Now that I've gotten a handle on exactly how much time I can spend on the game in my current work and life situation, I have a much better idea of how long each update will end up taking. Let's get the important bit out of the way and not clickbait you: I hope to release Build 2 with Chapter 5, which will be 6 in-game days of content, by the end of August. This includes a TON of quality of life adjustments and rewritten patches of both prose and dialogue.

Also coming in the next build is a Phone Messaging system if my feature coder can finish it in time for me to write a specific scene. It will be used a lot more once we get to the Security Arc.

Also, now that I have a feature coder, I want to experiment with game flow a little bit. Not during the Janitor Arc; that portion will remain linear. But when we hit the Security Arc, I want to introduce small, sandbox sections in the same manner that the Final Fantasy 7 Remake did. In their gameplay flow, they had long stretches of linear gameplay punctuated by small pockets of limited sandbox play for a more sidequesty, downtimey feel. With the way World's Crossing is organized, I feel like those downtime segments would be the perfect places to hide secret girls and cool little questlines that don't quite fit into the main story, such as the Harpy's story. She's in no way involved in the main story, but she has a really cool side story if you decide to pursue it.

This means I'd end up organizing the girls into Main Quest Girls and Sidequest Girls. Main Quest Girls would be unmissable content, but Sidequest Girls would be missable and skippable.

What are your thoughts on this approach?