Shilling For My Fellow Devs - The Second r/GoodAdultGaming Bundle

While I'm still plugging away at the love shack content for v0.15.1, here's a bundle of adult games (that includes the early access version of Precious Kouhai) celebrating 1000 members of the r/GoodAdultGaming subreddit, which is run by a developer friend of mine.

The bundle is paid, but in addition to supporting a bunch of small indie devs, you're getting the paid versions of all the games that have them plus a few extras, bringing the total value of the bundle closer to $100 for your money.

Get it before it's gone: https://itch.io/b/2434/the-2nd-rgoodadultgaming-bundle

Maids & Masters (& Starting On v0.15.1)

It's still slow going getting back to working on MnM. Aside from doing a bit more work on the new demo (which you can read a little about over on Patreon) over the weekend, and something I may as well call burnout, I had some outside work come up, so I wasn't able to get much done. I was able to get some work done, but I also had RPG Maker crash on me for the first time in probably over a year and ended up losing some work. Not enough to lose everything, but enough to kill any momentum I might've built up. Since that means I can't really talk about what I've completed, I'll just talk about what I intend to complete for the v0.15.1 update.

There are two main things I want to add, plus a third smaller bit that I've been meaning to add but haven't been able to convince myself is enough of a priority. Love shack content, affection quests, and cult investigation extras.

For the love shack, there's six (technically seven) new characters I need to add. For the new Maids, there's Vicky, June, and Clover, plus the newer mothers, Setri, Caitlainn, and Celine. If you're wondering who Setri is and where you find her content, go back to Cumhaill and check Phoebe's old house. Her content has actually been in the game for a while, but I need to rework how you're able to access it a little. Due to how the Grow works in Act 2, you can't actually go inside Phoebe's old house, which means you can't progress with Setri very far even though she's available. As for that seventh character, she isn't in the game to recruit yet, but she will be in v0.16, so I want to get her love shack content done before I run into the same "it's side content and this update needs to be released" loop that's lead to none of this being done before now. So far, only Vicky's first conversation is done, with her second conversation being about half done due to the crash. I should be able to get at least the fireside chats done for Friday, but my goal is to convince myself to hunker down and get both the chats and the scenes done for the first test build this Friday.

The affection quests are something else I've been wanting to add and haven't due to wanting to keep up a release schedule and these quests being side content. If you're the sort of person that's thinking "why not just delay the release?" right now - I appreciate you, never change - but keeping a release schedule is vital to growth, and I've been growing in reverse for the past 5 months. I wrote about that in my previous post here on the blog if you want to know more. I have most of these quests written out, so all that's really left is to implement them, but that's 20 (21 if you count the optional Maid coming in v0.16) side quests that I need to implement, which is a major update's worth of content by itself. Even if I keep these quests fairly simple and stick to existing maps, it's probably going to take me 2-3 weeks to get all of these done.

The cult investigation extras are something I really should have put in the game from the start of Act 2, in hindsight. The cult investigation is something that I originally intended to end with the first half of Act 2, but now that I've reached that point in the story and took the time to experience the story so far as a player, that feels, in a word, incomplete. The problem with extending the investigation is that there are only four actions you can take to move to the "meeting" portion of those events, and there will be closer to seven segments by the time I've actually finished that part of the story. So, I want to add things you can do to get time to pass without actually "investigating" anything. This will probably just end up being bonus scenes with Griselda, Evdokia, and Willow (maybe also June and Chloe), but that will at least create enough extra content to get through the story without repeating anything (and give me the opportunity to add a trophy for not being an irredeemable hornball and repeating the scenes instead of doing the investigation).

All told, this is probably going to take me around 6 weeks to develop, especially with this funk I've been in lately bringing my productivity down. I'm hoping to find some momentum and get it all done faster than that, but it's a fairly large update. I may even split it into v0.15.1 and v0.15.2 and have the affection quests be their own update so I have something to release for May. It all depends on how things play out between now and then.

Following Up On Precious Kouhai v0.2

It's been... a weekend. I really don't want to turn this into a "venting" post, because this is a development blog and not a personal one, but Patrons tend to support the creator rather than the project and motivation has been low, so it only seems fair to make information about myself available when it affects development.

