Hello folks!

It's been five months since our last update. We have a few announcements large and small for the Mika Mod's next release (v1.4).

First of all, though we have five scenes fully drafted, it will take us a bit longer to roll this update out. The scenes still need a few art assets from Oct and we want to give him the time he heeds to get through that work and not produce artwork that's rushed and below his standards. I don't want to make promises about how long the remainder of this work will take us. If it's a while yet, there's a good chance I will push ahead and start writing scenes for the next, *next* release. And no, you probably shouldn't read that as me saying there could be *more* than five scenes in this release. Getting ahead of our release schedule is more appealing to me than making a huge update even huger.

Second, the five scenes we'll be releasing are all core content (HG021-HG025). There will be no bonus scenes this time around, so don't go looking for them. However, this will still be our biggest update yet, so to speak. The initial 10 scenes we released for our v1.0 demo came in a bit shy of 40,000 words. That was our biggest release to date. This update is over 50,000 words. So, when it drops, we encourage players to take their time. A lot of care has been put into the execution of these scenes and there's plenty of missable content. If you're the type of player who likes to dig for buried treasure, this is your time to shine.

While the Mika Mod is and always will be Mika's show, all three of our side characters, Erina, Rin & Momo, will make substantive appearances in the release. This route is huge and we are confident there will be ample time to develop and progress individual arcs for all three side characters. That said, some side characters progress and develop faster than others at different times and this release will be a good example of that. If one side character's arc gets a bit less meat in this update, she's likely going to get more at some point later.

There is also a much hinted-at enormous scene in this release which comprises the majority of those 50,000 words. There honestly is no precedent we know of for this scene. It is longer than most "long" scenes. We went all in on this one and took some big chances that I still occasionally sweat about. We have considered breaking the scene into separate parts but so far, that idea has had a lukewarm reception both on the server and within the team. So, although we could change our minds, it's likely you'll be getting the one huge scene as actually *one* huge scene.

We've also been hashing out further implementation of the DRP system in the route. As we've said before, at some point (probably close to if not *at* the 50% mark), DRP will lock and Keisuke will solidify for the player as a Dominant, Romantic or Perv. So, our primary objective for DRP at this stage is to collect as many DRP choices from the player as we can. But, we're going to start implementing moments in the route that use the DRP score the player already has, both to give them a taste for how the route would go when DRP does lock, and to signal to the player that they have high score in one DRP value or another. One way we plan to do this is to make certain options available in decision trees only *if* the player's DRP score meets a certain threshold for D, R or P. You'll see the first example of this within these next five scenes.

Finally, this release will indeed be our quarter milestone, which is amazing! For all the work we've done on DRP, side characters and missable content, we haven't lost sight of the bigger picture. This is, still and always, a romance erotica about Mika and Keisuke. If all goes according to plan, this release should mark a new phase in that aspect of the story. In other words, the scenes that come after (and even to an extent within) this release will be different from what came before. We're not writing a 100+ scene route just for the sake of writing 100+ scenes. We have an evolution for these characters that the route charts. So, my biggest hope for the release is that it leaves our players feeling like that evolution is clearly shown, maybe stronger than ever.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for your patience in our rollout. We'll definitely keep you all posted as we get nearer to our drop date :)

-TrebleCleffy