Note that the public release will be in 2 weeks. You can also skip the waiting time by buying Star Knightess Aura on itch.

https://aura-dev.itch.io/star-knightess-aura

The first release in full time work! This month's release is steeped in real world corruption events. Due to various production issues due to the vacant mapper position, I mostly pushed on the corruption story line, although I did manage to squeak a small minidungeon into the update. If you had a lot of Roya storycontent left and needed to get rid of some corruption then this is the right update to get back into the game.

Anyways! Let's get into it! As always, this is a summary post, if you want to know more details, check out the weekly devlog posts.

This month we have 2 new H-CGs, 10 new mental changes, 12 new corruption scenes, 3 new passives, 1 new quest, and 1 new dungeon with 1 new boss fight. Ontop of this we also have the new Battle HUD and many more technical improvements to the game.

Since the corruption block is the largest, let's start with that one! In the real world, we have mostly 3 story lines that have advanced or even concluded this month: Books, Shoes and George.

In the George events, Alicia has finally managed to get the relationship reduction going. Watch as Aura starts questioning various parts about her relationship with George and whether the attributes she previously imperatively considered "good" are now transformed into her viewing them as negative. 

Alicia still has a long way to go to see some real success here, but she managed to get quite some progress going! As a side effect of changing Aura's values, she also managed to ca Aura's negative perception of Richard, after all, isn't someone who's at the top of the world at least somewhat admirable...? Or something along those lines.

In the other two storylines, Alicia completes Aura's in hobbies, which has some serious consequences in Roya. Two of the new passives come from the Aura Hating Books storyline which gets triggered from the Novel Pump mental changes from the previous release. They effectively render reading non-lewd books into a headache-inducing waste of time.

The other one is the shoes storyline, here Aura finally switches to some luxurious, high quality pumps, through the last shoes mental change. Once the sequence has played out, Aura's shoes in Roya transform, unlocking the third new passive of this update.

You hopefully weren't planning on passing those high AGI jump checks, right...? :'D

Moving on to Roya, there we have two main pieces of new content: The new quest The Disbanded Crew and the Nephlune Underwater Dungeon. Help the Captain get his ship and crew back using money, connections, gambling, lewd skills and other things you have acquired over the course of the game! 

There is also a new minigame in this quest, a chinchirorin dice game with cheating going and it's on Aura to either expose the cheat, beat them fair and square, or suck it up and pay the indebted Sailor's debt. Just watch out, if you run out of funds, Aura will be forced to strip. Which constitutes this month main lewd-content. So not a lot new on this front. But I believe plenty of additional motivation for diving deep into the Demon Worshipper cult.

The Nephlune Underwater Dungeon is fairly small with just a couple of enemies and one boss fight and mostly serves as a simple Underwater dungeon to prepare for the bigger one under the Central Lake in the Forest of Runes. Nevertheless, after a couple of updates without new boss fights, we now have a new one with new gimmicks and the new underwater environmental effects.

This covers most of the new additions in content this month. We also have a lot of new stuff on the technical and visual side! On the art side, the Rose and Richard scene has been illustrated. The same goes for the Bunny Suit scenes with the Magistrate in the Underground Dungeon. 

On the technical side, the Battle HUD rework has been completed. I intend to have our coder Trihan further improve the battle flow in the future, but visually the rework is done for now. I know it will be quite a change for some people, but I believe removes quite a lot of clicking and pressing buttons. Also, there is finally a highlight for rooms with available mental changes. You can now see the Lewdness/Vice/Corruption in the map HUD when Alicia is the leader. And finally, there are bunch of under-the-hood performance improvements that especially deal with a performance bug when you had a lot of items.

On the balancing side, there is just one notable change. Bloodshot Eyes now only gives 1 instead of 2 addiction. I saw that most people considered the Exhaustion effect to be the most important downside, but after thinking about it and also doing some test play, I decided that's something I don't want to remove since I want to keep the number of "super powerups" to at most twice a day (SK and Bloodshot Eyes). Though, you can find an upgrade to Bloodshot Eyes in the new Underwater Dungeon, which gives you even more stats.

A small mention maybe to the freelancer status. Sadly the latest candidate for the mapping position hasn't worked out. Most likely, I will go back to doing the mapping for dungeons and simplify the mapping position to only deal with City and interior housing maps. This will make it that the mappers don't a deeper understanding of level design and can focus only on the artistic side, which hopefully will expand the pool of skilled people who can do the job. 

