Long-Term Development Roadmap Post-1.0

After about 4 years, we have finally reached this point! The 1.0.0 release is closing in, and it's time to talk about the future. I have a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head about the future. The aim of this post is both to inform you about what's going on in there and also to kind of put it onto paper and sort it out a bit. Here are the main points I want to discuss in this rather lengthy roadmap post.

• The general strategy of development after the 1.0 release.

• Outline of content the major update post 1.0 in SKA will focus on.

• First words on a new project.

The roadmap is more of a high-level overview of these points. So don't expect detailed time schedules for the immediate future and rather a rough outline regarding the future in a timescope of 2 - 4 years.

1 Development Strategy

So, what is going to change after the 1.0 release in terms of development strategy? Quite a lot! Before I jump into the actual changes, I would like to first talk about the notion of "completeness".

When we talk about completeness of a video game, we can mean that the game is fully finished in terms of development and will never again receive an update. Note that this doesn't apply to many games, be it by fixing typos, making it run faster, filling in empty areas, giving extra choices, and so on. Software in general, is, technically speaking, never truly complete, and it's also questionable whether being complete in this sense is a good property. A game that has a definite need for an update but doesn't get one - is that 'good'?

So, when talking about completeness, I would like to focus on another angle: Receiving a complete experience. Meaning that there are no placeholders, there are no areas that say 'this is still under development', or 'this will make sense in a couple of updates' - independently of whether the game receives future updates or not, the game is a full and complete experience.

1.1 Content-based Major Updates

And that leads me back now to Star Knightess Aura. 1.0.0 is a complete experience - while there are many opportunities for extra content, even if I were to die after the 1.0.0 release, it would be a perfectly fine game without any further updates - and that is a property I would like to maintain with all future major releases. Note that the time-based way of monthly major updates does not uphold the completeness property. So, I don't think it's too surprising if I announce here that post 1.0

For Star Knightesss Aura, we will switch to a content-based release plan for major updates.

Prerelease updates will happen as usual weekly, but the main difference is that I won't necessarily be releasing a 1.x.0 major update at the end of the month. The major update will then happen during a month when all the planned content is done. This guarantees that post 1.0, major updates won't have to [TO BE IMPLEMENTED] messages or fade-to-black H-scenes. As I said, I don't think this is too surprising, and instead the normal experience for a 1.0.0 game.

Since prereleases would happen as usual, Patrons wouldn't notice any real differences besides the change in version number policy. For Steam, I would probably push the last prerelease build of the month to be [beta] branch. For itch.io, I'm not sure yet how to handle it. Maybe there will be beta files you can download, but maybe having another 4 files would be too confusing for the user, so I'm not sure.

Either way that would be the first change and probably the simplest one. Next I would like to talk more big picture.

1.2 Flagship Titles and Smaller Projects

Okay, so this one is going to be a pretty major point. Honestly, I could probably make a whole post about this alone. :'D

Star Knightess Aura is a huge project - and with the 2.0 development coming up - it's set to grow even bigger. This has a big problem: While I am gaining skills and external talent in the form of freelancers, there is a specific limit to my growth. Since the project is so big, there are various risky things that I cannot try, or if I did, it would have major negative implications. I will just drop here, for example, to say that I would like to give hiring a Voice Actress a try, but in the case of SKA, the consequences would be incomprehensible.

There are other things as well: I would like to try various improvements to the core lewdness system, but SKA is not a good testbed for that since - again - it's a complete game. I don't want to cause a trail of rework of existing content to get triggered to try out some new rule in the lewdness system just to find out it sucks.

So, to continue development of large projects but also to have something to pick up new skills, try out new systems, and so on,

I will be distinguishing future projects between Flagship Projects and Small Projects.

Flagship Game: During 1.0 development, there won't be Small Projects in parallel development to focus all resources on its development.

Small Project: A smaller project that will be in development in parallel to the 2.0 development of a Flagship Game. There may be various purposes in the development, such as: Working with new talent (e.g., a different artist), trying out new game mechanics, improving the technical foundation - basically everything that is difficult to do in a large project.

