WE'RE SERIOUS PROFESSIONALS, I SWEAR...

Who wants to talk about user interface? I hope you do, because I'm about to. Early days, we were using the UI style that we'd used in most of our games so far: white text on blue or pink boxes. You know, the functional kind. We just had to get things working and visually clear. Well, as you've undoubtedly heard by now, we're polishing the ever-kink-loving heck out of this game, so we decided to update the UI as well. Don't worry, we haven't succumbed to the 'sad beige' plague. The health bars, ability grid, menus and upgrade screens have all been given a higher contrast, sleeker, more professional looking re-design, but we've stuck to the blue/pink style with white text. We just made it better.



This new UI is an even bigger improvement in combat. We've made the health bars smaller and changed the player abilities from a grid to a list. This allows the player abilities to be completely vertical and only take up space on the side of the screen. Along with the smaller health bars, this frees up more space for the art, which is what we expect players to focus on. Since the player ability list is now less clearly distinct from the list of attacks the Domme will use this turn, those were moved under her health bar. Backgrounds with distinct colors for each list also make it very clear which abilities belong to whom.



The last combat addition was making each ability fold out when hovered over with the mouse. We'd discussed in the past how much information should be presented in the ability lists. There's an argument to be made for minimal info to keep the screen clear, but also obviously an argument for full, descriptive ability texts. Testers mentioned occasionally using the wrong ability before we added this feature, because they'd gotten confused about which ability does what. This is our compromise to keep the screen uncluttered while simultaneously making sure players have all necessary information. It's also a bit of future-proofing, as this will allow us to add more complex abilities in future DLC without having to explain every new ability with separate tutorials. See an ability you don't recognize? Just hover over it to learn what it does.



In the coming month, we're also going to be updating the ability and effect icons. Once that's done, we're planning to update the Store page. We currently have a couple of screenshots up to show the characters and art, but we knew there would be changes made over time, so it didn't seem worth the trouble to upload much more. We'll remind you all to check out the Store page next month, but you can go keep an eye on it yourself, if you really can't wait. While you're there, don't forget to Wishlist and Follow the game, if you haven't already.

How far are we with all the polishing and DLC making? Let's have a look-see.

COMPLETED:

• New UI.
  
• Backgrounds polishing.
  
• Some edits and text fixing.
  
• Shizuru training scene 1 concepting.
  
• Music progress.
  

CURRENT:

• Last Stacy upgrade scene art.
  
• Shizuru training scene 1 writing.