To actually follow up on the release of Precious Kouhai v0.2, it's been okay. I'm not sure if it's due to another algorithm change on itch or if something else is happening, but traffic suddenly cut in half a few days before v0.2 went into early access. One day I was holding an average of 200 views per day - something I've never even gotten close to with Maids & Masters - and the next it was half that, barely breaking 100 views per day. Following the release, views did increase back to roughly 200 per day and has stayed there over the weekend, but this is still a little strange. Everything else I've seen, both in my personal metrics and in analytics shared by other developers, shows a spike when an update releases with a gradual taper off to normal. Instead, things just sort of returned to what normal was before the drop. The same goes for the other things itch tracks, like downloads and browser plays (though browser plays in particular are still a little below normal).

At this point, you might be wondering why this matters, and why I care. That subject is actually fairly complicated, but I'll try to give a basic breakdown.

Putting aside that it's demoralizing to see the numbers go down, analytics like this are how developers like me gauge public perception. I'm still a very small dev, so I can't go to social media and look for a hashtag and see what people are saying. No one goes out of their way to ask me about my work. I can search the internet for myself or my projects, but that usually only leads to websites that host my work without my permission (which is why I have in-game options to find me; these websites rarely modify files, they just upload). When views drop like they recently have for Precious Kouhai, and like they have more than once in the past for Maids & Masters, it usually indicates something is wrong. However, because I have so little to go off of, outside of obvious changes like itch announcing a change in their algorithm, I can rarely tell what is wrong or what I can or should do about it. That's a big reason feedback is so important to me; you can tell me what's wrong, sometimes before it even gets as far as being a problem. It's a huge help.

These numbers can also be used to help me figure out if I'm succeeding or failing. Metrics like click-through rate give me a percentage of people who see my game and decide to click on it. That number is normally fairly low, around 3-5%. For Precious Kouhai, that number has fallen to 1.3%. It being that low is bad because that's how I get new Patrons. Someone clicks on my game, then they click through to Patreon, then they decide to become a Patron. Doing a bit of math, this means roughly 20,000 people see the thumbnail for Precious Kouhai every day. 200 people decide to click on it. Only 2 people end up on my Patreon page. Add in Maids & Masters, this blog, and so on, and that becomes 3-5. This lines up with the analytics Patreon gives me - on average, I get roughly 4 page visits per day, excluding Patrons. According to Patreon, it usually takes 3-5 visits for someone to decide to become a Patron. That means I need to get the attention of those four people 2-4 more times. Assuming they don't check the page more than once every update, that means it takes 3-5 updates (or, since I do monthly updates, 3-5 months) for me to gain just four new Patrons. Trying to grow as a small, solo developer is a slow, arduous process.

This is where I've lost a lot of motivation recently. Maids & Masters should, in theory, be bringing those one or two new Patrons with every update. I have gained one or two new Patrons every month, but nearly all of these new Patrons have cancelled their pledge within a few days of joining. Sometimes that new Patron isn't new at all, and it's one person joining to get the new update before canceling again. I understand doing it, and I still appreciate the support, but put plainly, it sucks seeing that cancel notification. Precious Kouhai seems to have brought in a few new Patrons, but the same problem exists. There's also the issue of new Patrons almost exclusively subscribing to the lowest tier possible, so even with those that stick around, my monthly income has been on a steady decline for the past 5 months even as my total of paid Patrons rises.

 

That loss of motivation makes it challenging to return back to work on Maids & Masters. If I'm seeing support decline like this, it makes me wonder if the project is worth the time and effort it will take to complete. I still want to complete it, but the combination of Precious Kouhai completely outstripping Maids & Masters in terms of performance and seeing my monthly income drop makes me re-evaluate what the best path forward is. For the time being, I've been taking some time to learn Godot (which is a very long-term thing; don't expect me to make any demos in that until at least after Maids & Masters is complete) and work a bit on the tactical RPG demo I mentioned a few weeks ago as a way to stay productive while still taking a bit of a break. 

 

Though to be clear, work is not ending on Maids & Masters. I still plan on having the first test build for v0.15.1 ready for next week so VIP Patrons can test out the new love shack content. 

I'm just dragging my feet a little. I'm also doing my best not to rush what's left of the second act and skip to the end so I can start working on something with more mass appeal. So, if you're here for Maids & Masters, don't worry - I'm not giving up on it.

