Phoenixes [v0.10][NoMeme]

v10 is the biggest update of PHOENIXES so far, even bigger than v9, with 1100+ new images and animated scenes. It is double the content of many previous updates. I don’t think we will ever make a bigger update in the future. In future update cycles, we will strive to keep the volume of updates and development time within a more reasonable and rational range.

Now let’s take a brief look at what we have in v10:

– Improved the clock UI:

The old clock was not even a real circle but rather a rough polygon that looked like a circle. Now we’ve made it more circular and added more lighting effects to it.

– Reworked the album system:

Now there won’t be any lagging issue when viewing images in the album.

– Implemented the biography system:

The Records screen has always been relatively unimportant since it is entirely unrelated to gameplay. Your gaming experience wouldn’t be affected even if you never viewed this screen. But it must exist because there has to be a place to record a dozen girls’ information.

However, this unimportant screen has become almost entirely useless since v2. Due to coding issues, the girls’ information could not be updated in time, for example, Cassy’s description still says ‘I don’t know much about her yet’ even if she has been your maid for so long. This obviously needed improvement.

In v10, we replaced the previous character introductions with a biography system. Every time your relationship with a girl progresses to a new significant stage, a new segment of textual content about her will be unlocked in her record. We believe this improvement will at least restore this screen from ‘completely useless’ to ‘unimportant’ again.

– Numerous bugs fixed:

– Fixed the issue that caused the game unable to return to the subplot screen after skipping a subplot to its end.
– Fixed the issue in the PC version where the first text triggered after opening the game does not pop up a dialogue box.
– Fixed a display bug that occurs when opening the Status screen for the first time in each time period.
– Fixed the issue that caused the game to only display thumbnails for the latest 15 saves.

– New girl’s debut: Enyora

In v10, a new villain girl will make her debut. She is a high-IQ schemer and politician, using explosive high-tech playing cards as weapons. Her appearance signifies a new phase in the main story. The city is getting more chaotic every day as the mayoral election approaches, and soon there will be more new girls coming on the stage.

– New sexable girl: Osonia

In v10, you will be able to have sex with Osonia for the first time, but please note that you will have to reach a certain level of intimacy with Sorring first. Unlike other girls, Osonia and Sorring’s stories are highly interconnected. Osonia won’t be too intimate with a man until her sister has a boyfriend.

– Alnilam, Kemuri, Sorring, and Osonia will have new personal plots

v0.9

V9 update marks a new milestone in the development of PHOENIXES. The independent storylines of the girls are now beginning to weave together. Your harem fantasies are starting to become a reality.

And now let’s take a look at what we have for you in this update:

The system part (v9):
– New stat for girls: Harem acceptance level

It might sound familiar if you’ve played VIRTUES before. This stat represents my understanding and philosophy of the harem. I believe a harem is all about honesty. All the girls in your harem should know that they are not your only love. Otherwise you’d be deceiving them, and I don’t like that.

As the story progresses, your girls will become more accepting of the fact that they are sharing you with other girls, and they will have bolder actions as their Harem acceptance level gets higher.

In this update, you can increase the harem acceptance level for Heather, Cassy, Osonia, and Sorring. And you can unlock their initial harem stories once their acceptances reach 5.

– New short event type: Harem playlet

After raising certain girls’ love points to a specific level, there will be some repetitive harem playlet about them showing on map randomly. Experiencing one of such events will increase certain girls’ harem acceptance levels.

In v9, you will see the harem playlets for “Heather & Cassy” and “Osonia & Sorring.”

– New Textbox UI
We’ve redesigned the UI of the textbox and used unique colors for each girl’s name. Hopefully this will enhance your gaming experience.

Old:

New:

– Improved game guidance
Now you will be informed when there is an unlockable club upgrade.

– Some small optimizations
– After watching an event in the gallery, you will now return to the gallery screen instead of the main menu.

– More short repetitive events will now show on the map at the same time. It will help you raise the stats of the girls quicker and easier.

v0.8.0.1

The System part:
– The Autoplay mode
The autoplay mode is undoubtedly one of the crucial features in a visual novel, but we’ve overlooked it for a long time because honestly, we’ve never used it when we played other visual novels.
After being informed by some patrons about their needs, we realized our oversight and immediately started working on it. Thank god we finished the job within this update cycle.
So now we have an Autoplay mode available in v8. You can freely adjust its speed and it won’t turn off itself when you pass the dialogue actively.
We even made a timer to remind you when the text will switch to the next line. There are two different timer styles for you to choose from.

– The free script editing tool (test version)
As you know, I’m not really a good writer. The game’s text is riddled with many grammar errors and typos, both the English and the Chinese version. Many lovely people have been so kind to point out issues in the text with numerous screenshots after every update, and I really appreciate that. I’m sorry for not being able to provide you with a better reading experience, and I feel that we need to at least create a more convenient way for people who care to give feedback on text issues and even manually correct the issues that are unbearable to them.

I will upload the scripts tomorrow, after I wake up and finish the tutorial document. Right now I just need to sleep so bad, haven’t closed my eyes for 30 hours.

* We eventually decided not to include the scripts in the PC version of the game. Because doing so will significantly slow down the unzip speed.

– Greatly improved the hints in the Story Progress screen
The previous hints were not clear enough, sometimes they basically forced you to guess if a requirement of a plot was achieved or not, which must be annoying. We are very sorry about the trouble it has caused.

But it will no longer be a problem in v8, we’ve redesigned the screen and reworked the whole system. Now the hints should be much clearer.

– Implemented a HUGE number of animation effects and sound effects.
It’s hard to describe here, you will know what I’m talking about as soon as you enter the game.
I’m not sure if all the new animation effects will work perfectly on low-end phones, please let me know if you experience any frame-dropping issues during animations.

