What's Next?

Depending on how you count them, Mortze and I have released five full-sized games in the last two and a half years.  On one hand, that's pretty cool.  On the other, it means that we tend to release a game and then disappear for six months while we work on the next one.  We've been talking about this for a while and have decided to try something different for our next game.  We're going to take a page from the large number of producers on Patreon who outrank us start releasing relatively frequent "episodes" that build together into a full game.  

This is at once exciting and terrifying.  I've done a serial before, and it's a serious amount of work.  But it was also one of the best things I ever wrote.  There's nothing like the relentless threat of a deadline breathing down your neck to keep you motivated.  Also, my fans loved having input into the story as it progressed.  I listened to their feedback and sometimes used it to change the story's direction.  I'm interested to see if we can replicate that in this different medium.

Doing episodes also allows us to experiment a little more. We're going to do a pretty traditional "say nice things to the woman and convince her to have sex with you" game as well as a separate, edgier, game that you may love, or you may hate.  And we're going to alternate between them.  So, even if you don't like one of the games, you won't have to wait long for the next episode of the one you do like.  It would be too risky to do this with a normal six-month development cycle, but alternating episodes should make it possible.  Also, while we're going to start with two simultaneous games, there's nothing keeping us from adding in a third at some point.  (So, Pandora fans, don't be too sad when hear that your favorite isn't one the first two games we're doing.)

The first game we're going to do in this episodic manner is "Coming to Grips with Christine."   Yes, I'm finally writing the sequel to "Getting to Know Christine."  Last year, at the request of a patron, I asked Mortze to show me what he would have made Christine look like if he and I were doing GtKC today.  What he did blew me away.  Although the visuals in GtKC were done by a different artist named Phreaky, the characterizations and story are mine.  So, I'm comfortable using a new artist to tell further stories with those characters.  Episode 1 of CtGwC is what we'll release first.

The second game we're doing episodes for is called "Darkness Falls."  The elevator pitch for this game is, "CSI meets the X-Files in the Elsa-verse."  It tells the story of two cops who solve crimes in the city that the Elsa-verse games took place in.  Although the main goal in every game we've done so far has been to convince the main female character to have sex with you, that's not the case in DF.  While you will build a relationship with your hot female partner over the course of the episodes, it most likely won't be a sexual one.  There will be erotic aspects to DF, and even the occasional hard core sex scene, but the eroticism isn't the main point, the way it is with our other games.  Like I said, this is experimental.  I'm excited about it, but we'll see how it goes.

Our current plan is to try to do one episode per month.  That might be too aggressive, or it might force the episodes to be too short.  We'll tune this as we go.  But that's the POR.  We intend to give ourselves some breathing room by getting two episodes done before we start releasing them.  But our goal is to release the first Christine episode early in March.

This brings us to changes in our Patron perks.  If I'm working on two simultaneous games and writing an episode every month, there's no way I can also do the monthly perks.  I've been struggling with those as of late even without the added episode pressure.  If we tried to keep doing monthlies, it would slow down the release of the episodes.  So, we're going to change the $10 perk to be early releases of episodes.  My current thought is that $10 and higher patrons will get each episode roughly two weeks before the general release.  We've struggled with this in the past, and I'm not sure it's going to work, but hope springs eternal.  Occasionally I'll write a new short story about Elsa getting busy in Dream land, and we'll release that exclusively to $10 patrons.  And maybe we'll do some "behind the scenes" things now and again.  But these extra perks won't be monthly anymore.  

We're going to continue to do the weekly pictures and caption contest for $5 patrons.  I enjoy that too much to stop.  And I'll keep doing weekly progress reports on the state of whichever episode we're working on.  Whether or not these changes make this endeavor of Mortze's and mine sustainable remains to be seen.  Here's hoping.

Tlaero