Ultimately, my hope is that some of the recent changes I made on Patreon - adding annual subscriptions, making use of the community feature, etc. - will help keep some new Patrons around. There are only so many ways I can add value without pay-walling things, so hopefully that's enough. Seeing this happen has also really made me appreciate my long term Patrons. Some of you are generous beyond words, and I really am eternally grateful for the part you play in my attempts to chase down my dream of making games and writing stories for a living. It genuinely frustrates me that so much of this process comes down to money, because the only thing I want money for is keeping my bills paid so I can keep doing this. Those of you that stick around, even if you're in that $1 tier and haven't said a word since you joined, are the ones that keep me going. If you want to be one of those people, I'd appreciate it if you became part of that 1.3% and took a look at my Patreon page.

Precious Kouhai v0.2 Release Date

I really wanted this post to be "the update is done, it's just a bit of testing and then I'm back to work on Maids & Masters" but my computer had it real rough the past couple of days. If the software wasn't freezing up or crashing during rendering, my whole computer was freezing up or crashing. Thankfully I didn't lose a lot of work thanks to autosaves, but it still made the whole process highly frustrating and significantly slower than it otherwise would've been.

That's it for the bad news, though. If you don't follow my Patreon, the test build still went out to VIPs last Friday, and I wouldn't have done that if I weren't close to finished with the update. Even after the scene got a little longer than I originally intended (which is still good news - it means more content for you) there are only a few animations left to pose, animate, and render. Even if the crashing continues and I'm only able to get one or two renders done in a day, v0.2 will still enter early access on Friday, the 19th.

After some thought, early access will also launch on itch with v0.2. I was originally planning on waiting another update or two so the game had a little more content before I did the extra work that comes with making it available in early access as well, but if I'm being honest, Precious Kouhai is such a small project, it might be close to done in another update or two. I've only ever had enough content planned for about an hour's worth of reading, and if each scene takes about 5 minutes to read through, v0.2 is already about a third of the way there.

There are also some extra bits I want to try and fit in, but those may not make it into v0.2 if the freezing/crashing continues. It's nothing major, but I want to see if I understand a handful of coding things with renpy for the sake of future projects, like having the title screen change according to a variable.

One last thing that's completely unrelated - Maids & Masters is part of a paid bundle where you can get a bunch of paid games at 50% off (including Maids & Masters Early Access). There's only 3 days left to get it, so if you want it, click here to get it before it's gone. I even made this promo image for it.

Progress on Precious Kouhai v0.2

I want to call this "Precious Kouhai v0.2 Release Date" but I'm still not totally sure what I'll get done before Friday, so I'm not going to commit to a release date just yet. I have some real life things that require my attention, and while one new client has their draft and doesn't seem to want any edits, I'm still waiting on a bit of feedback from the other client before I'm fully free and clear of outside work. That said, some good progress has been made.

The first of the two scenes coming in this update I managed to completely finish last night. That's a total of 13 new animations, bringing the total up to 48. I'll be starting to animate the next scene today, which is already mostly written out, so it's basically just the animation left. The only downside to that being that the animation is what takes up the most time. Depending on the complexity, it can take as much as a full day to make a single animation. Most of mine are relatively simple, and this project has definitely helped me maintain a decent level of quality while vastly improving my overall speed, but it can still be a very time consuming process.

All that said, I'm still hopeful I'll be able to get enough done that I can present a test build to VIPs on Patreon this Friday, and Precious Kouhai can have its first proper early access release the following Friday. That does mean the update won't be available to the public until v0.3 comes out, but just like with Maids & Masters, my Patrons get early access to everything I release. On top of that, I recently added a bunch of features to Patreon membership. You can read all about it (and get a bunch of benefits for supporting development!) on my Patreon page.

Being a straightforward visual novel, that's pretty much all there is to say about Precious Kouhai until I've finished enough for a release date to be set. I can't lie, it feels really weird not having a changelog to post with everything that's been added, fixed, and updated, but outside of one syntax error in the preview build (which was fixed for v0.1), there's been nothing to fix in the existing content. There is one change, though - I've managed to find a music license for fairly cheap, so Precious Kouhai will start to feature new music in v0.2. Only one track was replaced and moved to a new spot, so it's not a particularly dramatic change, but it's nice having a proper library of options to use that still matches the aural theming I want to use. This sort of thing is only possible thanks to the support of my Patrons, so if this sort of good news is something you'd like to hear more often, I'd really appreciate it if you clicked that link up there and considered pledging to a tier.

