I continue to work on Book 2, and hope to keep sharing it with all of you here as I do. Where the heart of Book 1 was a college romance slice of life, Book 2 tries to add themes of military fantasy into the mix, and it's one of the key themes for Act VIII. It adds ~2 hrs of additional story content, new companions, new abilities and several new erotic scenes.
The Love of Magic story is (like all good Fantasy) planned as a trilogy; the Crown, the War and the Return. With Act VIII complete, I'm more or less exactly halfway through the full story, which will end up being 16 or so Acts. Once I'm done with Book 2, it'll go on sale on Steam. So why on earth can you still play Act VII and VIII even though you only bought Book 1? There's a couple of reasons for that. The first is simply because hearing from happy players who enjoy the game is one of my key motivations. If I'm feeling tired or burnt out I'll often grab a drink and spend some time reading through reviews and posts about the game. The best way to keep players engaged is to keep putting out substantial updates pretty regularly, so that's what I try to do. When I first started Love of Magic, almost 2 years ago, I planned it purely as a hobby. I shared it for free on a couple of sites, and mostly just enjoyed watching people play and gathering feedback. Because that was the initial approach, interacting with players, hearing their feedback and thoughts has been a key part of my development process, and I'm pretty sure Love of Magic wouldn't be the game it is if it hadn't been for all the amazing players, and the questions they ask. Then 2020 happened, and our family finances took a tumble; that left me either finding a job flipping code somewhere else, or seeing if I could make money on my hobby. I ended up betting on Love of Magic, set up a Patreon and focused pretty much every free hour I had on the game. I also ended up setting up a Steam page for it, intending to release Book 1 when it was done. Optimistically I planned that for Summer Solstice, but it was almost Winter Solstice before the full book was finally done, and in the store. Why didn't I just make it Early Access? Well, for starters because I'm dumb. I've had some bad experiences with Early Access myself, and I wanted Book 1 to be *done* before I put it up. I still think that was the right decision, especially for a story-centric game. I could then have just built Book 2 exactly the same way as I did book 1, and put it up on Steam when it was done. But because I wanted to keep letting you guys play Book 2 as I was developing it, I added Book 2's depots to Book 1's Beta and just kept going. As long as it was just on the Beta branch, people didn't stumble onto it by accident; where it got confusing was where I promoted it to the main branch of the game. Players could now end up playing Book 2 without knowing that it wasn't done, which could be an unhappy experience. With Act VIII now done, I'll be front-loading the work on Book 2's Steam Page, and get that ready. Once the store page is done and accepted I'll probably shift Book 2 back onto just the beta branch of the game, so people don't accidentally stumble over it. I will continue to update it until the whole of Book 2 is complete, and do the same with Book 3. So why would anyone buy Book 2, if they already have access to it on Book 1's beta branch? Well, you do get collectibles and achievements that way (both of those have to be tied to a new App ID to work). You also get a cleaner way to launch it, without the weird little menu you've got to use now. And you get to support development, helping keep me supplied with instant noodles. So... probably a longer update than most of you expected; it's a topic I've been banging my head off for a while, and I don't know if I have all the right answers. Let me know in Discord or in the comments if you have any thoughts. But for now; I hope you all enjoy Act VIII.