sierralee
patreon
2024 in Review
🕑 Added 2025-01-05 18:00:10 +0000 UTC2024 was the "year of concluding TLS" and I feel overall satisfied with how that went. After so much time invested in this story, it was gratifying to see everyone react positively to everything. ^-^ We did a lot last year: the final battle, combat changes, final optional dungeon, the completed harem, the epilogue, and all the assorted improvements like the overhauled Stineford.
That said, in the long term focusing so much on TLS may have been a strategic error. I'm going to be hitting the primary 1.0.0 release with less progress on future projects than I wanted. There may be an unavoidable lull and I can only ask your patience.
With luck, however, 2025 will be the year that many new players discover TLS for the first time. I hope those who have loved it to this point will support continued art and the polishing stages.
Finishing The Last Sovereign
The final release date is now less about finishing work than timing. I only get one more shot at a larger audience, so I can't just release TLS at a random time and hope for the best. Right now my primary thought is "Before or after the Steam summer sale?" Releasing too close to the sale is a dead zone, so I need to choose my moment well.
However, there will be lots of work in the meantime getting TLS ready for its official debut. That will include:
Finishing the postgame, which is a ton of work. More on that later.
Adding the combat busts. Annikath and Rachnera are steadily working on these in the background.
Finalizing achievements, as well as other Steam features like trading cards (apparently I was approved?) or shop items.
Tweaking various things to make the game more forgiving and beginner-friendly. Some I've managed to squeeze in already, but there are others still to be done, like making Altina unmissable.
More polish, maybe including some new maps. I don't know, redoing Stineford burned a lot more time than I wanted and wasn't enjoyable.
As a final step, we'll redo some of the early scenes to try to show the artwork at its highest quality. In general going back to redo work can cause stalling, but I think it's worth it to make a good first impression on new players.
There will be more TLS after the 1.0.0 release, of course. Some of it will be very fun, and I'm looking forward to sharing all that with you! But more on that at the appropriate time.
Writing
In a weird place here. As I said last year, my motivation pendulum is swinging away from writing, which has both good and bad aspects.
The Cognosticon pen name has continued to perform moderately well. The first book launch was weak, without my full promotion apparatus, but decent enough to get publisher interest. I'm currently in negotiations, trying to figure out if I can get any competitive bidding or if I'll just take the best offer available. This is more than I expected, though, so at minimum it will spike the return on investment for this series.
For TWC and other Sarah Lin books, this year was unfortunately exhausting and demotivating. Usually in these posts I say that I'm ahead on books, but this year I am a little behind. I wrote a lot over the holidays, though, so that is moving in a positive direction! We'll just have to see how everything falls out, especially with so much TLS work still ahead.
Misc Other Updates
DStP: In 2024 I finally received the pieces I need to finish the game and put in some work. Still missing one piece of artwork from Santy, but we're close. I had wanted to dip my toe into Kickstarter with this last year, but I hope to do it in 2025. We'll see how the schedule falls out.
Vacation: Another thing I failed to do in 2024 was take a vacation. Honest, I commissioned a "Vacation Aka" piece from Annikath over a year ago. =/ Part of the reason was that I was always waiting on impending things, so this year I have scheduled ahead of time and just accepted that this may be bad timing. I will be taking my vacation in April.
Project Previews: I said I didn't do as much as I'd wanted on side projects due to TLS work, but that doesn't mean I did nothing. Throughout the beginning of this year, when I don't have more tangible progress to report, I will be talking about some of the fun things I have in the works. ^-^
So in conclusion, I feel good about my work in 2024, but 2025 will be a scary year of transitions for me. I've diversified and built enough of a foundation that I don't need to cling to the project that started my career, and as I always promised, I will be concluding TLS to the best of my ability. Hope everyone sticks around to see what's next!
Comments
Sierra Lee
Happy to take insights from anywhere, thanks! That metric would definitely suggest a pre-sale date, but I don't know if TLS will be completely polished by that time. The factors may be different for a free game, though. (I certainly don't have any rules about posting links! If you meant Patreon, I don't know, but the filter didn't eat your comment.)