Please don't misunderstand "Small Project" in the sense of a Side Project. They are also intended to be serious projects, but simply with a way smaller scope than a Flagship game.

The big picture plan would be to split development 50/50 on the 2.0 development of our current Flagship title (Star Knightess Aura) and a small project, which I will call Project A in the following. We will repeat that until 2.0 is done and then the plan would be to funnel all the acquired resources, skills and talent into a new big flagship project. I won't be talking about that one yet though, since it's quite far off into the future, haha.

In terms of time plan, I was thinking of aiming for a development time of 1 year if I was working 100% on a small project. So at 50%, it would give us a 2-year span.

Then, in terms of work plan, my proposal would be to alternate between development months of SKA and Project A. This would have the added benefit of having an extended "beta" period for each major update to catch up on bugs. Note, that while I will be working 50/50 on the projects, that doesn't mean the same for our freelancers!

1.3 Budget Plan

Which leads me into the next section. At the moment of writing this, I still have the old budget plan in the pinned post which I also didn't update even though we recently actually achieved a new milestone. Thanks for the 7500€ Milestone by the way! The reason is mostly because there will be a completely new budget plan once we go post 1.0.

While I will be working 50/50 on the projects, I don't plan to do the same with our artist. He will continue to (nearly) 100% work on SKA, and Project A will have a separate artist. As I said, I want to try out working with new people and also scout for a new potential artist for our next Flagship project.

The reason I said mostly is because of the budget distribution. I plan to consolidate the budgets so that we can finance both artists, but they will be working with a slightly lower budget that will be more like 75%. But still, it means that for each of the games, I will have more art to work with per major update, giving me also more freedom in making content that is perhaps a bit more art-intensive.

So, how would the new monthly budget plan look like? Here's the breakdown

• Art: 1600€ (800€ current artist Emubi for SKA + 800€ new artist for Project A)

• Assistant RPGMaker Developer: 900€ (Trihan)

• General Assets Budget: 300€

• Pixel Artist: 300€ (Will begin the search for a new one, as the one I had been using towards the end of SKA production wasn't quite reliable)

• Marketing: 100€ (Mostly just a bucket to put money in for the eventual trailer production of Project A)

• Admin: 100€

Mapping and Assistant Writing will (temporarily) lose their permanent position and have been unified under the General Assets Budget. I will talk a bit more about when I get to Project A, but probably we will only need a a couple of maps made by a dedicated mapper and the dungeon maps I can then make myself. For SKA I don't foresee a need for more maps. The total budget is about the same as the current budget.

Of course I plan to try again with certain other things such as music production but those will probably become goals in the future. Also, I would like to contract another RPGMaker developer, but who, in contrast to Trihan and me, would be more focused on "polish". But that, too, would become a potential budget goal.

1.4 Depth vs Width

Finally, before we dive into the actual planned post-1.0 content, I would like to cast a reminder on my development principles regarding Depth vs Width on pre-1.0 and post-1.0 content.

The content up to 1.0 is mostly dedicated towards reaching the "completion" property so that you can reach the ending game's endings. This is what I called depth. Width, on the other hand, focuses on giving you more options to deviate from the common path to have a more individual playhtrough experience. Width would be the primary development goal post-1.0. Examples, for features that I would like to focus on towards this goal:

• Extra ending variations

• Addition of Bad Ends

• Increased reactivity in content

• Longer event chains for important side characters

And now, with all the foundations set, we can finally talk about the main section of this post. Probably why most are reading it in the first place, I suspect. :'D

2 Outline of the Major Updates 1.1 to 1.4

What will be the concrete plans for the major updates post 1.0? Here I will give an outline for the next 4 Major Updates. Keep in mind, 1 Major SKA Update won't correspond to 1 Month anymore!

The reason I decided to outline the next 4 Updates is because I expect them to cover around 2 years of development time at 50% development speed, so basically the same development time as Project A.

With a 2 year development horizon and 4 Updates, we can also roughly estimate the development time per Major Update: 6 Months is most likely going to be time. I think that's a good timeframe for a released game so that guides and similar things don't become as outdated as they do during 1.0 production haha.

