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

Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's public post! The progress report is pretty straightforward - Chapter Six is currently at the writing and structuring stage, the earliest stage of the development cycle. Next comes the mapmaking and coding stage.

Last week I asked you what you thought of Chapter Five. I've had some really good qualitative feedback from people about this chapter, but it's also important to gauge sheer numbers. So let's look at what those numbers are saying.

19 respondents had no notes. Thank you! 

This is a bit of a drop from Avenging Angel, but as we'll see below, there are reasons for that.

The consensus opinion is that the chapter was over too quickly. This is a fair criticism. This was always going to be a danger with splitting the story in two, and as I have something of an aversion to padding the game with any sort of grind, it proved hard to create the length of gameplay that I needed. My hope was that having a big new city to explore would ameliorate this, but yeah, if you just go straight to each objective, it's not that long.

One point that was made is that other quests are mixed in with the school day, which is fun to play in itself, and this artificially spreads them out. It's a problem I'm going to have to think about for future quests that take place outside of school (including the one currently under development.)

The last chapter to take place outside school was Chapter 3. It's a similar length, so what's changed? Are expectations just higher now, or did the sandbox of being able to "play" with the slaves in the base help I wonder?

Either way, I expect this will actually change in the future, as Fivaviana continues to develop, you'll find there's more to do on arrival than just play through Chapter 5. A big chunk of time developing this expansion went into map making and those maps are now made and ready to be filled with even more stuff.

A rerun of the result we've had for this part of the poll the last few times. And that's fine. I'm not planning to make the game any darker than the fourth chapter was, as the humiliation and slavery elements are necessarily offset by the humour.

This would appear to vindicate my creative decisions at least. Obviously taking control of a new protagonist and leaving the city we've been in since the beginning is a change of pace for the game, but it was well received. It's even been suggested that sticking with Missy as she was tormented would have been enjoyable, but I fail to see how I could even have made any meaningful gameplay out of that.

This is the part I really wanted to talk about. By a large margin, players expect choices, even when the story itself is proceeding towards a predestined conclusion. It's going to require me to go back to the drawing board a bit on a quest later on in the game, since Act 2 finishes on another large multi-chapter arc, similar in scope to Reign of Jess.

This is another problem that arises from my decision not to use the more traditional combat-focused RPG elements of the software. When you think about it, some of the best RPG games out there have no choices, but the skill element stops you from noticing. Missy is more like an AVN, and lives and dies by its writing. Since I compared it with Chapter 3 earlier, it's fair to say that there were some fairly significant choices in that story.

I'm grateful to everyone who has submitted feedback on the newest quest, whether it be filling in this survey or through some of the excellent and thoughtful contributions I've read on forums. It's a reminder that Yuri game enjoyers are a more refined breed and your contributions genuinely help me to understand my audience and hopefully make my game better.

As we look ahead, I am now trying to give this story the satisfying conclusion it deserves. I wrote the scene the other day in which all is revealed, and I am absolutely fascinated to see how it's received.

One last note, the Sapphory Wiki has been updated with information from Chapter 5. These updates are:

Added Scarlett Raine
Added The Mulligan Corporation
Added Governess Kisimi
Added Cordelia Kisimi
Updated Abbie
Updated Fivaviana
Updated The Nobility 

Have a great week!

Trinian