LockOn
A thought on releasing, TLS on Steam. Specifically when. The lady on the Sex Positive Games Channel on Youtube put out a video last month that included her research on Steam releases and the trends she found. The video is 40 minutes long and it's a conversation between her and one other person, and unfortunately they meander. But, at the 9:40 mark, she goes into detail on when is the best time to release a game on Steam. She's reviewed the last 5 years of data, and the best times appear to be in the first half of the year. Video is below. Don't mean to intrude or break any rules here about posting links or whatnot. I can't remember if that's allowed or not. Regardless, thought it might be interesting for you. https://youtu.be/LQTKLXNbymU?si=DJNyiUx23tp-yZhA&t=579
Dubsington
I am glad you said that. You hear talk about TLS being "RPGM done right", "great worldbuilding", and of course plenty of raves about the quality of the writing. But for some reason people don't mention the humor as much, which is a shame because there is some *very* funny shit in there. The item descriptions alone have left me in stitches at times. SL comes across as being strictly businesslike on Patreon, but I suspect that over a beer she's pretty goddammed funny.
Dubsington
Not surprising, the degeneracy level goes up and the popularity drops once you start getting darker than F95. They do exist and do command eyeballs, but there is presumably some diminishing returns. LC came to mind because IIRC it is largely donation-supported, which implies a population there that is willing to support related projects.
Sierra Lee
We'll see how TLS progress goes, month-to-month. I certainly won't rush things, I just wanted people to know that passing one window would mean the next one would take a while. I am open to doing an AMA, I just don't know any good opportunities. The one I believe you're thinking of was set up by others, so it got more attention than a standard one would. I believe there are some subs where you can ask to do one, but I don't know which they might be. Also open to anything else, such as forum threads (if there are any forums still alive). People have long maintained a thread on F95, but I actually hadn't heard of lewdcorner. I'm willing to try anything.
Dubsington
Well, as a TLS fan I certainly have no complaints about the progress this year :-) I know this will come as a shock because nobody _ever_ tells you this, but you might be just a wee bit hard on yourself sometimes. For Steam, I'd advise you to go ahead and assume post-summer. A month or three isn't going to matter much, so why risk getting into a crunch? Working 10 years on a project earns you the right to run at a stately place when you cross the finish line. You might want to do another Reddit AMA if the opportunity comes up (or can be created). I think I recall you being skeptical that they did much, but I definitely think that you made a positive impression over the other devs in the AMA by your sheer responsiveness (and your usual candor). If nothing else it gives us something to link to outside of normal WEG channels. (Sidebar: Came across this funny thing a while ago, and seeing how _few_ boxes TLS hits is a great indicator of how much you shine when you are in a head-to-head comparison: https://bingobaker.com/view/7117804) A final thought is that once the game is done-done, it makes the effort of managing a forum thread on a game site closer to zero, so you might want to task a fan with trawling the more unsavory-but-still-eyeball-generating sites (f95, lewdcorner, etc) and ensuring you've got a presence on all of 'em. Given that this genre is, to borrow Vonnegut, one that "critics often mistake for a urinal" and therefore alternatives are slim, those sites do command a share of folks looking for good Patreons to support and not just the piratical downloaders.
Decarabia
Congratulations on your achievements this year!!! You've got an inspiring story on your hands, and I don't mean just the one in the game. I agree that you have to be strategic about its launch, but I genuinely believe this wouldn't be its last chance of it becoming a hit. I mean, the Among us phenomenon was crazy. And you might think that those are very different scenarios, yeah, but I feel your humor also has good potential to be appreciated by people later, with memes and such. Anyway, regardless, good luck with stuff, as always!
Nicholas
It'll be alright. TLS is the sort of thing that comes around only a few times a century to my mind (although even that is only based on the output of the 20th and 21st century). That you can work on so many other projects at once is mind-boggling to me. Hopefully this will help you feel less conflicted about TLS ending though, and more in a place of "thank god I can move on to other things".
