With Precious Kouhai checked off the list, that's one "major" project checked off the list, one left to go before I can put all my attention on the Maids & Masters guide. The other one is Divine Intervention, which I should really have had the chapter written for by now, but the writing is still significantly further out than the renders, so there's not a lot in the way of pressure to get that done outside of the pressure I'm putting on myself to complete my work.
Going back to Precious Kouhai, this is something I'll be posting to Patreon and Subscribestar as well, but it hasn't been said anywhere except the itch dev blog yet, so to recap that:
Precious Kouhai ended up even shorter than I initially anticipated it being, but at this stage in my projects as a whole, PK kinda became a to-do item that I'm glad to cross off and free up the brain space to dedicate to other things.
As you might have noticed, early access is a paid thing on the itch page. Now that the project is finished and there aren't any updates to rotate into free public access, there are a few things to call out in reference to purchasing early access.
First, if you don't think it's fair that something you're buying will eventually be free - don't buy it. While I'm an independent solo dev and every little bit helps, I know how tough times are just as well as anyone. Don't spend money you don't feel good about spending. At this stage, early access is mostly a tip to me for making a thing you enjoyed than it is a purchase for a product.
Second, PK v1.0 will go into early access once the MnM strategy guide is released. I'm expecting that to take a solid couple months, so as a vague general estimate, probably sometime in April. Maybe May. Then PK v1.0 will be free for everybody, including the mobile version that I've been keeping exclusive to early access.
The other point I want to bring up is that - unlike Maids & Masters early access - there isn't another related product coming later on that you'll get to replace your purchase of early access. I do my best to be honest about these sorts of things, but just so it's stated in plain words, buying early access means all you get is early access. Once v1.0 is public and the game is fully released, early access ends.
As a follow-up to that, I'll also be turning off payments on the itch page once early access ends. I would like to leave them optional as a tip jar, but due to censorious payment processor shenanigans, monetizing adult content is extremely difficult these days and itch won't index the project page unless I turn payments off. I don't blame itch for that, it's a payment processor overstep, but obviously there's not a lot that I as an individual can do to affect that.
And that's probably the last you'll hear about Precious Kouhai until v1.0 goes public. I have made slightly more progress on the MnM strategy guide, and I do have a better estimate on how long it's going to take to complete, which (unless I get into a rhythm and speed way up) is going to be somewhere between 48 and 72 days of work. Much more manageable than my original estimate based off of how long it took me to complete the Arrival portion of the guide, but that number also doesn't account for any days I try to take off (which I usually end up doing some work during anyway despite myself) or any extra time I dedicate to things like appendixes.
That does probably also mean the public release of PK v1.0 is going to be in the May/June part of the year, possibly July, but that still feels way better than the notion of spending another 1500 hours over the course of the next year on this guide, which would burn me out something fierce.
