In For A Penny, In For A Pounding

Greetings everyone!

With Alpha 6.0 and Chapter 3 successfully launched, it’s time to start looking to the future. That future, incidentally, will be focusing on some of the existing content in the game. Before we get into the juicy bits, however, this is a good time to sit down and talk about the overall development philosophy of The Company!

*Cue collective groans*

Five Chapters

As most of you know, the intent is for The Company’s main story to span five chapters. Chapters 1-3 are in the books, and the penultimate Chapter 4 is on the horizon. The current expectation is that Chapter 4 will be the game’s longest, likely going through New Year’s in-game! Chapter 5 will bring the main story to its conclusion, factoring in all the choices you made along the way and generating an epilogue based on those decisions.

We’ll talk about what happens after Chapter 5 at a much later date!

The Pyramid of Progression

The problem with progressing content in a non-linear game with a linear story is that you need to continue updating the foundation content (outward) before you can progress the main story content (upwards) too far. That is to say, any time we move forward with the story, we need to bring all the applicable tertiary content up to snuff as well. Otherwise, we end up front-loading all the optional content at the game and have a less substantial gameplay experience further down the line. This can already be seen, with a primary example being in the level of, or lack of, interaction options with Lauren in Chapter 3.

And so, this is why after every major story release, we take an update cycle or two (or three) to expand on existing content.

Bored Now, Get to the Point

Yes, yes…

Before moving into the 7.0 (Chapter 4) development cycle, I’m going to be taking some time to expand on existing content. The first piece of said content is something that at least a couple of you have been wanting for a long time now:

Penny and John.

Penny will be getting her existing content expanded, which of course means new conversations, random events, personal events and, yes, serum events. Additionally, we’ll be looking at different ways you can interact with her outside the office, both on dates and at her apartment.

Of course, we can’t talk about Penny without talking about John, specifically Dom John. Penny’s dialogue and events will be getting a wide-scale once-over to reflect whether or not she’s under John’s control, and new events and interactions will open up accordingly. On top of that, Dom John’s reign (get it? “Reign”?) of terror will be expanding to other coworkers as well.

The extremely tentative update cycle is currently looking like this:

• 6.1 – Penny’s Update
• 6.2 – John’s Dominant Update (Focus on Tasha, Julia, and Diana)
• 6.3 – Other Coworker Content Cleanup Update – This includes content expansion for Lauren!
• 6.4 – Ava and Dakota Serums Update
• 6.5 – ???

I don’t want to linger on content expansion for “too” long, as Chapter 4 is definitely something that needs to be tackled. That said, I think everyone can definitely find something to look forward to in the near future. Also, yes, 6.4 will include an alternative dosing route for Ava!

That’s it for now, and I’ll have more details to share as development progresses. Patrons can expect monthly “in-development” releases for the time being, while public releases can be expected for specific releases.

I hope everyone had a great holiday break because it’s time for us to grit our teeth, plant our feet, and eat that horse!