Maids & Masters (& The Rest of 2023)

Let's start with a little bit of a progress report. There has unfortunately not been a lot of progress made on v0.14 - largely due to this cold - but as I recover from the last dregs of sickness, I should get back into the swing of things pretty quickly. I've managed to get the introduction done, as well as a bit of side content that lets me test out the drunkenness mechanic, and a couple of new scenes for the new girls. 

 

It's not nearly as much progress as I'd like, but there's only so much working through I can do when I get sick. I did have some of the next bit done, but my cold-addled brain had a hard time linking things together so it was... well, boring. Thankfully I'm more or less over the cold at this point, so development should be more or less back to normal. I don't have an ETA on the update yet, but I should have a release date by the next time I post about MnM.

I put it that way because it's going to be a while before I post about MnM specifically. Next Tuesday I won't be posting since it's the day after Christmas, and I'll be busy with family. The Tuesday after that is when I'll be making my year in review post, where I look back and take the time to appreciate and celebrate my successes over the past year. Despite some of the lows, 2023 came with plenty of highs, too, so I'm looking forward to that. 

My Patreon posting schedule should go unaffected. I've got more Christmas to post about on Friday, a little bit of a late Christmas present for everyone the week after, and hopefully I can find the time and energy to get an extra something put together for Patrons on one of those two weeks. Of all the holiday related things I wanted to do this year, the Patron-only thing is the only one I haven't been able to get done yet, and the last thing I want to do is neglect my Patrons.

There may also be another extra little surprise coming, but that depends on whether the Winter Games Bundle hits that 5k stretch goal. 

That's all for now. See you next year.

Winter Games Bundle

After four years of not getting sick once, I've gotten very sick for a second time this winter (hence this post going up a day late - I was basically dead yesterday). So, to take it as an excuse to bundle up and play some games, I've been going through the Winter Games Bundle. You should, too - it's over 30 games from over 30 devs, entirely for free. Someone even made a trailer for it.

Want to know what you'll be getting in the bundle before you click on the link? There's a graphic for that, too!

Now go play some games while I try to get less sick. https://itch.io/b/2188/winter-games-bundle-18

Maids & Masters (& Starting on v0.14)

With the demo for Saccharine Soil out to Patrons (if you want to play it, that post is here), I have escaped my nefarious captor and my brain is now free to start working on the next Estate segment for Maids & Masters.

To that end, the maps are already done and mostly populated with interactions, most of the NPCs have been made and placed, and the introduction is already done. I'm still a little unsure of how to utilize this "drunkenness" mechanic that I've started implementing, but it is partially implemented, so that's a start. It will almost assuredly take a little tweaking to get it right, but getting it in there in the first place is the hard part, and that's already done.

After the Read Estate, I'm a little hesitant to make two or more versions of each negotiation segment, especially with the drunkenness mechanic. That really wants to be on more of a sliding scale, but I also don't really want to need to write out three or more different versions of each conversation. I have a few ideas of how to handle this, but it'll mostly come down to testing and reworking it until I'm happy with it.

That leaves the actual story.

If you're good at connecting dots, you might have already drawn some conclusions about where the story is going to go here. I've been avoiding being too open about that aside from it going into Phoebe's past, but suffice to say there's more than just the inner workings of trade economics and the business of running a winery at play here.

I've likened this section to being similar to dealing with Griselda before, and aside from it being less gloomy, that's the general vibe you can expect. However, the stakes are a little different this time around, and not just because you stand to gain a new pair of Maids.