Greetings! To say I'm humbled by the response to Volume 2 - Part 1's release on Steam is an understatement. Thank you to everyone who purchased this next installment of To Be A King, and I love all the enthusiasm for the continuation of the story. I am as eager to get it into your hands as you are to get it and play. Sadly development isn't as easy as waving your hand and having more content appear. Maybe one day? Since the Steam DLC launch I've been focused on the content for Part 2. It is going to be bigger than Part 1, as all these branches necessitate a lot of content. Much like Part 1 was nearly bigger than Volume 1, despite having fewer chapters, the second part of Volume 2 is going to be bigger still. You may not notice it in a playthrough with a small harem, but the variety in a single scene now is incredible. My storyboard looks like some overworked detective trying to piece together clues for a notorious serial killer. Thankfully my storyboard is filled with sexiness and intrigue, not dead bodies. With a full outline and all our main and secondary branches mapped out right up until the end of To Be A King's main story, my focus has been on doing some boring and tedious work to speed up my development process. Some of those improvements came with the render engine change I introduced in the latter half of Volume 2 - Part 1, but there are more things I've found since then. Nothing close to the scope of the render engine change (thank god), but I am taking a few extra weeks with this development cycle to get these other things done or close to it. It is not fun work, but it is necessary work. The good news is that I am already seeing the payoff in that scenes are quicker for me to setup and render out. What this means is that you'll see more variations in dialogue and renders going forward, as it is now much quicker for me to add that type of content.
Other than all that work, I have taken a short breather after the latest release to recharge a bit. In February, I had a close family member hospitalized, and we didn't think they would come home from ICU. The good news is that they did come home in April and are doing very well, all things considered. With that behind me, I've been taking a bit more time to do something I haven't had time for in months: play games other than my own. I've been enjoying Manor Lords quite a bit, and it seems about half the planet has also joined me in playing it. And I am slowly working my way through Alan Wake 2. In the past here, I've posted development updates that I've put on other platforms. Going forward, you all will get special development updates when I've got something important to share or when it has been a bit too long since I've updated you all on progress. As far as release dates for future content, I've learned I am abysmal at predicting those. Between life getting in the way, development issues, and releases growing with even more content, I am bound to miss any sort of target. What I will be doing is getting Steam store pages up for new DLCs at least a few months ahead of time, and putting a release date on those store pages once I have enough developed to be fully confident in meeting a target. Back to the grind for me. Have a great rest of your week, and be thinking about who you'll name as your queen in Part 2.