Hello, dear friends!

It’s time for a new report!

The Better Deal

First of all, you can congratulate me—The Better Deal has officially launched on Steam! Let me briefly remind you of the twists and turns of this drama:

 In January 2023, Steam banned my first game, Beauty and the Thug. Being a greedy and stubborn bastard, I couldn’t bear losing the $100 I paid to apply. The only way to get that $100 back from Steam was to create another game. So, I started developing my second game, The Better Deal, making sure it was Steam-friendly. My friend Nev wrote the game scenario. It took over a year to create a version good enough for publishing on Steam, and on June 11th, 2024, I finally uploaded my game build. Steam accepted my Store Page without any issues, but I can’t say the same for the Game Build. A few days later, I found out that my game build failed the automatic review and would need to be tested manually, which would take longer than the promised 2-3 business days. For over a month, they dragged things out, telling me they don’t accept adult games in Early Access—an obvious lie. Arguing was pointless, so I renamed my game The Better Deal: Part 1. Communication with Steam staff was painfully slow. I had to wait ten days or more for their responses, but on July 22nd, they finally agreed to publish my game as Part 1 without Early Access. They found some technical issues and told me to upload the fixed build whenever I was ready. But despite saying that my build failed, they approved it! I don’t know if the tester clicked the wrong button or did it on purpose out of kindness, but on July 22nd, four days before the scheduled release, my game was finally approved!

 By the time of release, my game was on 811 wishlists and had ten completed curator reviews, all positive. This is a very modest number of wishlists, which was my fault: because my first game was banned, I hesitated to publish the second game for too long, afraid of another failure. And, of course, part of the time that should have gone into promotion was lost because the game was unavailable due to the Early Access ban.

 The first reviews showed that The Better Deal lacked many elements that Steam players are accustomed to, such as Achievements, Game Gallery, Cloud Saving, etc. As a developer, I don’t have time to play games myself, and I’ve never really been on Steam as a player. My only purchase there was 3D Mark for testing my graphics card. I spent another week figuring out how to add all these elements, and when I did, the game became much better.

 I made many mistakes during the game’s launch, which cost me significant potential profit, but that’s not the most important thing. The main thing is that I achieved what I’ve been working toward for so long: my game is on Steam. After all, the only people who don’t make mistakes are those who do nothing, right?

 The game has received mostly positive reviews. So far, not a single Steam Curator has given it a negative rating. The main, and practically the only, complaint is that the game has too little content for a final release, which I can’t disagree with. In my opinion, the decision to ban my game from Early Access was unfair, first of all, to the players.

Beauty and the Thug

I continue receiving reviews where players say my game has very little content. Because of that, I’m going to implement major changes in Beauty and the Thug to:

• Let players know as clearly as possible when and where they miss content and what exactly they should do to reach it;
• Preserve some challenges in reaching the hot content to avoid turning my game into a slideshow;
• Improve both the quality of the code (which will reduce the likelihood of bugs) and the overall quality of the game.

 I’ve been wanting to refactor the code for a while, but I was held back by the fact that even small code adjustments can ruin translations. Now, thanks to my experience with The Better Deal, I no longer see this as an issue, since I’ll be able to easily restore the translations myself—possibly even improving their quality in the process.

  What I have planned:

• Implement a Game Tutorial;
• Rework the Game Gallery and split entries into sections;
• Add Achievements;
• Add some sound effects, like the sounds of insertions, slaps, etc.;
• Add the ability to skip more game events if they don’t have new content;
• Add information if a menu choice: a) will not lead to new content, b) would lead to new content if Lisa’s stats were higher, c) will lead to new content;
• Whenever players miss content due to low stats, they will receive a warning about it.
• Possibly add more content to routine events like watching TV, the Red Light District, pizza, etc.

  After all these changes, I hope many of you will want to replay the game, even if you’ve already reached the end multiple times.

 I’m eager to start working on this, but I need to finish the new content first. Speaking of new content, I created quite a lot last week. I focused on Amy’s route and created about 350 new renders and ten animations.

I’ve finished Amy’s daytime event on Day 25. Now, I’ll need to work on the returning home scene and the nighttime event. But first, I’ll handle the corresponding sequence for Hunter’s event. Considering that I want to implement the gameplay changes as soon as possible, I’ll wrap up this update with Lisa’s math test on Day 26.

Thank you for your support, dear players! See you soon!

Your zegamez!