On the music side, I have a candidate for the BGM composition. We had a very good talk this Tuesday and right now he is working on a 1 minute sample of a Star Knightess theme. Let's see what he will come up with my request for a soundtrack that some is both "Magical Girl" and "Heroic Knight". :D

On the position of Assisstant RPGMaker dev, I have currently given the position to our coder Trihan who will now also help out on the general RPGMaker work such as bugfixing, plugin-integration and more.

Aaaaand I think that's finally it. The full changelog is as usual below. Next month, mapper or no mapper, the focus will be returning to Roya. And on the art side, we have finally caught up all the old CGs and are now ready to get started on the last character artwork update for Aura. 

For more concrete plans, stay tuned for the project plan post in the upcoming week!

Changelog 0.27.0 (27.01.2023)

• Added Bunny Suit Loving Magistrate 1 H-CGs 
• Added Bunny Suit Loving Magistrate 2 H-CGs 
• Added Rose Seduced By Richard H-CGs
• Added additional creampie layers into John Sex CGs 
• Added mental change Celebrities II 
• Added mental change Popularity III 
• Added mental change corrupt Hardworking Orb I 
• Added mental change corrupt Character Orb 1
• Added mental change corrupt Kindness Orb 1 
• Added mental change Platform High-Heels 
• Added mental change "Empty Library Club Memory" 
• Added scene Aura Hating Books 1 
• Added scene Aura Hating Books 2 
• Added scene Aura Hating Books 3 
• Added scene Gossip About George 1 
• Added scene Gossip About George 2 
• Added scene Cheerleading Practice 7 
• Added scene Hallway Bullying 4 
• Added scene Exploiting Gofers 3 
• Added scene "Aura Wearing Heels 2" 
• Added scene "Aura Wearing Heels 3" 
• Added scene "Aura Wearing Heels 4" 
• Added scene "Being Into The Next Super Model 4" 
• Added passives "Can't Remember Ever Enjoying Reading I - III" 
• Added passive "#fuckreading"
• Added passive "Transformation: Platform Heels" 
• Added scene "Aura boots transforming to high-heels in Roya" 
• Added quest "The Disbanded Crew" 
• Added map Nephlune Underwater Dungeon 
• Added map Sailor Quarters
• Added map First Mate's House 
• Added items Bloodshot Eyes+ and formula 
• Added Charlotte learning Fire II at level 5 and teaching at level 6 
• Logged and cleared enemies from compendium during intro 
• Integrated plugin fixing * passabilities being ignored 
• Implemented chinchirorin minigame
• Added corruption/lewdness/vice display to map when playing as Alicia 
• Made back button for enemy/item/skill windows in battle more responsive when hovered 
• Improved performance when having many items 
• Updated battle HUD visuals for better visibility 
• Implemented visual marker for rooms with mental changes 
• Improved frame rate in battle scene 
• Improved visibility of version number on title screen 
• Removed double tap on mobile and added option for reenabling 
• Implemented controller icons 
• Improved wording of Womb of Lust 
• Removed Popularity I cobweb mental change 
• Increased max killed bosses to 70 
• Increased max mental changes to 115 

Balancing

• Decreased addiction of Bloodshot Eyes to 1 and reduce price 
• Added second Gourmet Meat to Sahaking drop 

Bugfixes

• Fixed typos 
• Added keys with missing string conversions to the code-to-string list
• Fixed message box flicker 
• Fixed turn sync issue for buff duration display 
• Fixed extra windows background remaining for too long 
• Fixed turn durations on indefinite states 
• Fixed hex buttons for touch input/Android 
• Fixed broken state display in menu 
• Fixed remaining Hermann 25% discount mention in text 
• Reverted changes to state/buff turn duration 
• Fixed Gossip About George recollection crystal not unlocking 
• Fixed #fuckreading not increasing required reading progress 
• Fixed remaining encounters in Draknor Fortress after slaying Sathanas 
• Fixed not being able to teach John Tenacity I in John Rising 
• Fixed passability of Nephlune house roof 
• Fixed X button icon in skill menu appearing even if no controller connected 
• Fixed attack/guard still appearing enabled if sealed 
• Fixed behaviour of ok key in battle HUD 
• Fixed non-responsive VN buttons