– Improved the game’s loading speed.
For some reason this improvement didn’t go as significant as we thought. Right now the speed of loading the main menu on mid-to-low-end phones should be 10-20% faster, and 30-50% faster on high-end phones in theory.

The speed of loading the gallery will be a lot faster on all devices, in theory.

– Small stuff:
– You can now adjust the textbox transparency and the text speed
– Implemented ‘slapping’ sound effect
– New icon for the Support Missions
– Improved the look of the event bubbles

The Story part:
– New girl: Fuying
Fuying is a mysterious time mage who had her first appearance in VIRTUES. She was also literally the first girl you saw in PHOENIXES.

Like most girls in the game, Fuying also comes with a pretty complex backstory, no, in fact she has THE MOST complex backstory. Creating her was a challenge, an attempt to step out of our comfort zone. I’m not sure if everyone will like this girl and her plots in this update, but I promise she’s going to have a very very romantic storyline.

– New interrogation target: Alnilam
The story of v8 continues to focus on Alnilam. This evil queen didn’t seem to change much after your last night with her on her island. Every crime she committed was still built upon extreme selfishness without concerning anything or any others. But this time, her goal was not to torture you, but to be tortured by you… …

– New club level & New functional room in the club
You can now raise club level to 4 and unlock the massage room. Our new girl Fuying will be the masseur.

– Alnilam, Heather, Cassy, and Fuying will have new personal plots.

v0.7.0.0

The Story:
In our development plan, we divided the game’s development into various stages, and the focus of our updates is different with each stage. In the first stage, our focus was on building the world and setting up the relationships between MC and girls. During this time, as the story was just unfolding, we couldn’t provide too much lewd content in each update. And now, with the arrival of v7, the game has entered the next stage.

In this second stage, as MC develops romantic relationships with more and more girls, you can expect more lewd content in each update, and there will also be more new girls introduced into the game.

– Alnilam
In this update, you’ll get a more comprehensive understanding of this most controversial girl in the game. You’ll know about her tough past, the reasons behind her turning into a villain, and the sadness beneath her bitchy personality. I don’t mean to whitewash her or anything. She is a bad woman that does bad things, nothing can excuse her wrongdoing. The way MC interacts with her will be different from with any other girl. It will be more about conquering and taming her than about deepening their love for each other.

– Juliana
Juliana’s plots will continue with a focus on her growth. You’ll be the witness and guide as she gradually becomes stronger.

In the previous updates, Juliana was probably the most marginalized main girl because this girl seemed to be a little bit too normal and didn’t have many labels on her. But as the story enters a new stage, in this update you will get to know some information about her unknown background which might be exciting.

– Kemuri & Osonia& Sorring& Yamir
There will also be a battle between the order camp and the wild puppy girl. You’ll participate as part of this fight and get to see your girls showing more of their fighting skills.

New Features:
– New mission type: Mission Support
In the next few updates, we will be adding more ways to increase girls’ love points and bring a more engaging, less grindy, and less repetitive gaming experience for you. A new mission type will be the first step. You can now unlock Mission Support in the club upgrades screen after your club reaches level 3.
Completing one Mission Support will increase the certain girl’s love point and the club’s fame at the same time.

– New interrogation option: Yamir

In v7, you will finally be able to arrest the puppy girl that messed up the underground order of the slums. Now it’s time to start the interrogation! Each time of interrogation will raise her submissiveness point.

However, she will inevitably escape after 5 times of interrogation, just like every other supervillain. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to hunt her down again in the near future.

– New patron privilege: Unlock all the gallery scenes
I receive requests from patrons who want to get a “save that unlocks all the gallery scenes” every now and then, so I decided to make it a $5 patron privilege in the game. Just type the code in the gallery and everything will be unlocked for you.

– New bedroom: Alnilam’s room
A harem master won’t just sleep in the same room every night. In v7, sometimes you will spend the night in Alnilam’s room (though you might not want to.) There will be more girls’ bedrooms available in the future.

Optimizations:
– Completely fixed the crash issue on low-to-mid-end Android devices
We have consistently received reports of crash issues on mid-to-low-end Android devices since the first version of the game. Throughout this year, we have made a lot of efforts to optimize the Android version with each update. However, the results have been consistently disappointing.
I want to sincerely apologize to everyone who has experienced this issue. It was solely due to our insufficient understanding of the Godot engine, and we take full responsibility for it.

However, in v7, it will no longer be a problem anymore. There will be absolutely NO crashes when loading animated scenes. The FPS during animated scenes may drop a bit if your CPU is way too entry-level though, but absolutely no crash anymore.

If you think your CPU should be fine, yet still having the FPS problem, please let me know!
– improved the loading time for the Android version after launching

we noticed that many Android users (even with mid-to-high-end devices) might have had to endure a black screen for over 20 seconds after starting the game before accessing the main menu. In v7, the waiting time has been reduced greatly. It might still be quite a while on low-end devices, but there won’t be a black screen anymore (so at least you will know the game is not dead.)

v0.6.0.0

PHOENIXES v6 update report
Thanks for your patience. Now PHOENIXES v6 is finally ready to meet you all! Turned out that the new update strategy that we tried this time (one functional update v5.5 in the middle of the update cycle, and one story update v6 in the end) didn’t really save us any time. We still spent a solid 2-month plus 5 days of the grace period to develop the game from v5 to v6. But the new update strategy did improve our efficiency and helped us manage our time better. The new content of v5.5 + v6 is just way bigger than any update before. So I guess we’ll continue using this strategy in the future. Now let’s take a look at what we have made for you in the last two months:

v0.5.0.1