Review of the year 2022

Well, it's been quite a year. Globally, of course, but also for me personally.

I got COVID for the first time while travelling and had to spend a week in a foreign-language quarantine facility. My neighbourhood went underwater in massive flooding. I lost a grandparent.

At the same time, this is the year I launched Lord Goblin, which marks the culmination of a lot of work for me over several years and feels like a big personal achievement.

I don't want to complain too much, because this was not a particularly bad year in many ways, but it was a significant one.

What's happened with PA:T in 2022?

This is the real reason for the review: I like looking back at everything that the game has gained in the past 12 months and this year there was some stuff that people had been waiting for for a long time:

• Mika got her sex scene and joined the harem, which allowed her to get a whole bunch of post-sex scene content too, and really feel like a proper member of the cast, finally.
• The Emi & Nobuko three way pairing that people had been waiting for finally happened. I also think this worked out pretty well, considering I'd found this one hard to finish, just because there was a fair bit of pressure on getting it right and this relationship had been explored a lot already.
• I implemented the "beach day" event with a whole range of possibilities. This was  something I'd been slowly building since near the start of the project in smaller pieces and I think it really turned into something quite special. Certainly a massive update for a single month!
• The engine was migrated to a new version, which brought newly improved stability to the Windows versions of the game. (And some big hassles getting Mac builds working again!)
• Lots of other new three way content for Nobuko+Shizu, Emi+Shizu, Nobuko+Mika & Emi+Mika. With all this in the game I feel like the "date two girls at once" feature is now (while not yet complete) a very extensive feature of the game.
• A lot of Hirai stuff, of course, and other stuff the Hirai fans would probably enjoy, which I've been trying to work in regularly, kind of parallel to the other content along the way.

And of course many other elements here and there; one-off scenes, toys, phone messages, wake ups & other smaller elements like that.

One thing I also note about this year is that I've just made a huge number of interactive scenes - much more than planned. I feel like I've got into a rhythm with them and they're a style I'm very comfortable producing now, so I've been able to include them almost every month recently. I'm not sure whether that pace will keep up, but I'll be trying!

So what do you think was the most important major feature I've added this year? Give me your vote below! (In b4 a third of the players just vote for the Hirai stuff without reading the post...)