Mid Term Roadmap Update 3

With the completion of the epilogue as of the latest prerelease, we have completed Chapter 3-B! Let's take a look what the overall standing of the project is at the current state and what our current progress speed means for the 1.0 release date.

First of all, let's take a look at Chapter 3 only.

Usually, the baseline for a quarter dev cycle is 10 months for this project, but based on the past experience I had already updated it to 12 months for Chapter 3. Overall, progress is a bit slower than expected and we are definitely not hitting the October Release, but with an overall expected extra delay of 3 months, it looks like we should be able to make the next available release month, which would be January.

So for the overall Roadmap we get the following

Definitely a bit of a standout compared to the previous cycles, which is definitely an estimation error on my side. Developing Chapter 3 has been largely different from developing the previous Chapters - if I was behind I could cut yet to be developed content. Cutting characters, locations or quests that aren't in the game yet is pretty simple and usually only noticeable in more extrem cases. It's a strategy I have been using since Chapter 1 to stay on schedule.

However, for Chapter 3, this strategy doesn't really work. I can cut something before it gets introduced, but cutting a storyline after it's been introduced leaves a noticeable bad mark on the game. For example, what dragged a little bit was the Charlotte Corruption arc, which I could have cut, but not being able to sell out the other of the two companions after Aura's development to 20 Vice just felt really bad, so I kept chugging at it and I think it was worth it.

Likewise, Paulina was originally only planned to have 3 lewd scenes but it turned into 4 because Companion Corruption is just something highly valuable to the game and even though this didn't just create the effort of adding an extra scene, it also added an extra state for Paulina ("Dizzy Paulina in the Party") requiring extra dialogue variations, I would say the extra time spent here was worth it so the whole corruption and Vice arc leaves some good high points towards the end.

I could also cut out the last Demon General quest and that way save time, but I feel like the value of sticking to the time plan versus a Demon General quest and the associated plot hooks distributed in the game going nowhere isn't quite there.

Finally, our artist has been running behind on artwork, so even if I would cut game content, I would also need to cut down the need for CGs which would also mean removing already done H-scenes. The ending not having concluding h-content for no reason but because of the schedule would definitely feel bad.

I am aware of the general phenomenon "80% gets done in the first 80% and the other 80% in the rest", and tried to counter it through my development style of

• always working with complete chunks so implementing 10% of the game really means 10% and not 5%

• downscoping content as we go along to git back into the plan as much as is needed

but for Chapter 3 I still need to add some extra time in future projects to respect that downscoping already developed plotlines just doesn't work (or only to a very limited degree).

I keep thinking if there were ways to somehow get to the October release date I was aiming for but even if we managed to progress at high speed, real life would have always thrown us off. Like our previous mapper being pregnant and quitting the project, or the ghosting of the latest pixel artist, or the cold I had in the third week of May, and so on.

tl;dr: Currently projected release date for 1.0 is January 31st 2025.

With the big picture talk out of the way, let's take a look at what is left to be done:

Main Content TODO

• Judement of Pride

• Final Dungeon

• Final Battle

• Good Ending

I wish I could have somehow fit the start of developing the last demon general's quest (Judgement of Pride) into the development of Chapter 2-B but alas that chunk still fully remains to be done for Chapter 3. Other than that, we are then in a very good shape to finish off the main content of the game!

Side Content TODO

• Entertainment Den

• Clockwork Forest

• Various minor side content such as remaining skill trainers

• Various minor lewd content such as a coupleof additional lewd books and lewd skills

• Polish Content such as remaining NPCs/NPC reactions and so on

Side-content wise, we are also nearly done. The desert area in the south will definitely be removed for 1.0 and I also don't think we need it. Our assistant developer Trihan will be working on the last major side quest area Clockwork Forest while I will be busy with the main content and also building up the barren Entertainment Den nex week.

And then there is mostly just minor side content to develop. A couple of last skill ranks are missing (such as Ligh III), Pasciel recently got a library but the book and is still low and so on. Nothing too big here though.

On the lewd side, there will be no more new content that requires new H-CGs, most new lewd content will focus on minor things where H-CGs are not needed such as lewd books and adding a couple more lewd skills into the game. Our assistant writer Absurdity has one more h-scene in the pipeline which will feature the return of the Toll Bandits from the bridge who will make themselves at home in the Refugee Camp at some point of the game and and harrass and annoy the locals. Aura will be able to get rid of them with another lewd action (that uses an existing H-CG), probably just going to use the blowjob one again.

Finally, Nephlune and Verdeaux are still not quite as lively as I'd like them to be, so some more NPCs moving around town, either giving some useful tips or reacting to the changes caused by Aura will probably form a part of the remaining work load for our assistant writer. Perhaps also revisiting the topic of flavor events.

Moving on to the next section, we have

Art Content TODO

• Charlotte Sex With Victor H-CG

• Georgia Footjob to Veronica H-CG

• Georgia Pegged by Veronica H-CG

• Liliana/Aura Demon Worshipper Orgy H-CG

• Aura Submission Sex With Richard H-CG

• Final Epilogue Orgy H-CG

Optional

• Georgia (Female) Character Art

• Demonic Rose Character Art

For the Corruption ending it would be nice to also have a final set of changed character artworks for our other two Earth characters, but those are mostly nice to have if we have some weeks left to the 1.0 release.

Finally, we have the technical side

Feature TODO

• UI/UX Iteration

• (Steam) Achievements

Optional

• World Map Fog

• Character Part Selector for Deluxe Edition

I recently already posted the mockup for the latest UI/UX update, its implementation is of course a remaining TODO. Then we also have the matter of (Steam) Achievements. Since we also need to expect the case of being rejected by Steam, we will probably implement them in a way that they also work without Steam so we don't end up wasting time on a feature we can't use.

The two optional features I have not yet majorly discussed with Trihan. I have noticed for a lot of beginners the full map of Roya can be quite daunting and would like to investigate the possibility of covering not-yet-unlocked regions with fog and removing it once the region gets unlocked. I expect that this would make Chapter 1 a lot less overwhelmingly looking.

And then regarding the last optional feature, a plugin that we are using actually already comes with the skeleton of a menu for this, but it would require quite some fixing in order to make it really work for the game. If it works, you would be able to indepenently select various costume features for Aura such as using the Bimbo Twin-Tail hair style with the Bunny Costume. Potentially it would even work for Earth costume parts but I'm not sure.

And that's I think already it?! I mean it looks like a lot and it will definitely keep me and the team busy but having whittled down the remaining implementational work to the point where I can write it down in a couple of bullet points is definitely another milestone in and of itself.