On another note, since artwork is one of the main limiting factors the following roadmap will usually put a lewd storyline as the main development goal of the Major Update. Furthermore, I will mostly focus on items that I plan to work one explicitly in that Major Update, but not in the others.

Work that will probably happen in all updates and I will therefore not repeat are things like improved content reactvity. Throughout the development time span of 2.0 I plan to improve on the existing content by adding more variations based on Aura's current corruption progress, as well as adding more pieces of tertiary content where Aura can display said progress (e.g., flavor content for random objects in the world).

Major Updated 1.1.0 Maid Bad End

The main focus of this update will be probably the most popular awaited content: The Maid Bad End. Aura will be giving a new way to enter the Festival by becoming Arwin's Maid. There will be new Maid Jobs ensuing from this and then eventually in the Festival when Arwin calls out to Aura to join his side, she will be given the option to do so. After that we will also get a set of epilogue events. Besides the addition of this bad end, I also plan to work on:

• New Game-: Similarly to NG+ bonuses, you will be able to pick up maluses for New Games. This will cost Score but increase the ending multiplier in return. An example for a planned NG- feature is an Ironman Mode.

• Extra Epilogue Scenes and Variations: I would like to increase the number of epilogue variations so that things like having very high Exhibitionism can impact various scenes.

Major Update 1.2.0 Roland Bad End

Roland is the second character who can obtain Aura's soul and lead the game into a Game Over state. I believe it would be most consistent if he also had a Bad End. Besides the Bad End itself, I would like to expand his storyline with at least two Lorraine events. One after you pick the corrupt options in Nothing But The Truth, and the other if you have done both that and gone all the way with Aura for a threesome scene.

A big item I plan to work on besides the Roland bad end is to increase the dialogue consistency.

• For example, when you ramp up Aura's lewdness and then perform the Alchemist scene, there are quite a few lines that are unfitting for a lewd Aura. I don't plan to fully write huge variations, the pink scenes are intended to deal with this split, but to at least try to filter out the most immersion breaking lines or replace them with variations.

• Another example is Aura's interaction with Albrecht. There are various comments where it would make sense for a further corrupted Aura to rather agree with Luciela's comments rather than dismiss them.

While I said in the beginning that this kind of reactivity increases would be a constant thing to work on, I believe this update would be a good candidate to push on it.

Major Update 1.3.0 Hermann & Other Repeatables

Those wishing for new Hermann content, it is finally your time! I'm not sure if he will get his own bad ending, but Hermann will definitely receive a second event chain. I have not yet focused on the exact direction, but it definitely will focus on him parading around Aura as his wife. What I would like to do, for example, would be an orgy/party scene at the Congregation where other trophy wives like Nadia and Charlotte could also make an appearance.

Besides Hermann, I would like to generally expand on repeatable scenes. With Roland already being addressed in the 1.2 update, the primary candidates here are the Underground Bar and the Brothel. Basically adding more customer events in both of them. Don't expect the expansion to be too crazy, though.

There is one more repeat character that could use further expansion but I'm afraid who will not receive anything this update, namely John, but that's because---

Major Update 1.4.0 Companion Events

---I plan to generally focus on Companion-related content in the 4th Major Update. Paulina who has been turned into a woman and the perverted John, when Aura and him have sex, I definitely feel like there is some extra content that should trigger here.

I would also like to increase the general events for a corrupted Paulina and corrupted Charlotte to draw Aura into new events. Going shopping with Paulina instead of saving the world, partying with Charlotte and getting drunk just like in the club on Earth, things like that is what I had in mind.

Finally, I would like to conclude this update with a variation of the Corruption Ending where John gets captured by Paulina and Charlotte, and subsequently TFed into a girl and corrupted. The Final Epilogue scene would then instead of the Earth characters, show the Roya characters Charlotte, Paulina and a to-be-feminized-and-corrupted John. Well, Rose and Alicia would probably also still be there, but you get what I mean.

I know there is a bunch of other stuff on people's wishlists. Purity scenes, for one, which would trigger on Earth when Alicia fails to make progress in the mental world. Perhaps when I get to the detailed plans, I can figure out some way to sneak a bit of that kind of content in, but for the first 4 Major Updates, they will definitely not be a focus.