April 2024 General Update

Today had an incredibly hectic start to it, and I'm kind of between everything right now, so I'm going to use today's post as a more general update to both collect my thoughts and share them in the same go. So, here's where that "everything" I mentioned currently stands.

In general Patreon news, some changes are coming. This includes annual subscriptions, some minor updates to descriptions to hopefully make certain benefits a little clearer (and make the "About" section a little less robotic), making itch benefits easier to find, and some potential changes to early access that you can vote on (and if you're a Patron, there's a second poll with a little extra info). Most of the reason for these changes is because I'm reaching a point where I need to push for monetary support a little harder, and there aren't a lot of ways to do that while still being consumer-friendly. If you want to know more about these changes, check the poll(s) linked above, or check my Patreon on Friday, when these changes will be getting implemented.

For Maids & Masters, I've finished my playthrough and have all my checkpoint saves created. I've tackled all the bugs and other minor fixes I found along the way, so now it's time to move on to actual development. I'd kind of forgotten how much I like my own game, so getting to play through it again was a little therapeutic in a way. I'm still debating whether or not I should roll v0.15.1 into v0.16 to make a bigger update - part of which depends on those polls I mentioned - but it's unlikely I'll have a release ready for April anyway. Even if I do split the updates and go with v0.15.1, I need to add the Love Shack content for six new characters (Vicky, June, Chloe, Setri, Caitlainn, and Celine), update Setri so you can progress with her during the first half of Act 2 while Cumhaill's Grow festival is active, and create the first round of affection quests for all the Maids (or at the very least, all of the combat Maids). That's probably going to take 4-5 weeks to get done, and that's without accounting for days lost to outside work or other potential hurdles. That means you're going to get another release for Precious Kouhai.

I'm going to try to do two scenes for Precious Kouhai instead of just one. They're short enough, and I'm used to updates having 20-45 minutes of content, not 5-10, so it seems like a reasonable compromise between the amount of content I think is expected of me and the amount of time and effort it takes to create the various animations. I won't say much more on that for now so I have something to talk about next week. In a perfect world, I'll find the time to finish up my outside work and have a test build ready for Friday the 12th with a release going out Friday the 19th, but with the surprises of today, I want to make sure it's clear that those are estimates, not promises. It might take another week. Thankfully, most of the posing and one of the more complex animations is already done, so the biggest hurdle will be getting outside work finished so I can work on Precious Kouhai unimpeded.

On that note, I have not one, but two clients waiting on work from me. These are projects I just write for, so the work (usually) goes pretty quickly, but it's still 2-3 days that I won't have to work on MnM or PK while I get it done, and another day every time there's post-work or follow-up drafts I need to do. If you don't like hearing that, I get it, but bills don't pay themselves. You can free up my time so I can focus more on my own projects by supporting me on Patreon.

Maids & Masters (& Act 2 Part 2 & Patreon)

As expected, I'm still busy with playing through the game, so this is going to be another fairly boring post. I'm close to the end of current content, so the actual playthrough won't take much longer, but I do have some outside work to take care of as well, so I won't have much in the way of development news for a little while.

That said, playing through the game again has still been productive. Most of the errors I'm finding are smaller nit-pick type things, but I'm glad I'm getting them fixed. I also had some concerns about the length of the more recent updates, and playing through the game again as a player has more or less set that concern to rest. There's a lot of game in Maids & Masters, and I'm happy with (and occasionally surprised by) myself for making what I have.

Self-aggrandizing aside, I do have some news to share. First, the less fun news - between outside work and keeping up the pace on my own projects, I haven't found the time to make an April Fool's project. As much fun as they are, I just don't have time this year. In more exciting news, I've found out that I'm eligible for a feature I've been wanting to implement on Patreon, so I've been looking at other potential changes to go alongside it. Right now, there's a poll open to Patrons that will be closing the Friday after next (April 5th) regarding changing how early access works for Patrons. If you're a Patron (or are considering being one and want to get a vote in) click that link and leave a vote. If you're not a Patron, a public version of the poll will be going out to gather more information this Friday. That poll will also close on April 5th.

Once both polls are closed and Patrons have had ample time to make their voices heard, I'll be making another post on April 5th to announce the new feature along with whether or not the change to early access is being implemented. It's not a huge change, but the votes have been tied since the poll launched, so I'm eager to find out what everyone thinks of the potential changes.

