Remaining Pre-Crowdfunding Checklist Tasks

Hello!

In January of this year, I wrote a long post on Patreon detailing what improvements I wanted to make to the game before I would consider returning to producing YouTube videos or launching the crowdfunding campaign. I called this the “Pre-Crowdfunding Checklist.” If you look at that Patreon post, you’ll see that most of those tasks have been completed over the past few months – very cool! However, has the list changed since then? Have any tasks been judged “not worth it” and discarded? Have any new tasks been added to the list? Which tasks have the highest priority, and which tasks are potentially going to be ignored?

I’ve decided to write a blog post spelling out exactly where we’re at with that checklist, and assign priority to each of the remaining items on the checklist. If you’re interested, scroll down past this gorgeous artwork by haihondaitao and click Continue Reading!

✅ = Done.
❌ = Not going to happen.
🔨 = I’m currently working on it.
🕒 = Planning on it, just haven’t started yet.
🤷 = This is unlikely to happen, but I haven’t decided yet.

Essential

Each of these tasks is something that I consider to be absolutely mandatory before I proceed to the crowdfunding phase:

1. ✅ Implement a better social interaction system.
2. ✅ Get the game to properly handle input from Playstation controllers.
3. ✅ Balance stealth kills.

Maybe

These are things that I think would be significant improvements to the game, but aren’t necessarily “essential” for the game to become complete, so I haven’t decided yet if I should commit to them yet:

1. ✅ Investigate whether or not adding more props and decorations around the interior and exterior of the school would harm the framerate. If it wouldn’t significantly impact the framerate, update the school’s interior and exterior in a number of ways.
2. ❌ To make it harder to eliminate Osana, many students have been placed along the path that she walks through school. However, all of these students are currently just standing and talking, which is kind of boring. I’d like to investigate the possibility of making them perform more appropriate actions (artists sketching, gamers gaming, etc.) instead of just standing and talking.
3. ✅ A group of fans created a document listing a bunch of potential improvements that could be made to the game relatively quickly. I want to read the entire document front-to-back and decide how many of the suggestions are worth incorporating into the game.

Fun, But Not Necessary

Each one of these can be summarized the same way: “I think it would be super fun to implement this feature, and I know that there are definitely some people who would enjoy it, but it wouldn’t be absolutely necessary, so it’s hard to rationalize spending development time on it.”

1. ✅ Implement Custom Mode – The ability to build your own 10-week story mode. Design your own yandere, Senpai, rivals, and cast of characters, or have the game randomly generate a cast of characters for you for you, providing infinite replay value.
2. ✅ Give functionality to the “Lust Demon.
3. ✅ Give functionality to the “Death Demon” and the “Enlightenment Stat.”
4. ✅ Implement Mission Mode for 1980s Mode, including the addition of an optional challenge mode.
5. ✅ Give the player the option of playing through an “Alternate Timeline” for 1980s Mode that offers an “Alternate Ending.” In this timeline, Sumire’s disappearance is never investigated as a potential murder case. As a result, the Journalist never investigates Akademi, the student council never becomes suspicious of Ryoba, Sonoko never returns to Akademi, Ryoba never goes to trial, and Ryoba gets to confess to Jokichi underneath the cherry tree.
6. ✅ Improve the appearances of many 1980s Mode students. I’m dissatisfied with the appearances of many 1980s Mode students, and I’ve wanted to update/replace their hair models for a long time now. A group of texture artists and 3D artists have been creating new assets for 1980s Mode students so that we can finally give the 1980s students a long-overdue makeover.
7. ❌ Update the 202X Mode tutorial with additional tutorials. There are several mechanics – crouching, crawling, bucket traps, locker notes, drinking fountains, salty food, bags, crafting, thrown items – that are not introduced in the 202X tutorial. I’d like to make additional tutorials to introduce the player to these mechanics, but I really have to ask – is it worth it? And also – would the addition of so many more tutorials make the tutorial list way too long and intimidating, discouraging players from even wanting to do any tutorials?

Missing Assets

These are things that can be added to the game very easily and wouldn’t take much time to implement, but I’m waiting for the necessary assets to be provided:

1. ❌ Add voice lines for the 1980s Mode delinquent students.