Hi everyone and thank you for joining me for today's public update.

Supporters, I'm sorry about the lack of radio contact recently. I've been flat out at IRL work where an emergency has occupied all my attention for just over a week. Not that there'd be a great lot to report. Early development of Charity Begins at School proceeds nicely, the writing is well underway as is some of the preparatory work on some new generic images. As we move ahead, you're likely to see more and more classroom conversation scenes rendered in full even when everyone is fully clothed and not doing anything sexy. It's all intended to increase the immersion and give a more VN-like feel, which hopefully it will.

I will also be shortly unveiling my plan to overhaul the school day and take a massive bite out of the repetitiveness problem. A small but significant change to the algorithm will allow the player to focus in much more on the active quest, with lesson events taking a smaller role when there's something more interesting happening. More on that once plans are finalised, but the intention is to have it rolled out in 0.11 so that Charity Begins at School can be the first quest to benefit from it.

On then to the poll results from two weeks ago. Over 100 of you were kind enough to share your thoughts on Rise of Poppy and while this game is one-and-done, the data is still useful, both for Missy and for other such games I might make in the future.

32 people, somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of respondents thought the game was perfect. While a slight drop from Jess's relationship quest, this is still very flattering and in line with what we've seen in the past. Thank you ^^

The fanbase was split nearly down the middle on whether you'd prefer me to spend my time on projects like this or focus it all on the main game. Of course, there's no way to please both camps, so my compromise will likely be to keep doing what I've been doing - mostly work on the main game, release one of these every 1-2 years.

I'm going to be completely honest with you, this one was a test of how realistic people's expectations are. And over 80% of people's expectations are indeed reasonable, which is good.

If you checked the top box because your answer is "I want these games to be bigger even if that means they take 6 months to make with no progress on the main game in the meantime," then fair enough. But otherwise, understand that I'm only one person working part time on this. Rise of Poppy was made in about 3 weeks, and is the size of a medium length quest in Missy. I worked flat out on it to have it ready before Christmas. It doesn't get any more efficient than this until I retire!

A pleasing set of results here, I'm glad to see that the new arrivals captured the imaginations of most players. Big interest in seeing Celine and Isabelle again, with respectable showings for everyone else too. The good news is that every single one of these girls has content planned for Missy, and following a snap poll on Discord in which it was also established that a majority of players also now feel either somewhat or very invested in Poppy's relationship with Isabelle, I am delighted to announce that this subplot will return in the concluding part of Poppy's story (working titled Popularpocalypse,) in which the player will have some say over how things end up between them.

 Celine meanwhile will be appearing in the next part of the strip club progression, (you may recall that this is what became of her after high school.) Has her experience at the hands of Poppy changed her? Hopefully not.

Sheryl and Charlotte are still fifth years at Saint Alancia's and while they are now more focused on their studies and have largely hung up their ribbons, you can't take the bad girl out of the girl completely, and so will torment our girl in a way that I hope you will find new and fun in an upcoming new progression arc. Erin is of course in medical school now and we will see her (and the rest of the medical students) when we return to the hospital in the future. Kaitlyn is now Poppy's girlfriend and although mostly seen in the pub or hung from a display column these days, surely still has a part to play in our story.

I wanted to round off today's check-in with a word about the upcoming changes in Discord's policy regarding NSFW servers. If you are not a member of the Saint Alancia's Discord and have no interest in being, then this won't interest you, have a great week.

I have been following developments with this carefully as a decision will need to be taken regarding what, if anything, should be done in response. If they were to push ahead with mandatory ID verification/facial recognition for all users, then the status quo would not be an option as I am not personally prepared to take this step. I've verified my ID to Patreon, Subscribestar and Itch, because these companies handle money for me and I get that money laundering laws are a thing, but I am not in the habit of showing my papers to anyone who arrogates to themselves the right to ask. No law is compelling Discord to do this.

The good news, however, is that this may never be a problem. If the platform's algo classifies me as an adult, without my having to prove it, then I can continue to administer the NSFW parts of the server. If not, then options ranging from removing the NSFW parts of the server to migrating to an alternate platform will be on the table, but I'll consult on this at the time. For now, the policy remains one of wait and see.

Until next time!

Trinian

Hi all, and thank you for joining me for today's public update!

Last week, a record 164 of you were kind enough to give your verdict and feedback on Best Frenemies. Today I'll talk about the results of that poll and reflect a little.

If you're just here for the status update, we are a couple of days away from the big reveal of the headline quest of 0.11, so that will be in next week's post. I have done a little remastering with my downtime and started writing some sexy new events and scenes. Soon, the school council will vote on what else they'd like to see in 0.11, including which of the characters' ongoing progressions will receive attention and where my efforts will be focused in delivering new side content.

So, onto the dissection!

Nearly a third of you that voted had no notes. This is a big vote of confidence and higher than previous such polls, so I'm very pleased with that. I'm happy you're happy!

The traditional temperature-check on the tone yielded broadly similar results to previous polls, with a small minority thinking I went too far, about 30% happy and most thinking I should have been a much bigger prick to my unfortunate characters. These are numbers I'm broadly happy with as while I'd love to be able to move some of that bottom box to the middle, it also risks filling up the top a bit more. I offset the isolation, terror and hopelessness of the girls' situation with humour, and hopefully that worked.

I'm actually a bit glad that this didn't go over all that well as it definitely won't be happening again. 60% of respondents thought the sequence in the slaver base was too long, though some qualitative feedback suggested that a save point midway through would have helped, as the decision was coming up. This is easy and will be in the next update. However, given that this mega-scene added so much to the development time and wasn't that well received gives me something to think about in some future quests that contain lengthy sections in which Missy is at someone's mercy.

Broadly good numbers here with well over 3/4 pleased. Many of those that weren't happy did offer qualitative feedback on why and while I'm grateful for that, I am leaning towards this being a case of not being able to please all the people all the time. Each of you will have had an idea of where you wanted Jess's story to go in your minds and this will have been closer for some than others. To the doubters, I should remind you that this isn't the end for Jessica, and she'll be getting new scenes and content more or less constantly. She is, after all, one of the most popular characters in the game with only Poppy running her close. We're just moving out of the "she's your bully" phase and into the "she's your girlfriend as well as your bully" phase ^^

I fucked up here. I can't believe I forgot to include one of the options, and once I had, it's not possible to edit the poll options. I can however extrapolate what the numbers who would have voted for the missing Romance option might have been. 10 votes were missing from this section, though that number may be a little higher as a few double voted, checking both the willing slave and defeat mode boxes, so instead a better indication may be the Discord snap poll that asked the same question and revealed 18% did romance. Since the rest of the numbers are more or less bang in line with that, we can assume that about 30 people would have voted for Romance.

I'm actually a little surprised more people weren't playing Defeat Mode, but there's also a lot of willing subs out there, and as always, between them, they were by far the most popular choices.

I'm not really sure what information I hoped to gain by asking this question, but it was interesting to see where people's minds were with it. If anyone wants to provide additional feedback on what kind of other choices you'd have liked to see, the comments section is below. It'd just be interesting to know.

Thank you to everyone that provided feedback, and I hope you enjoyed Jessica's relationship quest!

Trinian

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