After that, it's back to development, and I'll have some more substantial news regarding the updates coming in the second half of Maids & Masters Act 2.

Maids & Masters (& Following Up on v0.15)

This might be kind of a boring post. Not because I don't have anything to say - if you've been here for a while you know full well I can ramble on about nothing for a good long time. No, it might be kind of boring because all I really have to say is that my follow-up to v0.15 is to play my own game like a player for the first time since the remaster.

It's something I've been meaning to do for a long time, because it gives me better context for what the player experience actually is. Sure, I playtest everything - often multiple times - but that's mostly an attempt at making the game "work right" rather than trying to figure out how fun it is. That's one of the reasons I appreciate feedback so much. If you're still having fun, I must be doing something right. If I play through a section and I don't have fun, I'm definitely doing something wrong. Having gone so long without playing my own game just for the fun of it, that's an extra check that I've been missing.

Doing a detailed playthrough like this also means I can finally re-create my checkpoint saves. Those are nice to have for a couple of reasons, with the two big ones being that I can provide saves to Patrons if they lose their data (something I typically avoid doing, but my Patrons get special treatment), and if someone reports something I'm having trouble finding on the back end I can look for it on the front end. That second thing also makes investigating certain bugs much, much easier. Sometimes you just can't understand what's happening until you experience it, and doing that part of the research has been a lot harder without having those saves ready. Of course, this does mean that the next few days are going to be dedicated to something other than development, so next week's post might be a bit boring, too.

That's not to say there's no development happening, though. While I play through, I am still hunting for bugs, typos, and keeping an open mind to anything that might need to change. So far, I've found and fixed a couple of bugs (including a rat fight engaging during a save transfer from Arrival; turns out it was triggering because you already beat it, but the self-switches are set differently between Arrival and the main game) and have started taking a closer look at progression to see what I can change to improve the overall experience without affecting existing saves too much (which so far just means that boss encounters give more XP now). On that second note, I'm a little wary of changing things like that, but even counting the XP increases to some enemies that happened in v0.15, existing saves are still only down one fifth or so of a level if they've cleared all current content. The biggest difference this change makes is that Maids are more likely to level up after clearing a boss, which adds to both the reward and incentive to getting through those challenging fights without really affecting the long term balance of the game.

Once I'm through this, it'll be on to development on v0.15.1. Probably. I have some things I need to talk over with my Patrons about how to best go forward on developing the second half of Act 2, so the next release might just be v0.16. If you want in on that conversation, it'll be open to all of my Patrons.

Maids & Masters v0.15 Release

This update is in kind of a weird spot length-wise. The story bit is one of the shortest it's ever been, but with the new arena, it might take multiple hours to get through if you decide to do everything.

 

I'm working on an idea to try and make these updates more substantial going forward, but that's a post for Patreon on a future Friday. For now, here's the changelog:

v0.15
Added the next main story segment - the remnant of an Estate that played both sides of a war.
- A new Estate to explore, including dozens of new optional challenge fights.
- A new trophy, awarded for becoming the champion of the new arena.
- The fourth cult investigation segment.
Added an abandoned house to Magach.
Fixed a bug that caused wake-up events to occur before the Maid’s affection was high enough.
Fixed a bug that caused some Estate grounds statues to not change when customized.
Fixed another handful of bugs that caused the player sprite to be temporarily incorrect.
Fixed a bug that caused the second half of Quinn’s Freeze event to replay after completion.
Fixed an incorrect hint description for the eastern puzzle of Farquhar’s hold.
Fixed a bug that caused the sword butler fight to not trigger in the Bancroft dungeon.
Fixed a bug that may cause Melissa’s extra Freeze scene to not trigger correctly.
Fixed a bug that caused Insulting Blast to debuff the incorrect enemy stats.
Fixed a bug in the second Adelade conversation that caused the screen to never fade back in.
Fixed a bug that caused the new equipment event to appear in Emily’s shop when it shouldn’t.
Fixed a bug where Emily’s shop gave out too many Experimental Concoctions the first time.
Updated Emily in Act 2 to explain why your free samples stopped coming in.
Updated several customizable Estate statues to have dialogue and fix a “turning” issue.
Updated experience values of Sword Butler, Assassin Maid, and Cave Bear.
Various other minor dialogue and event updates.

