0.17 Public Release

The next public release is live!

This one has some marked changes from previous public releases (besides including all the improvements of content that is public):

All the club content has been added

Ability to skip or RPG start your character and head right to Act I

New cliffhanger to end on (or a maximum number of days)

With this public release, that means we're on the precipice of dropping 0.19 for our Vet supporters in Early Access in just a couple days.

Play here!

Thanks again for all your support!

0.17 Full Release!

First off: welcome and thank you to all our supporters, new, returned and long-time. It's been great to see the swell of support for this release. It means you think we're doing a good job with Blue Swallow.

0.17 is now available through the website to all Dossier+ supporters. Want a copy on your hard drive instead? You can go there and download the APK and ZIP versions for offline play.

What've we been up to in the past five days since early release?

*Zach, Fict, and JoMOtta have been working hard to ensure the website is stable, fully accessible and bug-free -- we appreciate your bug callouts and patience, Zach just pushed some more fixes.

JoMOtta has begun sketching out an idea that he had pitched to me at the end of last cycle: why isn't there any possibility during the Prologue for Claire to become a stripper and get some pole-dancing skills? It was a good point. So there will be a couple of entry points he's building out to coincide with **0.18*. This will be somewhat styled like the modeling super-arc to pre-College and/or an extracurricular in College.

I've been reworking the RPG-start to be what I had originally envisioned: a quick way to head right to Act I with the version of Claire you imagine. A few screens choosing archetypes and into a skill/trait buy-up and sell-down screen before finalizing and jumping into the main story. It's going to need some vetting from my team, but will drop with **0.18*, fingers crossed.

Starting today, I'll begin on the content for 0.18. Some things that I've planned: - A potential appearance of good ol' dad. - Another new Honeypot arc. - An extension of an existing Honeypot arc. - Reappearance of Sallah, if you know, you know. - And, of course, another day of work at the Club where some choices will come to roost. - I'm also pretty close to putting in the first few tie-offs and tie-ins to Act II.

Not exhaustive, but the headlines.

On another note, towards the end of 0.17, I realized that I'd exhausted the Honeypot voting and mostly exhausted requests that you've had for content and other improvements to the game, so I'm calling on you all to drop into these comments or the Discord (#game-suggestions) and let me know what you'd like to see in a poll for future additions, either in 0.18, 0.19 and beyond.

Looking forward to your ideas! The Stripper bit was one of them and look at that -- adding to the game.

0.17 Early Access Release!

What's new this release? 73 new passages. ~72,500 new words. Six new sex scenes.

It also brings the Nate arc close to its Act I conclusion, and the first release where the Club stops being a place Claire works and starts being a place that's watching her. There's a full week of work at the Club post-Big Event to explore.

What else:

-Tara and her side content

-Elena 'the New Girl' -- will Claire save her and what will the cost be to do so?

-Datu Phase 3. Will she survive trying to honeypot such a dangerous man?

-The Russian Escort Side Quest closes out to its resolution.

-Repeatable escort jobs have opened up.

-Does Claire have someone back home? They might just show up...uh oh.

Beyond the new writing, dead flag reads repaired across several arcs, and a full audio and formatting sweep. Prologue copyedit continues deep into the University arc.

How to Access

EROS HQ is live! alongside this build. Log in on the website with your account and play in the browser at your tier. (If you are a Sudden Agent+ tier with Veteran [3+ months of continuous support] and you aren't accessing 0.17, please ping me on the Discord!)

Sudden Agent Vets will gain access in 2 days, Dossier Vets in another 2 days, and finally a full release to all supporters without Vet status in 5.

0.17 Progress Report

The site is done!

EROS HQ goes live with 0.17.

WHAT'S BEHIND THE DOOR

The site reads your 'clearance' and serves you your version (early release, public release, whatever aligns) — no hunting through post history for the right link, no wrong-version downloads, no wondering whether you're on the current build.

For every supporter tier, that means two things waiting for you the moment you sign in:

The early access release — the newest build for our veteran supporters, playable in the browser the second it's live.

The current live release right there alongside it. Hotfixes drop? You'll find them live on the site, ready for you!

The public build for everyone else.

And if you'd rather hold a copy of your own: downloadable zips of your version, yours to keep, play offline, back up, whatever you like.

It's been the biggest single piece of technical work happening this cycle. Thank Zachari!

THE DATES

August 2 — Public 0.15. Free build, everybody.