Finally, to close out this section, I would like to talk about the results of the poll on post-1.0 CG content (besides H-CGs for the new content). There are pretty much two top-contenders:

• Extra H-CGs and variations for existing H-Content

• Alternate Earth Costumes

With extra H-CGs, since the base scenes are all in a complete state, I think the production progress I will be fairly simple. With me only producing new content at 50% speed, we can simply alternate the production of new H-CGs with the production of Extra H-CGs for existing content. A more concrete plan here will probably be preceded by another poll.

As for Earth Customes, we will probably do the following:

1 Extra Costume Choice for Casual/Flashy/Slutty

That should keep the scope reasonable. Again, not sure when I will schedule these, we will need to see the concrete art production progress when we get to the Major Updates.

3 Project A

Alright! With this post already getting super long and the mysterious Project A not being super detailed out in my head either, I will focus on the planned core features and design pillars in this section.

Then let's dive into the core setup of the game. What will Project A be about? It terms of genre, it will of course focus again on a Female Protagonist and corruption, I think that much should be clear. But just spelling it out in case someone feared a major genre shift, haha.

I would like to continue the core direction of SKA, but in the spirit of trying out variations in order to improve on the core concepts, the mental changes system will be replaced here with a...

3.1 Contract System

We already had such a thing in SKA in the form of Soul-Contracts, which, however were narrative elements. In Project A, you would, as usual, be put into situations where you can gain some sort of advantage in exchange for making a compromise. In this case, it would be by signing off on some clause on a magical contract that obligates the Heroine to obey the rule she just agreed to. So basically, in SKA terms, instead of having mental changes done to her in secret, it's openly building her Soul Contract.

I believe this would give me room to explore a similar-yet-different narrative and gameplay angle to improve on the existing system and potentially build a better one.

I'm not sure how the Contract System would work exactly, but I definitely would like to have some sort of larger negotiation segment. In the simplest case, this could be that instead of a Yes/No decision you would have a decision of the type "For every [Advantage] this clause gets worse by 1. How many [Advantage] would you take?" In a sense, Hermann scenes already have this type of decision-making since you get Gold for every agreeable response in his scenes. This would be more supported by the system rather than individual narrative scenes, though.

When I started writing this, I immediately kind of went on to present the story setup and everything, but I think that is something for a separate post. Instead, I will focus on the core non-gameplay features I would like to tackle in Project A.

3.2 Non-Gameplay Features

One big thing I already mentioned at the beginning of the post: Voice Acting. Again, it could end up just being moans, it could go the full way to fully voicing the Heroine. This is where I would pour some of the money of the Steam release (in case it's a success).

I have no experience working with Voice Actors, nor do I currently have a social network for it, but that's exactly why I would like to try and build up the knowledge and contacts in this smaller scoped project. If it goes wrong, then it won't be the end of the world. I know, some people don't like VA and just turn off the sound, but luckily having an extra sound option for that isn't difficult to implement.

The second big goal will be translation support. For SKA, I decided not to consider translation as a primary citizen, which doesn't mean we can't support it some day but it's a 900k word project and uh that's kinda expensive. For Project A, translation will be a primary citizen, meaning we will setup the technical foundation from the start. The implementation will also work for SKA to perhaps get some community translations going.

I hope that we will be able to reach new audiences with this who perhaps didn't take another look at SKA and thus use Project A to also drive new players towards the Flagship game.

3.3 Project B

In case it turns out my ideas for Project A suck, or when we get to its completion, I will close out this long post with a very brief teaser on what would by my next candidate for a small project. In Project B the focus would be on memory manipulation.  A concept I decided to simplify in SKA's memory room. The focus would be on exploring new interactions for messing with memories, and it would be the main gameplay focus.

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So, for those interested in the post-1.0 future, I hope I was able to enlighten you a bit about what is in store! Even though the text turned out super long, I'm sure there are a bunch of aspects I wanted to talk about but ended up forgetting x_X

For more details on Project A, probably with a real name next time, expect another post sometime in February after the 1.0 release of SKA!