the remainder of the missing features.

Obviously with the artwork itself falling behind on its own, everything was going to be pushed back one way or the other (which is why I don't like giving exact dates to avoid small little delays like this from cropping up!) but with everything that's happened last week, I've had to reevaluate my plans and choices.

Now originally, I was okay with the games ending being out in the wild, because ideally, it was only going to be a few weeks between the last Early Access update, and the full release. Now though, if I finish Chapter 13 in October/November, things get more complicated. If more content is being added, then I no longer like the original plan. As that would mean pushing out the games ending at the very least, A FEW MONTHS before the full release. And that feels like way too long a gap to have spoilers and other crap out there. I also don't really want people to buy the early access because the full main story is there, play it, and be done with it. As the amount of content that would be missing would just REALLY alter their experience, for the worse in my opinion.

I was pretty clear in the last post that once this thought came into my mind, I knew I wanted to follow it. I would've been happy to release the game as intended literally any other day before that opportunity. But once the realization hit me, I knew that anything less would be a compromise that I would look back on with regret.

So, since the vast majority of votes supported the delay in exchange for more content at launch, and that was what I also wanted to do, I went ahead and pulled up all of those discarded scripts, tweaking and adjusting, and even added a few new scenes and sent the order off to Sultry who is now in the recording process.

With that said, I've also decided to leave the Early Access in its current state for a while longer.

Outlining the Rest of Development

The top priority is still to complete chapter 13. The sooner 13 is done, the sooner the game as a whole can release. I would much rather have it fully done and then take a few more months polishing up the rest of the game and adding in the cut content than do all that and come back to an unfinished ending. So for this month, I should finish the 30 boss arts by this weekend. I'm writing this while at work so I don't have the files in front of me, but I believe there are about 6 images left that require shading. That will be completed in September at my current pace. From there I will focus on the ending related arts as well as the epilogue and end credits. I expect this to take up most of October, especially as I have a fairly ambitious idea for the end credits involving some animation that I'd at least like to TRY.

Once all of the core content is complete, presumably by November, I should have all the new voice acting ready to go. With that I will break the remaining content down on a chapter by chapter basis, adding any remaining quality of life tweaks or new scenes as I go. Each chapter will of course vary wildly. Chapter 1 for example I'm considering a few new arts for the different ways you can die, while Chapter 2 I think is already 100% done.

When the new content has gone past the Demos ending, I will release an updated demo. The current one is LONG out of date and really could use some help. And a fully featured demo is needed anyways.

Grind until the remaining content is done. All of the cut content and small additions are scenes i will be comfortable sharing (save for one) so I will constantly be sharing updates at this point.

Jump straight to a full release with all features and content complete.

When will it release? That I can't really answer. I CAN do 30 cg's in one month. Most scenes are not that long. So, it really comes down to how quickly I can do these art scenes. Most scenes are around 10 images long, so it should be possible to get through 2-3 in a month. I can't really give any concrete estimations. It's technically possible that I could finish all the art by December. I could be insane like that. Is it likely? Probably not lol. I think it just needs a little more time to really feel out what that's going to look like.

Once chapter 13 has the stamp of approval, all art assets done, and I move onto the other stuff, I will have a much clearer idea of how big each scene will be and how long they will take. But for now we're just going to have to sit on it for a bit longer.

I think that about wraps it up for today though. So I'd once again like to thank you all for your continued patience and support. I want to give you the best possible version of this game that I can, and I think that's what most of you want as well. So, that is what I will strive to do.

If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and I will do my best to respond to you!