Weekly update - May 9th

Hi Everyone,

Firstly an announcement as promised on my plans for the release of chapter 8. I've batted it around in my mind, between releasing a half chapter or just waiting until I have completed the full one. There is an obvious break point for the half chapter and all the work is complete for a half chapter release. But I'm not going to do it! I'm going to wait it out until the full chapter is done. Sorry if that disappoints some of you, the reasons though are two fold. Although, as I said I have an obvious break point, the impact of the delivery of the chapter in two parts I feel will not lend to the best possible experience. The other factor is, I'm so close, I'm firmly in the final stretch right now, with just 4 out of the total 27 scenes to go. It will be complete within the next couple of weeks.

27 scenes is way beyond where I had planned this chapter to be. I saw this as a similar size to chapter 6 which was 16 scenes in length. I certainly did not see it being near the length of chapter 7 which is 25 scenes in length. Now not all scenes are created equal so the content may not be as big or bigger than 7 and as I write this there are almost 200 more renders and 2000 more lines of code in 7 than in 8 (that gap will obviously close when I complete). But at the end of the day it's not been a small endeavour at all.

As chapter 8 nears completion, I have to pivot to start planning out chapter 9. I'm comfortable with the early part of the story line for 9 and where it will go, but I've not put a lot of thought into the latter part of it yet. I need to do that. Although the focus obviously is on getting chapter 8 done, I don't like having any down time for my render rig as I wait on story line. So I need to stay ahead of my scene plans.

Quick note for Great Friend tier folks, I will make chapter 7 complete available to you today, to keep in line with my 30 day goal. For way in the future though I will need to look at the Great Friend tier when the game is complete. I will not be able to offer a means to buy the full game at a much lower price than on other platforms. I will however do all I can to ensure any folks who have loyally supported me through this development are not disadvantaged.

The discount ended on Steam at the beginning of the month and boy what a difference that makes in terms of sales.

On a personal front, I'm moving forward with my change in life. I've found an apartment where I would like to live, hopefully my credit rating is good enough for them to accept me. And I'm finalising the ridiculous number of steps it takes to buy a car here in North America. Hopefully I can keep any disruption to development as minimal as possible during this period.

I think that's it for this week, thank you as ever for your wonderful support, have a great weekend.

Fae.