Tier updates, bonus perks and Early Access

Hey everyone
With Eruption Imminent soon available on itch.io as a paid release, I wanted to make some changes for the supporter tiers here as well.
Here's an overview of all the updated benefits and how they work:

Early Access
  • Starting with Episode 4 there will be a supporter-exclusive early access window before the build goes public.
  • Gold/Silver tiers can play the update 3 weeks before the public release.
  • Bronze tier can play the update 2 weeks before public release. The same goes for buyers of the itch.io version.

Progress Reports
  • No changes here. I'll post weekly progress reports on how it's going. They're available publically.

Previews
  • Also no changes here. Bronze tier and above get weekly preview images for the upcoming episode (as soon as I start doing renders).

Polls
  • I'll do occasional polls that are exclusive to certain tiers.
  • Bronze level polls usually won't affect the game much and are more of a tool to check people's general preferences and feedback.
  • Silver and Gold tier polls usually will have a direct impact on the game where supporters can decide on smaller details of the next episode. There will be at least one Silver and one Gold poll of that kind for each episode.
  • Silver and Gold tier can also vote on special renders, see down below for more info on that.
  • More significant story decisions won't be decided in polls.

Pin-Ups
  • I started doing pin-ups for the cast of EI. Pin-ups will consist of one body shot and one close-up (both with no background) and one full bonus render. The former two will also have a variant with some details of the girl added to it (name, age, height, etc.).
  • Pin-ups will be available for Silver and Gold tier only. Silver get 1080p images, Gold get additional 4K versions.
  • The plan is to publish one set every two weeks. One set will feature one girl. Later down the line I might add more naughty versions to already published pin-ups as well, but starting out they will be relatively tame for the most part.

Special renders
  • Gold members can now suggest themes for special renders in the new Discord channel #special-render-requests. There's info on how this works exactly in the Discord (please read the top posts there before you start making requests).
  • Approved requests will then be brought to a poll, where Silver and Gold tier members can vote on their favorites. Depending on the number of requests, I might need to pre-select entries before that.
  • The winner of the poll will be created as a special render and will be available for Silver (1080p) and Gold tier (4K). Additionally, I will also choose a personal favorite of the requests, and do that one as a render as well. The plan is to do this roughly once a month.
  • This is pretty much an experiment at this point, so things might change if I don't see it working out.

Discord
  • No big changes here. Bronze tier and above get access to the patrons channels. Gold tier additionally gets access to the special-render-requests channel.