Kickstarter Plans and 3.0 Details

Greeting everyone. It's been a while, and I feel I owe it to the followers of this project to keep you guys updated. After all, I'm hoping that each of you can maintain your excitement and decide to support me in making this game as great as it can be. 

First off, I'll start with a transparent disclosure about the success — or lack thereof — of my initial campaigns. To date, Zeta Wolf has been downloaded about 1200 times. Given similar itch.io results from OELVN devs, it's an acceptable number. Nothing stellar, nothing underperforming, simply average. Given my limited marketing at the time, I'm content with the number. However, if I could go back in time, I would align our Kickstarter with the first demo release. Due to such a large gap, I fear losing conversions (followers to KS backers) on the initial KS launch (which I'll talk about later). 

Due to my misunderstanding of the algorithm that itch.io places on new titles during discovery, I expected a greater turnover rate with the 2.0 update. It seems that title discovery or boost is nigh non-existent with updates versus new launches. As such, I was a little disheartened by the lack of reception (downloads) to the second launch. As you might imagine it caused me to stall and feel unmotivated to continue work on the project. Turns out, 80% of downloads came in the first month of the initial launch. This was in March 2020 which, holy crap — seems like forever ago. 

So where are we today, nearly 2 years after putting out our first demo? I'm happy to tell you guys that I am firmly committed to a Kickstarter launch in Q1 of 2023 (next year). With much going on in my life previously, I'm finally in a place where I have secured funding for pre-launch assets. It's a pretty penny, I'll say. Nearly 40% reserved for marketing alone. It's a big risk, but life is about risks, really. Giving your time, effort, money for a goal, making sacrifices, in hopes of seeing the fruits of your labor one day. Since conception in 2018, I have been budgeting assets piece by piece as that's all the available funds I had at the time. Never have I had such a huge allocation like right now. The good news is that I have the resources available. The bad news is, I'll still need to work with my collaborators to finish all required assets. Beyond that, there's still some last-minute programming and writing to be done. 

Let's talk about the additional content for the 3.0 (Kickstarter version) of the game. We have 3 additional CG (with variations), promotional artwork, 3 new OST tracks, 2 custom BGs and additional voiceover dialogue. Specifically, this release will cover Chapter 3a, which is Ravia's introduction. If you completed version 2.0 in its entirety, you got a small sneak peek. I'll show Ravia now since she'll be plastered on promo materials shortly. 

A little about Ravia, huh? She is one of the "main route" girls and captain of her track team. Somewhat of an overachiever, blunt, and cold as ice. You could assume she's a tsundere of sorts. In any event, Rayen "selects" her as a pursuit under guidance from Arctia, Lyca, and Ferine. In version 3.0, you'll be locked into Ravia's route, but in the full game, you'll be able to pick between the four girls. 

It's important to note that I wrestled with the idea of including all of the four girls in the next release (chapter 3a, b, c, d), but quickly realized the budget would not allow me such expansion. The demo content is ballooning to quite a large size already. Nonetheless, the four girls signifying the main routes of the game — Ravia, Maikah, Crescia, and Alphi — will be featured in promotional materials. As such, you'll get a tease of them and hopefully feel compelled for more. 

You might be wondering where this places our main heroine, Siona. Importantly, the game stresses many subtle aspects of romance and courtship. At times, you are forced to straddle the lines between friendship and lovers and discover all manner of social etiquette. While Siona doesn't have her own specific route, I will say that she is a player in every route, if that makes sense. 

Replayability will be a large factor here. With 4 main routes, bad ends, additional endings, and twists planned there's a lot to work with given just that. Throwing in dialogue prompts (insight/reflections), additional event scenes, and glossary expansion will give you even more of a personalized experience. 

More on the glossary and lore of Zeta Wolf. I have been working on a huge glossary for quite some time now, and it's an integral part of the game. If you remember the few terms presented already (in purple text), these are the first of literally hundreds. I'm planning to integrate a glossary GUI, though it might not make it until the final version. At the very least, there'll be a GUI mockup during the Kickstarter campaign so you can get a better sense of things. If the programming works in my favor the plan is for two currencies. One gained from triggering insight events, and the other from reflection events. This will further the dilemma when these two events occur simultaneously. You will be able to "cash-out" your currencies to unlock a glossary term and short explanation mini-event. 

While the demo script is not fully complete and ready, it's nearly there! I'm expecting 50k words minimum or 2.5/3 hours of playtime. Seems enormous, but I did want to fully encompass what players could expect from the full game. Version 3.0 is fully storyboarded (mapped out) so that just leaves filling in details and polishing. Crazy to think I've been writing on and off for 4 years, but I admit to having terrible writing productivity. On average I've been lucky to produce around 2k words a week. To be fair, my work hours lately have been disastrous with 11 hour days since summer 2021. Fortunately, I have just completed a job transfer, so I'll have more time to commit to development going forward. 

A few more notes on the upcoming Kickstarter. I'm tentatively planning a Q1 2023 launch as mentioned. The only thing that could delay that is asset delivery and troubleshooting with the Steam page. I do plan to list the demo on Steam and complete the programming for that, so hopefully, it works out for me. The Kickstarter pre-launch page should be up well before the actual launch, so I'd appreciate everyone following that when you can!

All of this being said, fall 2021 was quite difficult for me. I very heavily contemplated dropping Zeta Wolf as a project altogether. At the time, I wanted a simpler project with fewer characters and an easier budget. To be honest, I even drafted up around a 10k word prologue for this future game. We'll have to see if I ever return to this script in the future — I suppose it largely depends on how successful Zeta Wolf is in the end. I usually have a guilty habit of churning up new ideas before completing a task I started previously. In this case, I'm glad I stuck it out, as I realized what followers I had would probably be distraught with the news. Can't say that I have ever closely followed the development of an indie project, but there is one Kickstarter I followed previously. This particular project, a visual novel actually, was quite successful. It took them around 4 years to actually launch post-KS (promising more art than Zeta Wolf), not to mention their pre-kickstarter time, which is unknown. 

In any event, that's all for current developments. Please look forward to the future of our project! Twitter will be relatively quiet for now, as I'd like to ramp up promotion closer to Kickstarter launch. Until the next update everyone.