Posted June 23, 2023 by bitshiftgames
Thank you all once again for the wonderful response to GutterTrash's initial release. It's been a ton of fun seeing the reponses, the fan art, and even hunting down some of the very odd bugs. As we're coming up on a week since the release, I think it's time to pull together and share the general roadmap of what I'll be working on next, and the general timeline involved.
First up, in the next few days I'll be diving back into the first Cruel Serenade game. Probably not for any additional content, but just to tune up various things: porting quality-of-life stuff from GT, like tooltips on status effects, tweaking various things, like the often-mentioned stair guard fight, and potentially overhauling the battle system. Not to change any mechanics, but just to try to quash some bugs and oddities that still crop up here and there. If you have a particular bug that's been bothering you about CS1 for a while, let me know now!
I anticipate this taking anywhere from three or four days to two weeks at the most, with most of that being how long I end up messing with the battle system.
Next up, the content updates for GT!
My plan is to split these up into a few distinct packs, work on the packs one-by-one, and release them as they're finished. This will be done roughly in order of importance, (at least in my mind). The packs are:
1. "The Slut Mode Pack" This will include the unique final boss fight and ending scene, but also the host club, with a scene there, and possibly a few smaller art assets to help fill out the Slut Mode version of Entertainment District I. I anticipate this taking roughly two and half months (Edit: as of 9/23/23, planned release for this pack is end of October, ie about 4 months working time).
2. "The Mahir Pack" This will include the Mahir bad end, as well as some new scenes/mechanics in the strip club. Because of the vagueness of some of what I'll be working on here the timeline is a little harder to pin down, but I anticipate somewhere between two and three months.
3. "The Center Path Pack" As you'd expect, this will include scenes and some new mechanical stuff for the center path, as well as (maybe) its own outfit. This one is the hardest to nail down in terms of timeframe, but almost certainly at least two months, maybe up to four.
So between six and nine-and-a-half months overall. It'll take a while, but I want to fill GT out as much as is possible without over-working it. Also note that these "Packs" are only called such to help communicate the idea of gradual content additions; when each pack releases it'll be fully part of the game, you won't have to add it in or anything, just download the most recent version.
And on that note, the plan is to release each of these with a two week lead over at SubscribeStar as a reward to the supporters there, then on Itch for everyone else. I hope this doesn't frustrate anyone too much: I'm trying to balance the need to give some reward to the monthly supporters with the need to get the new content to people who have bought the game without TOO much delay. Keep in mind that there's an added bonus to this too: If you wait two weeks, a lot of the bugs in each new release will have been ironed out before it gets to you.
And once all of this is complete, of course, I'll start in on Chapter 3. But we'll mostly cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I'll only say that I anticipate dev time on that to be roughly a year, as it was on GT.
Thanks again to all of you for your support, both financial and it terms of discussion, feedback, bughunting and the like. It's great to see people enjoying the goofy little world I've made, and I look forward to making more of it for you.