Dev Update #4: Release and no early access

Holiday season is right around the corner, making it a perfect occasion for a project status report. For this update I would like to mainly address two points: the release date and early access.

Work on the game is progressing nicely. though a bit slower than I'd like. That is sadly the problem when working on something as an after-regular-work project. Especially that there was a lot of chaos, deadlines and crunch at work, so it was even harder to find time for drawing, coding or writing for my game. But even though I'm all worn out after work, I try to spend at least a little bit of time for Bonding, Now every day. Sometimes affecting my personal well-being, but as long as my partner doesn't make complain, it's FINE!
Because of this, however, I'm afraid I will not make it in time to release in 2024... It's a shame, since I really hoped I could go live around the holiday season. But I also don't want to rush it. I need time to not only finish the planned content, but also make sure all included stories are as much bug-free as possible.


This brings me to my second topic for today: early access.



Not sure if I mentioned it, but even though the game will not be "complete" on release day, I do not want to mark Bonding, Now as early access. The main reason is: Bonding, Now is supposed to be a living project for most of its runtime. This is the power that the 'stories' split gives. The game will launch with a few ready stories to play through, some being work-in-progress and some entirely missing. I want to keep adding more as time goes, trying out new ideas, new mechanics, adding new characters. In my eyes early access doesn't fit here, since then I'd need to keep it labelled as such for years. And what would it mean to be out of early access?
Of course there are also other reasons. Like, as a small creator, using early access removes some Steam visibility.
So please be mindful of this once the game finally goes live. Release day is only the beginning...! I intend to keep adding content for years to come.

Also: I enjoyed drawing this small comic strip for this post. I might make more of them!


In the last weeks I was finally able to finish the whole 'Day 1' of Story #5, the more open-ended one. This is a big milestone, as the first in-game day in such simulations is always a bit of an extended tutorial. All the subsequent days will be a bit less time consuming to do (I hope). I also finally got back to working on the final scenes of Story #4. This is the first story where I am experimenting with some animated scenes. Nothing too special, but if people like it, I might consider making more scenes with moving parts. The biggest potential is of course for sex scenes! Minus is, of course, that those take longer to draw. But we'll see how it goes.

Once Story #4 is done, I will of course continue working on the next days of Story #5, but I do have a few other stories lined up. Theme wise those will be: a spooky horror-ish story, a gender-swap story,
a nudist story... I'll think about which one to do first, and if I should do that, or maybe finally spend some time on Story #3.

So much to do, so little time. Happy (soon to come) holidays everyone!