August 5 — 0.17 early access AND EROS HQ (the website build), together.

NEW ART

Three new pieces of passage art this week, and they earn their rating — Datu's path and Zohran's -- honeypot content getting the illustrations they're owed. More will come in future releases.

Also in: HD assets for the new hair styles. The doll keeps getting sharper — every style now rendering in full resolution instead of making do.

That's on top of the twenty-five passage art pieces from last week and LewdPirate's ongoing doll work. A very strong art month!

CLUB WORK DAYS + NATE'S ARC

Another day has been integrated along all three tracks and the drug undercurrent is going to reach a higher peak -- no pun intended.

Nate's arc is reaching its peak as well with a planned resolution in the next couple releases. I hope you've been enjoying it. Claire sure has ;)

One week. Then the doors open.

0.17 Progress Report

August 2 — Public 0.15. Free build, streamlined Prologue that incorporates all updates and improvements that went live with 0.15.2. (No HD art, animations, etc)

August 5 — Early access to 0.17 opens for veteran supporters.

THE GAME LOOKS BETTER

Twenty-five new pieces of passage art are in.

LewdPirate is also building out the doll. More bits and pieces to make your Claire yours.

Art is the slowest thing to make and the fastest thing to notice. But we're adding what we can when we can!

DATU

Last report promised the honeypot extension. It's being written now.

Claire's been circling this one since she got to Manila, and the thing about getting closer to a man like Datu is that proximity doesn't buy you clarity. She's further in than she's ever been and less certain of the ground than she was at the start. What he wants from her, what he's already worked out about her, what the evening is actually for — none of that gets easier to read from the inside.

THE PROLOGUE KEEPS GETTING CLEARER

Last week it was a partial University and Prom pass. This week it's tooltips.

The Prologue has a lot of outcomes buried in it — traits, skills, whole vignette branches that depend on choices you made three scenes earlier without knowing they mattered. Plenty of players have never seen them, not because they played wrong, but because they weren't sure how to get them.

We're hoping to fix that. Tooltips across the Prologue are being rewritten to actually signal what a choice feeds and what it takes to reach a given result. Less guesswork, more players finding the content that's already built.

BUGS

Thanks to masterjavier and hornyguy, who have been turning in reports all week and turning in good ones — reproducible, specific, the kind you can actually act on. Several fixes are already in.

As said last week: no hotfix is coming for 0.16. Nothing reported breaks a playthrough, so the repairs ride into 0.17 rather than getting scrambled into a patch.

ONE MORE THING

The supporter site is closer! Last kinks are getting worked out.

No date yet. When there is one, we'll let you know and love to hear your feedback!

0.17 Progress Report

0.16 has been in your hands a week now. You've been playing it hard, and you've been telling us what you found — routing snags, state mismatches, the small ugly things that only surface when hundreds of playthroughs hit a build at once. Keep them coming. They're getting fixed.

Nothing you've reported breaks a playthrough, so rather than scramble a hotfix, the fixes fold into 0.17.

0.17 STARTS!

If you finished 0.16, you saw the exit page promise a few things: Tara. Dalisay. Elena.

They're first.

Tara's side quest is written. Six new passages. She predates the Club as Claire knows it. She was there before, she stayed, and she's the only person in Manila who talks to Claire like she's a person instead of an asset. What might she know? Or maybe she's just a true friend on offer.

Elena's arc is next in the queue.

And Datu's honeypot gets extended. He's been the most dangerous man Claire has gotten close to, and the closer she gets, the less she understands about what he actually knows.

THE PROLOGUE PASS REACHED UNIVERSITY

The proof-and-clean pass through the game's oldest content has cleared the entire university arc.

Rush. Hazing. The houses, the bids, the parties, the parts of Claire's life that happened before anyone ever handed her a codename. All of it tightened — prose sharpened, pacing fixed, dead branches closed, bugs pulled out that had been sitting there since the first public build.

This is unglamorous work and nobody makes a trailer out of it. But it matters. If someone new picks up Blue Swallow tomorrow, the first two hours are what decides whether they see the next ten. Those two hours are now written to the standard of everything that comes after them.

If you bounced off the Prologue early on — come back. It isn't the same game.

PUBLIC 0.15 — AUGUST 2

For everyone playing the free build: 0.15 goes public on Sunday, August 2.

It's the biggest jump the public build has taken.

More soon.