The Rise and Rise of Poppy

Hi everyone. Thank you for joining me for this week's public post.

There's a few things to get through today, firstly, there's a small patch to fix a bug with Missy, then we'll talk about the 0.11 plans, and finally we'll round off with the outro for Rise of Poppy.

Because Best Frenemies uses the same locations as the quiz part of Lola's quest, it has created a conflict that can hard lock you while you're trying to get into Lola's panties. If you intend to play Always the Quiet Ones between now and the release of 0.11, you'll need this patch. Download it here. The instructions for how to patch the game are included, and they're very simple, but if you have problems, message me and I can help.

Following three dramatic rounds of voting, the School Council has decided that the next quest to be added to the game will be Charity Begins at School, a school side quest in which Missy and her friends will need to put on a series of charity events for slaves - dressed as slaves themselves! Flounce around school in that humiliating underwear set that Madeline had you wearing in Slave to Love - but all for a good cause!

The new quest will give us, among other things, a peek into the private world of the teachers when we venture inside the Staff Room, and for this reason, the final two teachers will be getting character models. the beautiful Miss Pupusa has already been unveiled to supporters, and Miss Argolla won't be far behind. We'll also be seeing some significant character development for Becky, Natalie and Miss Fafine - but with Jessica, Abbie, Lola and Mary plus of course the irascible Miss Paris featuring heavily, there's something for everyone in this quest!

Once again, this is happening a little later than I'd like, but I want to throw up a small poll to gauge how well Rise of Poppy went over. This story was a couple of years in the making, mostly due to a lack of development time. When I had a month left until Christmas after releasing 0.10 to supporters, I knew this was the best chance I'd get.

For this, we met some new characters and significantly developed others. Isabelle gained her character model (and I have to say it's absolutely one of my personal favourites so far,) and two new bad girls, Sheryl and Charlotte arrived. Both are still fifth years and will be back. Celine will also be finding her way into the main game, but as she's now 25, she has left Saint Alancia's. We'll be encountering her elsewhere.

A lot of thought went into how to make this truly feel like the past - making the school slightly less developed, such as through the quiet study area being unfinished and having Miss Boceta hanging around perving on girls, plus the various conversations you can listen in on, such as the two teachers discussing the imminent arrival of Miss Paris all contributed, as I hope did the "unknown middle school girl" in Fallulah Park chatting with her mother.

A snap poll on Discord revealed that a plurality of people now care about Poppy and Isabelle's relationship, so I'm happy to announce that this subplot will be resolvable in the concluding part of Poppy's story, whenever that ends up being made. Right now, of course, Isabelle isn't Poppy's biggest fan. So would you like to help her get even, or maybe even get them back together? We do of course have that whole complicating factor that in some timelines, she's currently in debt to Melanie...

I hope you enjoyed this little vacation in Poppy's stream of consciousness, and I'm sure it won't be too long before I'm inspired to give another girl her turn. There seems to some interest in playing as Jessica, or maybe Stacey. Anyway, please do take a moment to share your thoughts.

Until next time!

Trinian

Hi, and thank you for joining me for this public post.

I usually try and do this straight away, while it's fresh in people's minds, but, you know, life. Today I'm going to do the retrospective on Best Frenemies, Jessica's relationship quest, which was released just before Christmas. If you're just here for the latest news, there isn't much, the School Council is currently voting on the headline quest for 0.11 and we're expecting the final result a week tomorrow. Before you go, please do feel free to fill in the usual customer satisfaction survey at the end of this article and if you'd like to leave qualitative feedback, you are welcome to use the comments section.

A Match made in Hell

Going into this quest, I knew two things: It would be very important to get this quest right as Jessica is such an important and popular character and that it would need multiple endings as the range of relationships players want to have with Jessica is... wide.

Applying the lessons I learned between Bad Girls Bitch/Down with the Bad Girls and Avenging Angel, I delayed the decision until near the end so that everyone plays the same quest before experiencing the outcome they want. This did mean creating three different versions of the end scene, but there was some crossover.

How the quest played out went through a number of iterations before I arrived at a final version. I played with the idea of having a longer escape sequence from Slaver Base II, perhaps involving Missy having to attract the attention of the slaver boss so you could steal the key while she slept after having her way with you, but in the end, I wanted to keep the focus on the relationship between the two girls. I also abandoned an early idea to have the player temporarily take control of Jess as this would reveal the existence of the player to another character, and one who doesn't have her mind wiped afterwards.

That super-long scene which begins at the moment of capture and doesn't end until the beginning of the escape is most of the reason for the long development cycle, but as I discussed when explaining the creative decisions that led to Abbie's adventure in Fivaviana, there isn't really a lot of gameplay to be had from being a slave - particularly not one that spends the entire time chained up. So whereas in that instance, I opted to have the player do something else and keep checking in on our girl's torment, this time we stayed with her for the whole time but had no control. I think there's merits and penalties to each approach.

But why involve the illegal slavers and do that whole sequence at all? We already had the counselling sessions through which to explore the girl's growing relationship. Well... first of all, because it was hot. I mean come on. That scene was like 45 minutes of pure gas. This is reason enough on its own in a game like Missy where titillation is the whole point.

But there was another reason: it acted as by far the best relationship development out of anything I could think of. Putting the girls in this extreme and seemingly hopeless situation (and of course chemically removing their inhibitions,) meant that the relationship was forged in fire. Remember Lola's relationship arc where we had to get past her mothers first and it was that much better for it? Well this is that on speed. In the gloom of that dungeon, love blossomed. Unless you chose the rejection ending, I guess.

I am quite pleased with the way this quest came out - from an early idea to have the girls captured together to something which I feel did quite a good job of bringing their feelings for each other out into the open all while doing humour and sexiness. (I hope you liked the sequence where they're talking nonsense at each other as the drugs take hold as much as I do.)

But anyway, now's the time for you to have your say and tell me what you think! I'll probably do another one of these soon for Rise of Poppy as that too probably deserves some creative postmortem.

Please select all options in the poll that apply.

Until next time!

Trinian