Course of Temptation Dev Diary #91

Hello friends! How are you doing? It's time for another dev diary!

This week, as we near early access, I'm continuing to extend the Greek life content added in this month's major update. I'll continue work in this area in the week between early access and public release as well. Of course, there's a lot I could still do with Greek life and I'm not calling it finished, but it is about time to shift focus to another area of the game for a while. Pretty soon I'll put up a poll and ask for input on what the next major focus should be.

If you want to see the possibilities, check out the roadmap — I'll select some items from here that I think would be good for the next major update, then narrow it down further through the poll. Having done two major updates in a row that mostly focus on specific locations, I'm leaning toward something that will more broadly extend the game, like year advancement, crime and punishment, seasonal events, or something else along those lines. But I'll talk more about that later.

In the meantime, I've finished off the house upgrade system I previewed in last week's dev diary, and also implemented the house renown system that will allow you to select new upgrades.

You gain house renown through pretty much anything that reflects well on your house... or at least gets people to notice it. Any publicity is good publicity, as they say. So, helping your team win a game or acing an exam will earn your house a little notoriety, but so will painting your house letters on your chest in lipstick and streaking across the football field in the middle of a game.

Many pledge tasks have now been adapted into repeatable events that you can continue to do once you've formally joined a house — mostly, I think, the more interesting/fun ones that you'd want to be repeatable, such as skinny dipping in Blodgett Gym or volunteering to be free use at the Greek party. Once you've joined a house, you of course no longer have any tasks to check off, but most of these activities will gain renown for your house.

My current area of focus is adding events that spice up the Greek party and demonstrate the various allies and rivalries that come of aligning with a Greek house. For example, if you've seen a certain party event then you know I planned to have some possible personal stakes in the racing game, and now that's getting done:

There are also some bits and pieces of the game still working under the assumption that the player will always live in Chicory Hall — notably the roommate and roommate's partner storyline — that I need to find a way to hook back into the narrative if the player moves into the Greek house.

The volunteer contributors are also adding some big pieces in this update, which is exciting! And it's always humbling to see people willing to volunteer their time and effort to make this game better, and I'm very thankful for it. Meat Glacier's big project, the Planet X game shop, will be coming in, and along with it, noonycurt has added an entire collectible card game!

That's pretty cool, so thanks again to them and everybody who contributed ideas! The little art assets here come from HeartsDmise, and we'll also be adding more of her unique location images in this update.

Okay, that's all for now! I'll be back on Sunday with your early access link. I hope you have a good end to your week, and as always, I'm incredibly grateful for your support — without it, this project wouldn't be possible. See you later!