Hi everyone and thanks for reading this week's public update. Today's agenda is to discuss a new feature coming in the mini-update to help those of you that struggle with where to go and what to do, and then we'll talk poll results from last week.

Being a game dev can sometimes be an enlightening and frustrating experience, and one thing I consistently find is that as easy as I think I've made something, there are always questions about it. This is coupled with the fact that so many people today expect their games to be made in Ren'Py, many simply do not have the patience for the RPGM interface and aren't interested in the exploration and discovery element of the game. Over time, I've tried to introduce a variety of things to help, but now I've gone the full hog and made a mode that will lead you by the hand through the whole game. Introducing Quest Hints!

Like Narrative Mode, Quest Hints can be turned on and off at the start of the game or from Missy's laptop. Maybe if I can figure out how later, I'll add it to the in-game menu, but for the time being, that's how it's going to work. Switch it on and wherever you go, there'll be a handy big pink arrow or bubble marker telling you where to go and who to speak to next. I really couldn't make it any easier if I tried.

It will always show you your current active quest. You can change this yourself in the menu screen, but the game will also select the most relevant quest for you if there isn't one currently tracked. In the mini-update, it will only work for the main storyline, as this took a bit more setting up than narrative mode, but every new quest I make will now come with them and the existing side-quests will soon be compatible too.

For those of you who really just want to be playing a Visual Novel or get to the next scene quickly, this mode is as close as I can offer you. And for everyone else, if you're stuck at a part and don't know what to do next, switching it on temporarily could be a godsend for you. I hope you find it useful!

Last week I asked you for your feedback on Chapter Six and the Reign of Jess arc as a whole. As this was a mega-poll, I'll break it down into relevant sections to discuss each in context.

There are spoilers below, if you haven't played Chapter Six yet.

17 respondents thought the chapter was perfect. I appreciate the ego-stroke, and am happy you're happy.

Consistent with other recent releases, there is, as usual, a large majority that would be happy to see the game get darker (than four of the main characters being sold into slavery for life!?)

Once again, this is about as dark as it gets for the time being, and while I'm happy with less than 4% for too dark, I don't want that number to rise too high. I feel like we're about where we should be at present.

A significant improvement on Chapter Five, with the majority happy with the length and a couple even thinking there was too much of it. I was a bit concerned after that last poll, as this time around, there wouldn't even be the element of exploring Fivaviana, at least not as much of it. There's a few things to see in Old Town North and at the Governess's Mansion, but not enough to take up a lot of time. Still, it seems that with the puzzle elements and dungeon, plus the punishing Jess minigame and everything else, this chapter provided a decent chunk of game time.

On the subject of the puzzles and bearing in mind what I've said above, I was frankly amazed that I didn't get more questions about the clock in Elizabeth's house. Well done, all of you!

I'm pleased with this result. A nearly 75% majority liked running around Scarlett's base. Again, I wasn't sure how this part of the chapter would be received, but I worked hard on it and was pleased with the result, especially the chase sequence on level 2. Did you manage to find all four of the things you can throw at her? I bet a lot of you got caught accidentally-on-purpose a few times though didn't you? ^^

 Several of the upcoming stories have scope for adding more content like this to them, so I'm glad it was mostly well received.

I added this out of curiosity, and again, it shows progress on the results from Chapter Five. It's clear that a majority are still looking for more of a choices-matter experience, and one of the main (and fair, at least in context of what you know right now,) criticisms of the ending are that in the end, nothing mattered with everyone's memories getting erased. I'll decline to comment further on that, and just leave you to ruminate on the cryptic part about "what you know right now."

But I digress, this, I think, is why Poppy's story remains so much more popular than the main storyline, the payoff is immediate and the effects of the choices obvious. And the good news is we'll be seeing more of that in some of the upcoming side quests.

Nonetheless, this doesn't seem to have stopped the overwhelming majority of you from enjoying the Reign of Jess. Even some domme players have remarked that they didn't mind seeing what Jess did to Missy and took the story in the manner I intended it - just a bunch of really hot stuff that happens while doing the business of telling the story.

Some of the feedback I've received (and again, I'm grateful for all constructive feedback, good and bad,) has criticised the big undo, but again, it seems the majority were still able to just enjoy a good schoolgirl blackmail/submission story for what it was. I'm pleased you enjoyed playing it, because I really enjoyed bringing this long-awaited tale to life!

So on we head into Act Two, and in the next public post, we'll learn a little more about that. There most definitely are going to be consequences from the Reign of Jess and Act One in general. You're at a super-strict school and there's been a lot of misbehaviour! Now the other shoe is about to drop...

Have a great week!

Trinian

Hi, all. I know that public posts have been a bit sparse of late, this was down to a series of things making unreasonable demands on my time, not least the rush to get Chapter Six done and out. Real life is currently still on the busy side, but I'm hoping to get a bit more regular with these as summer progresses. (Or winter, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere...)

But anyway, today I'll be doing the traditional outro on the recently-released content, and then next time, we'll focus on what's ahead. Because this is the end of a major arc, I'll also be discussing the Reign of Jess story as a whole and welcome all comments and criticism below. Needless to say that if you haven't played Chapter Six yet, you should definitely stop reading now and go and play it first, as today's piece contains a discussion of major plot twists in the chapter and the ending. Don't worry, the poll at the bottom will run for a whole week.

