Posted January 26, 2024 by aura-dev
Note that the public release will be in 3 weeks. You can also skip the waiting time by buying Star Knightess Aura on itch.
https://aura-dev.itch.io/star-knightess-aura
REMINDER: During the development of 0.39.0 I changed frameworks for the Andorid app because among other reasons becasue the old framework didn't allow for dependency upgrades without losing saves. Because of this switch, however, you need to enable "external saves" in the options before you upgrade or saves will be lost either way! This is a reminder, so those wo already did that for a prerelease build are save. Also, this only affects the Android build!
Okay, reposted that note for the last time. :'D No way, I have to do it one more time for the public release of 0.39.0.... Oh well, okay anyways, let's look into the actually new content!
We will do the usual thing. First look at a quick numerical summary and tour through the main additions. For more details I refer as usual to the previous devlog posts. So, what do we have in store for 0.39.0! It's mostly a lewd content focused update, which will probably be the case for many updates until the end of Chapter 3-B. We have 2 new character artworks, 2 major H-CG variations, 2 new corruption scenes, 2 new vice decisions, 1 new dungeon, 1 new passive, alongside the usual minor additions.
The two main focuses of this update are on the moral degeneration side of Aura - both with content in the real world and in Roya in the Maid Academy. And those into tf related content are probably going to enjoy the start of the Paulina corruption content.
Let's start with the character artworks! Paulina and Laura got new content here! With the addition of the Laura character artwork, we finally have our real world cast complete... That is not counting a gyaru version for Laura. :) She ended up getting quite a few expression variations as her base expressions allowed me to do a lot of mixing and matching, especially allowing her to keep breaking eye-contact. Oh and a lot of pouting. :'D
Alongside the new character artwork, we also have new scene content involving Laura. Both new corruption scenes deal with her bullying sequence. Finally the Homework Project is completed! However, the new mental changes that are available in this update make Aura into a quite menacing bully and Laura gets to suffer quite a lot. We also get a new passive to go alongside the character change.
In Roya, the big focus continues to be the Maid Academy. I have completed this month the Aura related lewd content and half of the Paulina related lewd content. All Aura Maid Trainings are with this done. And for Paul continues his transformation into Paulina on both the mental and physical level. The Soul-Contract he gave to Aura during the Festival now finally comes into play when his patron finds out about it and makes Aura a very tempting offer to add some new clauses to it...!
There are two vice decisions with which Aura can now interact with Paulina's patron. The first one, technically not vice decision as it doesn't increase vice nor require it, it simply increases corruption but Aura can get vice-locked into it, makes Paulina take the Maid Trainings more seriously. The second one... is well, a bit more viceful. :'D There is also a very unexpected thing that happened in the related vice scene for this decision that I myself didn't expect but Aura had some ideas of her own, you know, while she's add it, to just add a litttttle improvement into Paulina's soul --- to share her love for shoes. It can't be that bad to mess with someone if it's to add such a GOOD interest, right?! Well, see for yourself.
Then, moving on past the lewd content, we also have some more dungeon crawling content to get the final dungeon started - Richard's Domain. I will keep this brief, as this segment is currently not very relevant. You can only access it if you break Richard's barrier using the Star Knightess, as we need to progress further on the Maid Academy content to unlock the proper way of unlocking the way into Richard's Domain. I will just say the dungeon's powerlevel is quite high with the currently existing resources :'D (At the same time as writing this I am already mentally prepared for our local min/max power players to laugh sneeze at the encounters calling them pathetic beyond belief :'''''D)
Okay, that covers most of the new content. On the artistic side, aside from the new character artworks, we have the two H-CGs, one for new 3rd Maid Training and one for the real world corruption Lewd Streaming 3 scene. They are both variations of the bunny suit masturbation H-CG but with adjusted costumes, expressions, etc. So don't be surprised if you don't see the H-CG counter go up in the Stats, since technically these are "just" major variation updates to an existing CG.
On the technical side, well, first we have the change in the android framework. And then a couple other additions. Don't be surprised when booting up the update! You will now be asked ingame to activate the Analytics option when you first boot up the game. A couple of people activated the option when it was still in development, but it's really just a couple which isn't statistically useful enough, so I added an opt-in question on first game start.
Then we also have the NEW markers in the Skill and Item categories that our assistant developer Trihan implemented this week. I would like to hear more feedback about them! Currently the only feedback I have is from a person asking to be able to turn them off which is why added an option for that as well... But if it's not as useful as I think it is, we may can also by default turn them off.
And then we also have a set of further minor improvements such as new hints Nothing But The Truth, an offer from Luciela to provide hints in case you lose a life and are stuck. (On the pure route she will charge 1 Max WP for this!) And various other small improvements!
Aaaaalright! And that's it for this release! Let's see if we need a hotfix! ...The patreon release already got rebuilt twice while I was writing this post. :'D As usual, for the full list of changes, I refer to the changelog below. Have fun!