December news!

Hello!

News about the development of the latest update!

We're almost there! I'm working on the raptus scene, and it's not far from completion. I'm satisfied with the work, especially today after a sweaty 14-hour work session! I'll try to push for at least a couple of hours more, and I'm taking writing this as a bit of a break!

My head has been in the next update (the one after the "hopefully soon" to be released). I think it may be time to break the ice and turn this into a bigger project, and it will take time— a decent amount of time. My goal is to finally have free-roaming, repeating scenes, more freedom of choice, and fix stuff in general. The pressing question I'm asking myself is whether I will be able to reorganize all the work done till now into subsections for free-roaming or if I'll "settle" for an update where the forward gameplay is in free-roaming while keeping the previous story as is until I have more time/mental strength to convert everything. I obviously hope for the first, as I work better when I have momentum. There are things I want to change from the story, and there will be a substantial amount of organization involved. It will be exhausting, but I know I will be proud if what I deliver will be even close to the image I have in my mind.

Now, I know free roam can be kind of scary, particularly when switching from a linear story. Some of you enjoy Raptus as it is, but it's important to me to boost replayability, game time, and interaction. Clearly, some of you (me included) sometimes would like to just get in there and enjoy a scene you've already seen or try to discover if you missed something. I don't want to make a tedious type of free-roam; I don't want the player running back and forth for twenty minutes just to have those five minutes of heaven. I've never been a fan of that type of gameplay, so I would like to deliver a hybrid or at least not a "farming" type of gameplay.

I think I will also switch from an episode version to a more common one. So, if you see a Raptus V0.1 or 1.0, don't get scared; it will still be all there!

Hopefully, we'll all be here soon for the new update, and remember, all this free-roam stuff will not be for the next update but for the one after the next!

Transparency is important to me, and I want to let you know that I've utilized ChatGPT to help me with this message.