Maids & Masters (& Strategy Guide Act 1)

The Maids & Masters strategy guide is officially over 90 pages now, and I'm approaching the end of the first act. There's still a bit left for me to fill out with Drain The Swamp and the Haunt, but once that's wrapped up, it's just Griselda, the Freeze, and Lalita left to finish out Act 1.

 

I would love to say that this Friday's Patreon/Subscribestar post will be a "test build" for the guide up to Act 1, but I've had a busy weekend (which is why I'm still working on Drain The Swamp - I feel like I should've had that done days ago despite still gaining 10 pages) and I still have a fairly busy week ahead of me. My general goal has been to complete one quest per day, but while some days I get two or three done pretty easily, Drain The Swamp is a quest that covers two regions, (technically) three Estates, four Holds, two optional Maids, and not one, but two entire side quests. Which is all still before I get into the trophies in the area. It's taking a minute.

 

But as much as I feel like I'm not making as much progress as I'd like to be making, when I actually put some math to the amount of work that I've gotten done, it maths out halfway decent. I think the main problem that I'm perceiving is that I'm used to either working myself to death or threatening to dive head-first into burnout, mostly because I genuinely enjoy doing the work. That - for better and worse - isn't so much the case here.

 

Which, to be clear, I don't actively hate working on the guide. It's not nearly as much fun as working on the next game, regardless of which game that ends up being, but I find myself dancing around what I actually want to say with these guide-related blog posts and ending up being unintentionally negative more than I want to be. I know the strategy guide is something you want, and for reasons other than my income backsliding, I want to do right by you for supporting me, regardless of how you've supported me. 

The guide is another way for me to do that, and I've been debating changing my development process to make a guide alongside the next game. I doubt I will, because as much as I like hiding secrets and making those secrets rewarding to find beyond the simple dopamine rush of finding something I've hidden away so you can feel extra smart (and if MnM's guide ends up making me enough money to fund development for the next game, repeating that would be really nice), I also don't want a guide to feel necessary. I've had people use the phrase "guide dang it" on me before, which is the sort of "moon logic" that's most common in old adventure games where what you're supposed to do makes zero sense until after you've looked up how to do it.

I don't think I've ever gone full moon logic for any of the puzzles or secrets I've designed; the vast majority of things that come close (or that people have complained about frequently) are just the sort of thing that only happens if you go looking for it (and unless you're looking for literally everything literally everywhere, you'll naturally miss some things) or that use the cancel mechanic (which is inherently not directly in front of you, so even though it's used constantly, unless you use it constantly, it's easy to forget it's there). I can think of more times where a puzzle was just poorly designed in the first iteration and had multiple solutions when only one solution was intended to be correct. 

 

But that's a lot of game design philosophy talk, and there's way more to be said on that topic than I can fit in several blog posts, so I'll leave that there. 

Maids & Masters (& Strategy Guide Suggestions)

I feel like I've hit a decent pace, at least in terms of how I'm working on the guide, if not the amount of work that's actually being completed. I still have this feeling like I'm going to spend far longer making this thing than I should, but I'm willing to believe that feeling comes mostly from the fact that I have the majority of the work still in front of me despite the guide already being nearly 80 pages.

 

Either because of or despite that (I'm genuinely not sure which), I want to know what would make the guide worth the asking price for you. Obviously I'm laying out combat strategies every time you encounter a new enemy for the first time, and I know trouble with bosses is one of the big things people have asked for help with. It should be equally obvious that I'm covering each step of every quest in detail, including the negotiation segments, which covers all of the "what's the best choice" (which doesn't always apply - there often isn't a single optimal choice - but the guide will give you all the mechanical information of which choices move which variables) questions, along with all of the "where do I find <blank>" type questions. Same goes for the usual appendix type inclusions for info on all the Maids and how best to use them in combat, detailed enemy stat lines, and a trophy checklist.

 

The less obvious things I'm already planning on including are little cut-outs for behind-the-scenes info. Things like what the original intent was for a thing that changed, and how things were before they got reworked later in development or things that got cut, and world-building type things that never got fully explored anywhere within the game itself but weren't really substantial enough for a lore post. That doesn't cover absolutely everything that'll appear in those little boxes; sometimes they'll be random fun facts that I decided to include as I was writing the guide, but that's the sort of thing I want to hear from you about.

 

Last Friday I put up a post on Patreon (and Subscribestar) asking for suggestions on things you might like to see. The suggestions I've gotten (both in the comments there and elsewhere on the internet) already range from already planned to a good idea I hadn't thought of that's easy to include to something that'd be basically impossible to include and I have no idea how to approach the idea. If you have any particular thoughts about or hopes for what you want to see in the guide, whether it's a detail about something I've already mentioned here or something else entirely that I didn't mention at all, I want to hear from you. The sooner I see a good idea (or even a bad idea that a lot of people want), the easier it is to include it in the guide-making process.

Maids & Masters (& Strategy Guide Progress Updates)

It continues to be kinda difficult to talk about the progress being made on Maids & Masters' strategy guide without just outright telling you what's in the guide so far, so... let's do a little bit of that.

 

As of right now, just the Arrival section of the guide has 5 different maps, two battle tactics pages, six commentary cut-outs, and is about 20 pages long. Those numbers might not be huge, but keep in mind you can get through all of Arrival in 15 minutes if you rush through.

For the main game, the guide is already another 20 pages long, and I'm not even halfway done with the first act yet. That also doesn't include any of the appendixes that will include more granular information about the Maids, enemies, and trophies.

This guide is gonna be big.

 

It's also gonna be exactly as much work as I thought it'd be. I feel like I keep ending up negative about working on the guide when I really don't want to be, so instead of the couple paragraphs I'd originally written out, I'll just say that it feels like a lot is riding on this guide's success, I hope it ends up being worth the time and effort, and that you think it's worth the asking price.

 

I also hope you don't mind these posts being short ones while I'm working on the guide. 

Maids & Masters (& The Strategy Guide & Precious Kouhai v1.0)

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.