Everstone Daycare - Progress Report [May 16, 2022]

Howdy everyone!

I’m glad you all like the previous demo! And the fact that I also ever received only one bug report, not that there was much room for bugs to happen in the first place.

We’re currently at a milestone in the story. The “main story” of the first day is finished and now we have good jumping off points for any side content we might want to add for the first day to fill it out more. We’re not sure if we’re going to add other strings of events that lead to the end of the day, but stuff like optional side scenes and the beginnings of character-relationship routes are definitely on the table.

With this new freedom, I want to let patrons have a bit more involvement with the development and direction of the game, as the “Access to the voting system” benefit that the $10 patrons have access to has been very underutilized. It will also give me a good sense of what people do and don’t want content-wise and what are the limits of what I can include. I’ll do my best to engage more with everyone here, not just in updates but also interaction. It’s definitely been a weak point of mine.

We’ve been playing it fairly safe in terms of content when it comes to the scenes present in the game so far. A couple of AB staples is so far the furthest we’ve gone. I’m interested in including a wider selection of scenarios and have discussed as much with Tennet and Spooky, but there have always been a few issues that get brought up (in addition to the issue of not all 3 of us having the same “interests”).

• Not everyone will be interested (or possibly even averse) to the content being presented. A possible solution we’ve discussed is making a content warning and an option to skip whenever scenes like this are presented.
• Time spent making niche scenarios only a few people will enjoy vs tamer themes everyone can appreciate.
• Discussions over what scenarios/situations are appropriate to the setting and the world (which is mostly the decision of Spooky as the setting is mostly his brainchild), and the hard limits of what kinds of content we should include (including whether some things should be considered at all).

I’ve decided to simply poll these issues in the future (most likely this month) to get a feel for what direction everyone would prefer us to go with for this project. We won’t compromise our own creative visions of what the game is supposed to be like, but it will give a good litmus test of what people will be receptive to.

There are a few scenes we already know people are excited for or we know people will be receptive to, so I might start working on those while polling other potential choices. The first one most likely being a robo-hands scene involving the changing table in the Changing room adjacent to the Nap room.

Other than that, I’ll also try to work on more miscellaneous stuff like new art and expressions for the characters, and begin working on the custom background for the different menu screens. There is also new music on the way from Tennet as well! This time It’s Mew’s theme, and we’re still trying to get the right mood for the track. Last (and least), I might start organizing the demos with actual version numbers rather than with just the name of the month they were (supposed to be) released in, mostly for the sake of organization. I might go through previous release posts and edit them to reflect their new names, so please look out!

TLDR:

• We’ll begin working on side-content for a bit to pad out the content of the first day.
• I’m planning to open more polls for $10 patrons in the future regarding things like content they want included, themes and limits, and decisions about the general direction they would like the game to go.
• I’ll begin work on side-content I’ve already received feedback on that people would be interested in such as a robo-hands scene.
• Work on misc. stuff like new expressions and menu art is also likely. Mew’s theme is also currently being worked on.
• Demos will not be organized based on a version number rather than by month. Changes to previous Patreon posts will be done to reflect these changes.