This post was originally made on my Patreon.

Happy new year, everyone. I don’t know everything that the next twelve months might hold, except for one thing: a lot of horny Paardenrust action.

As mentioned on Discord, this month is the first of several where I’m taking a break from the complex main characters to work on a few fun side stories. I want these to be shorter and largely self-contained (though some will inevitably become multi-part stories in time), letting Flax meet up with other characters and do what he does best (or worst, depending on your point of view :P). These will ideally be more like my standalone stories, with less active branching than the main characters and a focus more on a fun story with a dollop of sex - or mystery - as a prize. I’m actively looking for angles to write that let me do shorter stories so that I can get more out in each build.

There are a few locations in Paardenrust that will act as hubs for activity in the game. The manor itself is one, of course, but there’s also the Painted Dog, Umzansi, and the Bridle Society - all of which you may have encountered already based on your choices. There are also going to be events that are linked more to vague areas of the valley, such as “the forest”. I’ll play it by ear and place events where they make sense. This month’s current story is introducing us to Rav again and seeing what he’s been up to. I’ve come up with a really fun conceit for him that will let me do all sorts of cute things. Looking forward to that.

As an aside, right now you’re getting a choice list that lets you play all scenes one after the other, but as the collection of options (and their follow-ups) grow, I’ll be changing that to limit how many things you do in a week before time ticks over to the next. I’m still pondering exactly how that’ll work (is it just a fixed number of events per week? Do I factor in the relative length of segments? What exactly happens in the interstitial periods?) but I’ll certainly let you know once I do. I’ll eventually need to write a new component to handle the choice list anyway, since the default Ren’Py one doesn’t scroll nicely if the list goes off-screen.

Other things in the pipeline:

• Work continues on the new UI. I’ve posted a preview of that on Discord for Coachmen+, and I’m very happy with how that’s going. Work will continue into February, and I expect to have a build with it in by March. But that date is subject to fluctuation depending on how tricky some parts get.
• I’ve been thinking about guest writers once more. My assumption to date is that people are primarily interested in the writing for my style, but it’s fairly common for VNs to allocate characters to different people to parallelise. I wouldn’t want to do that for main characters, because I have specific goals in mind for them and I’d never be happy with someone else’s take on them, but the side characters are something else. They have certain personalities, but they’re not intended to change so as long as someone makes them fit that mould, that’s all it takes. How would you feel about having side stories written by other people, as a way of getting even more content out? Let me know in the comments.
• Tanutanuki has been ill over the holidays, but once she’s recovered she’ll be delivering the final design for Eshu. She’s completed enough of it already that I have begun work on his next CG in parallel, being done by the fantastic ArcticLion. So that’ll probably end up in next month’s build. I am hopeful that the CG for Babbelas will make it into this month, based on the progress so far, but we’ll see. After Eshu, I’m expecting to crank out the refs for Dalarius and Rhangani, who are both pre-defined characters so those should be quick. Then there’s the painted dogs and Inkanyamba left, though Inkanyamba’s design might be done by another artist as Tanu isn’t as confident in her skill to create a feral dragon from scratch. The CGs will likely slow down after the Eshu and Babbelas ones, as I want the new content to rest for a bit before I make it immutable by committing art to it.

Finally, as part of writing scenes set in more populated areas like Umzansi, there’s a bunch of nameless characters implied to be around. I already have a huge fixed cast that definitely doesn’t need to grow, but these unnamed may offer an opportunity. The slots for the full-length characters have long been filled, of course, but I’ve had a few people express the wish to have known about the slots back in the day to have an opportunity. So I’m considering auctioning one-off YCH slots for side stories. Pay a fixed amount and get your character in a story with Flax (and potentially some other characters). The plot and role of the YCH would be known, but that’s all. No input into the process after that. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, let me know in the comments. If there’s no real interest I’ll just save myself the work, lol.

And finally finally, I’m almost done on a new story! Totally separate from the game, but my first proper big story in like a year. I did it mostly over my holiday, and it genuinely made me wonder why I put myself through the pain of writing, lol. But as always, it’s coming together well in the edit. I’ll probably finish it next weekend, so keep an eye on my FA and SF for that. See you next month.

Zaggy