V0.5.5 Progress Report

Hey everyone,
it's time to talk about V0.5.5! I have to be honest. It's not as far as it's supposed to be at this point, because I have something else brewing for you all very soon. However, it's still some time before the Alpha release is scheduled and once I'm diving in deep, it will probably all work out. I have most graphics ready, I just need to implement them. Of course, a patch is more work than implementing graphics, but graphics are what holds me back most. So... all is set for me to work on this.
So... let's talk about what I have planned for this patch.

1. Masseuse Branch

I feel like the title is even more stupid than usual, but... what pun isn't stupid? That's the point. So the title might have already given you an idea about the content of the patch. No, it's not chainsaws. It's a brand new Thai masseuse branch. Well.. it's not exactly a full branch. Just like last patch, this is a variant of the Asian branches, in this case the Thai branch. While developing the hourglass, I realized that Himari's branches had the least variants, so I decided to add these two. As always, I'm not spoiling more than the title.

2. Reworks for Thai Branch

The original Thai branch was one of the first things implemented into the game, and while thinking about the new variant, I remembered some things that need changing in the Thai branch. It may not be obvious, but the clothes have been completely redone by the real character artist. Originally, I had done those myself, so they were pretty poorly made. But more importantly, they now exist for all body proportions, so finally you can decide to wear the rundown street clothes in a later playthrough. I'm going through a few more things in the branch, as well.

3. New Fight/Evade Mechanics

So... this is the big rework. Evasion in the game has always been a quicktime event based on your mood. If your mood is low the event becomes harder, and it's one of the things that has been criticised the most. Now... I'm not going to remove the quicktime event entirely, but I'm going to add something that makes it a bit more strategic. And also, add that to other parts of the game, that were just Fitness stats before, e.g. when Katelyn attacks you.

So... I don't want to explain too much what I have planned, because Game Design changes a lot during development. Let's just see how it goes.

4. The Hair Salon

This one has been asked about a lot as well. Hopefully you are aware that you can already get your hair style changed right now. The options are the ones from the branches. However, we have a few new hairstyles from the anime branch available. So, they'll be added into the game with a new mechanic. This will only be available when you have both Himari and Abigail as Allys.

That's because only Himari knows the styles and they only have one length available so you need Abigail to fix the fact that your hair length can change so much. I think this is a great way to add the general availability of fixed hair styles to the game because before it was a pain in the ass to draw 10 different version of each hair. Now, these old styles will of coruse remain, this is just a new system and it adds to the idea that you'd want to be Allys to get the best of the game.

5. Marco's Bedroom

Last but not least, there's another addition to our bedroom series. This time you'll be able to look into Marco's bedroom, so we're almost done with the bedrooms. Erica's bedroom will remain a secret, so I can now concentrate on making use of the bedrooms on the Ally route, starting with v0.6.0!

And that's it for this version. I hope you're looking forward to V0.5.5! I can't wait to get deep into development and get all this new cool stuff ready for you soon.

And again, I'll hopefully be back this weekend with something extra special.

Best,
Rel