Maids & Masters (& Putting The Finishing Touches on v0.15)

Being as close to release as it is, there's not a lot left to say about v0.15, so this is largely just going to be a "Patron appreciation post" for my high-tier Patrons. That said, there is some information to share.

As I mentioned in last week's post, there isn't nearly as much XP going around in Act 2 as I wanted there to be so I could build up to where I wanted levels to be in Act 3 properly. This can also create some progression-related issues, such as characters not having all of their skills, when we're getting to a point in the game where you should have more of those to be able to deal with some of the more strategically difficult fights. Lucky for me, my Patrons are amazing, and give me feedback. I discovered a bit of a flaw in the way I was calculating XP for the newer enemies, resulting in their XP values being significantly lower than they should be. 

Fixing this means there are some enemies (like the Cave Bear, Sword Butler, and Assassin Maid) that are already in the game that now give nearly (or more than, in the case of the Cave Bear) double the XP they did before. Thankfully these enemies are really rare at this point in the game, so anyone with an existing save that's already past where you encounter these enemies will be minimally affected - it's only about 1/7th of a level's worth of XP that's been added. The main thing that would be affected is the new arena and exhibition fights coming in v0.15. All of those enemies will be worth nearly double what they were when I originally did my own playtesting.

This also means I really need to do another in-depth playtesting run to look for bugs in parts of the game that I've already played through. I've been relying on having help playtesting a lot for Act 2, so my personal saves are kinda half-broken messes, and now I'm under-leveled as well. It'll also be nice to take a little "time off" and have work be just enjoying all my effort up to this point.

If you're interested in being one of those amazing playtesters, check out my Patreon. VIP Patrons get access to all of my test builds. If the high tier is a little too rich for your blood, I still love feedback, and Patrons get early access to published builds before it goes up anywhere else, along with a bunch of other benefits. Every bit of support matters - my Patrons are what keep me going.

Maids & Masters (& A Release Date For v0.15)

Kinda weird to think this is already the "end" of the first half of Act 2. There's obviously still all the side content coming in v0.15.1, plus v0.16 to act as the actual narrative mid-point, but this is pretty much it. I'm not totally sure how I want to handle the second half, either, despite it being literally right around the corner. Plus there's some story things that are mentioned (I would say foreshadowed, but it's a little too on-the-nose for that) in this update, which hopefully won't feel like it's spoiling anything that's coming. But now I feel like I'm saying too much, so let's talk about things that aren't so story relevant.

This segment is a little different from how I originally envisioned it, but I feel like this version is a little more in character for the Master of the new Estate. Mechanically speaking, that means this update is kinda reduced to the basics - a couple of character growth conversations and one big story conversation and otherwise functions as an introduction of a new feature. But I'm more or less okay with that.

There's two parts to this new feature. The first part is being able to participate in exhibition matches, where you can have your usual engagement team go through a shorter series of fights and make bets on the fight, so you can make a little Silcrow for winning. The second part is the arena, which will limit your party to a single Maid for one-on-one matches, just for the sake of seeing if you can win (though you do still get XP for winning). The second part is also where the trophy is, and where you'll need to figure out things like how to make, say, Ella win a relatively difficult fight without someone else there to pick up the slack in terms of damage. Which will probably make you wonder where Archibald got all that confidence all those updates ago. 

 

In both cases, these fights are limited, so there's still a limit to how much XP you can earn, but it helps solve a problem. Act 2 has been a lot lower on the combat end of things than I originally wanted it to be, which means characters are still going to be around level 20 going into the end of this first half instead of level 25-30 like I wanted them to be. Without the opportunity to gain those levels, it affects how difficult I can make Act 3 unless I do things like adjust XP values of enemies earlier in the game, but doing that would require a restart for existing saves, which I don't want to do. It's kind of a difficult design problem to have, and setting this arena up to create an opportunity to grind levels and make the later parts of the game easier on yourself is one way for me to avoid compromising my vision for how the gameplay fits into the story based on how hard or easy the game is.

As for what's left, v0.15 just needs the cult segment story-wise, so the test build will definitely be available to VIPs on Patreon this Friday. It may still not include the cult segment, as I have a lot of testing as well as some finishing touches on how exhibition and arena progression works to do between now and then, but it'll for sure be available on the 8th. That puts the early access release date for v0.15 on the 15th, which I suppose is about as appropriate as a release date can get.