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Sapphire Safari - Steam Early Access Plans
🕑 Added 2024-08-23 17:20:06 +0000 UTCIf you have not joined our community Discord now is the time to do it! We recently had an open development meeting for Sapphire Safari to discuss our new roadmap for building towards an Early Access launch on Steam. I am going to go over the numerous changes to our plans with you all here.
Let’s get this out of the way. We had a rough couple of months with some of our staff changing which pushed our schedule back a whole bunch. Originally we were hoping that by November of this year, we would have our Early Access launch. Given the amount of work left in the current roadmap that is no longer feasible, so it means our scope has to change. The goal was to launch with the entire Plains region fully completed, meaning narrative, side quests, unlocks, etc. If we were to do that now the release date would look like Q3 2025. So what does the new scope look like?
Tourist Mode
Tourist mode is our answer to that question! Tourist mode is an open sandbox experience designed around letting the player engage with systems without needing to gate or unlock features. We will focus on completing this experience for the launch of the Early Access content and the “Story Mode” will be the focus post-launching.
After v022 is completed the team will move into creating all the work and polish needed to make that game mode feel incredible. This includes overhauling the introduction to the game and implementing a very small section of the tutorial we have pre-recorded.
Once we have this complete we will also be able to release a demo of the game with some limited features and species list.
Diegetic Mechanic Changes
First on the block for a slight tweak is our original plans for Familiarity. Previously as you level up a species they progress through 4 tiers, slowly becoming more accustomed to the player, while also unlocking a gallery viewer of player interactions. It would have been 5 new animations per species which would have been 45 animations in total that would be a once-view type reward.
The diegetic version of Familiarity works a little differently. The player now has 3 tiers to progress through
Fearful - Girls flee once the player is spotted.
Curious - Girls pose for photos but flee if approached.
Friendly - Girls pose for photos but can be interacted with if approached.
Leveling a species to Friendly will allow for Player X Monster interactions, interacting will pull up a new feature we are currently calling Monsutra. Within this new UI panel, the player can select from any sexual animations they have discovered in the game. To discover a new sex pose, you simply take a photo of it for the first time, much like how species discovery works.
A Better Sandbox Experience
Core functionality aside like tutorialisation and such, the goal is to take some of the elements we wanted to build in later patches and push them into the new Tourist Mode dev cycle. I’ll quickly list off a few of the stuff we will be building ahead of schedule:
Nests - Each species has its nest location. Activating Radio Beacons will uncover these areas as a point of interest for the player. Exploring inside during the species' sleeping hours will be a small stealth puzzle to navigate. Exploring until the end, the player can witness a very unique sex act performed by the species which will unlock inside the Monsutra.
New Tools and Toys - Found inside the player campsite is a tool chest, filled with new gadgets and toys to use on the wildlife. This includes Sex Toys to throw around, Toys like beach balls, or teddy bears, Bait to lure particular species around, and Fake bushes to help with stealth and sneaking.
Map Functionality - Teleporting to camp polishes for fast travel and the like.
Motion Capture Animation Overhaul - We suit up and add a couple hundred new global animations to the game.
Perfect Photo Functionality - Tied in with the new mocap animations, scoring photos gets a huge boost for taking the photo at the right time!
Polish - New loading screens, Detailed save file information, Animation tag overhaul to stop duping.
And loads more! We really hope that our decision to focus on the quality of the first launched product instead of rushing to build the content for Early Access won’t rub too many the wrong way. Our goals for the narrative won’t ever change, we feel the pressure from you all to get this game on Steam sooner rather than later, so we needed to compromise to make that happen.
Finally as a spoiler for something fun that grew from our Discord meeting, here is a new slime creature we will be adding to the game as a way to “elevate” some of the animations without spawning in something too random. Why lean on a magical rock, when you can lean on a squishy little guy who likes milk?
