Hello!

It's time for another Friday Progress Update. 

What's new and what's up? Let's get the progress out of the way first. I'm rendering. Two animations done, and a little over a hundred renders completed. I'll be rendering for some time but there's also a bit of writing remaining. To give an idea about size, the last update's raw script file was 145k. The current one is 95k and will probably land at around 120-130k when all is said and done. I've tried to increase my writing per render average a bit too. No render count prediction yet.

Now let's talk a little about where the game is going. I'll quote Awaken from discord: Is it too soon to talk about endings? How many more updates have you planned? Will the endings differ? Do we have to pick a girl? Multiple? Is there a canon ending to the story?

So many questions! I'll only answer one: "How many more updates have you planned". The answer is, I don't have any specific number of updates in mind. Okay guys, thanks for this week, see ya!

Okay, okay, calm down, I'm kidding!

They're hard questions to answer, mostly because they don't have easy answers. But I'll try. I might have mentioned some of this earlier. This will get wordy, by the way. Consider yourself warned.

When I started this game-making adventure, I had two game ideas. A short game about a guy who's been away awhile and comes back home. There's him, the dad, the dad's new wife. There's a maid and a neighbor girl. Recognize this? Yes, it's Elisabeth, Miko, and Hannah.

My other game idea was a longer story about a guy out for revenge. It had two girls clearly outlined, a corrupt cop and a girl in need of help. These are Catalina and Chris.

I started making the first game. Everyone says make something short for your first game. I thought it made sense. Then ... I merged them. And added a couple of more girls for variation and some other ideas.  Maid to Please was the name for the first game, the second game never had a name and never will, as it's now also part of Maid to Please. Okay, enough background, now the questions:

Is it too soon to talk about endings?

Probably. Some game makers, those with successful moneymakers, run on seemingly endlessly. I have no thoughts for doing something like that. I have other ideas for other games I want to make too. I know the end of the main story, but what we're talking about here, I suspect, are endings for the girl's storylines.

How many more updates have you planned?

I couldn't give you an honest answer. More than a few!

Will the endings differ? Do we have to pick a girl? Multiple?

I feel that these are all the same question. I never had any thoughts of forcing exclusively selection of one girl and get rid of the rest. So much unhappy breakup writing! I'm also trying to not force relationships. So I guess that's leaning towards a harem where you get to pick and choose and the girls are somehow okay with how it ends up. It's a game after all. But there will definitely be variations depending on your choices.

Maybe the game won't end with Miko as your maid. Maybe it will. Maybe it'll end with a houseful of maids and the cleanest house ever? I'm also scared of putting myself in a situation where I render and render and render, only for the player to see 10% of them depending on choices. Too much branching creates a bunch of tiny updates instead of fewer, longer ones.

Is there a canon ending to the story?

For the revenge/testies part, yes. For the girls, probably not really, as the endings will vary depending on choices.

Choices, choices, choices.

The problem with choices is that players want big, important choices. You pick X over Y, you want it to have an impact. But big impact means branching. Branching means players see less and less of the writing and rendering for updates. If you're not careful as a dev, you can drive yourself insane.

I've tried to limit myself, to find a balance. I'm starting to see branching creep though. I feel like there are more and more variations in scenes (naughty scenes mainly) depending on choices. I'm not talking about skip yes/no choices. For those, I put very, very little effort into the skip option. If you don't want to 69 Beth, don't. But don't expect me to put any effort into writing/rendering something big for saying no to a girl. But I feel like the number of variations for sub/dom numbers and such things are increasing. Often unannounced branching too where you won't really know that the affectionate blowjob had a more dominant variation too, unless you play two routes. Is this good or bad? I don't know, I just know that it is creeping up on me!

Okay, I'll stop now. If you didn't skip to the end, treat yourself an ice cream. You've earned that ice cream like a motherfucker, man. (and another ice cream if you know the quote).

See you soon, thank you for your support!