The Reign of Jess is a story that has been in my mind (and partly on my computer) for nearly four years. One of the first things I wanted to do after I had this insane idea to make a game with a repeating school day and an immersive story and world was have my brand spanking new villainess Jessica blackmail and dominate the heroine. It was always the case that part one would be the day at school in which Missy is punished relentlessly, then in part 2, we'd assume control of Abbie and head for Fivaviana where she'd get mixed up with Scarlett and eventually find the solution in the Oblidar pills. When the scale of what I wanted to do with Fivaviana became apparent, I split part 2 into parts 2 and 3.

I opted for an ending that puts everything back to as close to normal as possible, so that I can continue the story into Act 2 without it wildly diverging and every new update after this taking a year to make! Many of you would have preferred that Jess had won so that you could remain her slave forever, while just as many would have liked this story not to have been told at all so that you didn't have to be her slave for three chapters.

There's no squaring this circle. Not without putting in insanely diverging branching paths that would require huge amounts of time to add relatively small amounts of content anyway. It can be mitigated to a degree - some on the subby side have suggested a bad ending in which Jess wins and it's game over - this is possible, and along with some of the other scenes that I didn't have time to make, such as more fun with the bad girls, I can always go back and add them in later, while really the only option for those of you looking to play a dominant Missy would be for Chapters 4, 5 and 6 to be skipped entirely. I've floated this possibility before on forums and people have largely thought it was a bad solution.

However, while the solution I did choose - a drug that erases memories - may seem a little contrived (at least it didn't all turn out to be a dream,) it does have the shining virtue of allowing me to have told a story with high stakes and seemingly-life-changing events and then afterwards have everyone go back to school the next day none the wiser. More on this below.

It's been noted that setting up the whole thing with Jess dominating Missy then instead playing as Abbie while all that goes on elsewhere was an interesting choice for a sex game, (Abbie also acknowledges this in-game with a fourth wall break,) but bear with me here. If you'd spent the whole time with Missy... what would you actually do? What sort of gameplay would there have been for me to put in? At best, you'd have spend your time walking around Jess's house in what amounted to a scene finder that would have been quite short. This way, we still got to see all the terrible things Jess did to Missy while playing a full adventure with Abbie.

It would have been nice to have had time to add a second scene will all four bad girls, but again, there were already so many scenes in Chapter Six that time became a factor, and also once the Scarlett's base sequence started, I didn't want to pull the player away from it and break immersion. And once Abbie was back out into the big wide world in her birthday suit, there was plenty of humiliation going on on-screen anyway.

Why the reset?

This is the part I was the least sure about in terms of the reaction. As expected, some people hated it, but most seem to at least see the need for it. If I'd had this idea later in development, I could perhaps have made it the final chapters with the player getting to determine the outcome, with it ending in anything from Missy remaining Jess's toy forever to Jess being expelled and sent to an obedience school as Miss Paris described.

The fact is that I actually have something even more dramatic planned for later in the game, so it's as well that it worked out the way it did. ^^

It should be obvious why I went the way I did - the mindwipe enables me to now slide effortlessly back into the school in Act 2 with most characters thinking that little has changed. No one who knew what was happening remembers it and no one who remembers it knew what was really happening. Except Missy, if you decided to flush the pill, as about 3/4 of my supporters did!

Finally, I've left myself writing space in two ways, one of which was easy to miss: Firstly the obvious: we know that victims of Oblidar can regain their memories, as evidenced by Scarlett, and second, which you could have missed if you chose to have Emily help you get back to the ferry instead of Tina, is that two women you can overhear talking at the docks say that no one was found at the slaver base and Scarlett has disappeared. I won't bother pretending this is the last we'll see of her. She'll be back.

But wait, Trinian, couldn't you have done everything you wanted to do in this story by opening up a new area of Sapphory City instead of making a whole new town? Well... maybe, but going to another city was cool! Plus it allowed me to do things like have Abbie wander around naked without it affecting things back home. The idea to add Emily in came late on in development, but was something I was very pleased with and gave us a great ending to Chapter Five.

I know that some of you don't like making choices without having an idea where they'll lead, and this one probably brought you out in hives, but this is a choice-based game after all, and there had to be some consequences after it was over. Remember though that there are no right or wrong choices, and you should always play Missy as you see fit, then find out how badly things go for her as a result!

All we know so far is that whether or not Missy remembers what Jess did to her is likely to have an effect on Jess's upcoming relationship quest (now that we're into Act 2, this will become an option for my School Council and Noblewoman tier supporters.) Exactly how it affects your relationship with Jess remains to be seen.

Jess and Miss Paris's character development

In the Chapter Five retrospective, I discussed the impact that this story has had on the characters of Jessica and Miss Paris, a subject on which some players have offered strong opinions. What I of course couldn't say at the time was "hey, it's fine! Everyone's memory is getting wiped anyway, I've got a big old undo coming, so I can make things as extreme as I want without breaking anything permanently. Chill!"

But... yeah, what I just said. We as players have had a look into the darkest recesses of Jess's psyche, and seen what she would do with unchecked power - behave like a member of the nobility - but none of the characters know it happened. Miss Paris is back on top and has no memory of her humiliation and Jess is back to being a sulky schoolgirl brat who's biggest powerplay is making you act as a footrest for her if she wins at volleyball (though as things ramp up in Act 2 this will change...)

And of course, in Act 2, you'll be able to get into both of their panties ^^

Anyway, please take a moment to fill out the customary customer satisfaction survey, please choose as many options as you like.

Have a great week!

Trinian