Dev Blog #81 - The Ballad of John, in Three Parts

Greetings everyone!

Work on Update 6.2.1 is underway with new content being written daily as seen in the latest dev build. Today, I wanted to talk about how this update is being developed and what everyone can expect in terms of new content and release timelines. It's gonna be a bit of a bumpy ride, but I think the end result will be worth it!

On The Road Again

So, let's get the bad news out of the way first, I guess.

Well, bad news for you, and a combination of great news and waking nightmare for me! I make it a point to keep my personal life out of these updates, but right now it's unavoidable and there will be some impact on development, so, here it is.

This month marks the 10th consecutive year that my spouse has been able to tolerate me, and as such I'll be acknowledging that with a customary apology in the form of a vacation out of the country! That's all been planned for ahead of time, but what I wasn't expecting was for relocation of me and my brood to be expedited by a number of weeks. As a result, I'm looking at the briefest of windows between getting back home, packing my home into several boxes, moving those boxes from one of the country to a storage unit on the other side of the country, moving two adults, two children, one old man, and three cats into an apartment for a period of time, and finally moving said boxes, humans, and felines into the house I intend to one day die in!

Hurrah!?

In the interest of transparency, here's what all of you can expect from me in that time.

• Weekly devblogs will still be posting on Thursdays over the course of the transition
  • At least one more devblog will post in October
• Barring emergency fixes, there likely won't be any Dev Builds over the next two weeks
• A Backer Build "should" be out at the end of October opening up some of the new content coming in 6.2.1, if not the first week of October
  • This will be a Backer Exclusive preview build
• I'll be pulling extremely long and odd hours in the first two weeks of November in the hopes of getting the lion's share of the content for Update 6.2.1 finished before embarking on a one-way-four-day road trip on November 15th
• With the dust able to settle at that point, my hope is to have Update 6.2.1 released at the end of November
• The day that goes out, I'll be taking a tour of all the local breweries in my new hometown in North Carolina before diving right back in and tackling 6.2.2!

By the time New Years rolls around all this madness will finally be behind me and I'll be working from my new office and maybe... just maybe... things will finally get back to normal!

Update 6.2.1 - Tasha

Whew! Now that that's over with, let's get into the actual content, huh?

Having finished outlining the entirety of the Dom John route for this development cycle, I've decided the best thing to do for everyone would be release it in three parts. The first part, Update 6.2.1, will focus on John's corruption of Tasha and what that means for the player. While John will make appearances, he'll mostly be playing the Sauron-like villain in the shadows for the first two updates. Instead, you'll be treated to having all of your peers breaking you down while John pulls the strings.

Tasha will be John's first victim, and you'll quickly find yourself as the "bottom-bitch" in John's growing harem. In addition to new static scenes to drive the events along, the update will include new random events, new recurring events with Tasha and others, and new ways for the game to humiliate the MC.

You'll have the chance to interact with these events as well, either playing along or trying to fight back. Attempting the latter will have consequences, including its own set of new scenes and events! Of course, just bending over and taking it will come with its own risks!

You'll be seeing a whole new side to Tasha in this update, as well as getting a few more humiliation scenes for Top Girl Penny.

Update 6.2.2 - Diana

Tasha's content will end with a cryptic warning concerning the next phase of John's "Master Plan". Of course, this will lead into the corruption of resident records clerk, Diana.

Diana's update will be a little more mechanical than Tasha's, while also opening up the player to several generated encounters. I'm excited to put the new interactive event system introduced in Update 6.1.3 to use in what I'm going to go ahead and cheekily refer to here as "Escort Quests". While Update 6.2.1 saw Tasha breaking the MC down, 6.2.2 will see Diana building the MC up, or rather, building them into what John wants them to be.

Expect a lot of one-on-one "conditioning" time with Diana in this update, while also getting to meet lots of new people!

Of course, all of this leads us to...

Update 6.2.3 - John

Now that Tasha's broken you down and Diana's trained you up, it's finally time for the big man himself to reap the rewards!

This update will finally see your complete submission to John as he uses you whenever and however he sees fit. You can expect completed interactive events with John in various locations, as well as multiple new group events that ensure you know your place within John's growing harem.

This update will also set the stage for events to come further down the line involving Sophie, Ava, and Dakota!

Neat! Why Three Updates?

My biggest concern is always the rate at which I'm able to release new content, and when I say "content" I mean actual real content as opposed to backend updates.

As such, I'm constantly working on ways that I can get content out faster, or at least more consistently, and what that often means is the release of more frequent though smaller in scope updates. The "Dom John" update was initially going to be released in its completed state which encompasses all the content elements outlined above. However, both in the interest of quicker releases and in light of all the events outlined at the beginning of the post, I'm opting to get playable content into everyone's hands sooner rather than later, even if that means not getting all of it at once.

This is probably a pattern I'll continue to follow, even when things settle down in my personal life, if only to keep updates moving at a steady and more reliable pace.

As far as release windows are concerned, here's the tentative schedule for the rest of 2019:

• Oct 10 - Devblog #81 - Ballad of John
• Oct 31 - Backer Release - Update 6.2.0XX Partial Build
• Nov 7 - Voting on Update 7.0 - (Tasha, Diana, Ava & Dakota, Store Clerks, or Chapter 4)
• Nov 14 - Devblog #84 - Voting Results Implications
• Nov 21 - Update 6.2.1 Release Notes
• Nov 28 - Update 6.2.1 - Backer Build
• Dec 5 - Update 6.2.1 - Public Build
• Dec 26 - Update 6.2.2 - Backer Build

It's crazy how fast this year is moving! I want to apologize to everyone again for what will unavoidably be a slow month, and I'm working to get back on track as quickly as possible. Thank you all for bearing with me through all this, I'm definitely working to make this next update worth the wait!

Anyway, that's it for this week. I can't thank everyone enough for the continued interest and support!