Hello everyone! Today I'd like to talk about my Patreon. Specifically the benefits you get from being a patron from any of the three tiers. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is to advertise and give people incentives to become a patron of a specific tier. Another reason is that I want to communicate both to you and to myself and what it is I'm exactly providing to my patrons. Note that since my Patreon isn't even a year old yet, it's bound to change one way or the other in the future. Without further Ado, here are the benefits of being a patron in all three tiers.

Basic Tier ($3)

Access to builds a month early: This is the most common reason why anyone would become a patron to me. Followers of other FVNs would understand this system quite well. Patrons have access to the latest build of By Your Hands whereas the public will have last month's build. I really don't want to explain this anymore because I can never explain it properly. Patrons get new builds earlier than the public, that's all you need to know. Got it? Good, you got it. I don't even care that it's impossible for me to know what response you're giving me now as I'm typing this, let's just move on to the next point. Well, one last thing I'll mention is that I update both my mailing list and itch.io (as well as other social media but those aren't worth mentioning) when new builds are available to patrons and when they're available to the public. Patrons also get new builds of Barachoda Bloom two weeks early, but that's less of an incentive to become a patron since BB updates much more infrequently than By Your Hands, which updates every month (excluding breaks). 

Access to polls relating to By Your Hands: Okay, I'll admit that this isn't really a big benefit. I've made one poll available to all my patrons across several months and then it wasn't even related to By Your Hands. The reason for this is that I originally thought that I'd have issues making certain decisions related to the game. Turns out I'm less indecisive than I thought I was when it comes to making VNs, which I'm kind of disappointed in. I've also noticed that my audience is mostly easy to read, so I'd know what my audience wants from certain characters and how they'd react to certain scenes. You guys are smart, sexy, and super, but the survey results I got give me a good idea generally of what my audience expects. I will admit I could have made the surveys exclusive to patrons, but I was more interested in learning about my audience than telling people to become a patron so they can decide how things will go. Okay, there are things I'm indecisive about when it comes to making By Your Hands, but not only are they far and few in between but they either spoil things that come way later in the story or they're such big decisions that it would be inappropriate to have a community poll decide for me (Stuff like "Should Character X be homosexual, bisexual, or pansexual?" Spoilers, it's none of them). In the future, I might actually have polls related to the VN, and this benefit would actually mean something. But for now, it doesn't give any incentive to become a patron.

Your Name in the Credits: I'd imagine this one isn't really that much of a benefit, it's just more of a "goody bag" type of thing. You came to the party for a big reason and you're given free benefits that you didn't really ask for but you also aren't going to decline. Your username will be put in the "About" section of the game. Here's what it looks like: 

It's not really exciting, but I hope my patrons appreciate it anyways. Eventually, I'd like to display the names of my patrons in a cooler way that doesn't involve the player clicking on the boring "About" button, but I don't currently know how to code that so it will have to wait until later. I pick the patron's name based on their Discord username. If they don't have that, I just use the name they use for their Patreon account. If you want a different name to be used in the credits, DM either on Discord or Patreon and tell me what name you want to be credited as. Assuming you're a patron of course.

Commentary of the first build: This used to be advertised on my Patreon but I removed the mention of it. Originally I had a Google Doc that I shared with my patrons that contained the commentary as I was writing it. This got really annoying because I kept having to add new people every time I got a new patron and I got paranoid that some people didn't have access to it. Now it's a PDF that's available in the same place you can download the latest builds. I thought it would be a cute idea to commentate on the entire first build since someone else was writing the script. This was a bad idea. It took me almost two and a half months to get this finished. That's why I'm keeping it as a commentary of just what the first build contains. If you want commentary on future story content, read further down to see if you're interested in that style of commentary. But commentating on an entire script is just exhausting and I won't be doing that type of commentary anymore. But patrons have access to the commentary of the entire first build, so please enjoy. Note that when I say the first build, I mean everything from the start of the game all the way to the point where there's the text shown that says "Catch A Tiger By Its ****".

?????: This is another benefit that I don't have labeled on my Patreon. I have several short projects planned to work on in the future. At least one of them will come to fruition in the coming months. What I plan for these VNs is that I'll have them be available for the public to enjoy for free, but they will be censored. If you want to enjoy them completely uncensored, you'll have to become a patron. That's my current plan so far. But right now it's not a benefit you can get right now so you'll just have to wait on that. (Also it probably won't be available to the $3 patrons. It would depend on the price of the games but $4 or $5 patrons are able to gain access to the uncensored versions, though at that point you might as well become an Advanced Tier patron.

Exclusive Discord channel: Even another benefit that's not labeled on my Patreon, it's an exclusive channel on my Discord server. It's not much, it's just a place where you can discuss stuff that's in the latest build. That's pretty much it.

Advanced Tier

PSDs of all the sprites and CGs in Barachoda Bloom and By Your Hands: I share a folder of all the PSDs of both VNs with all my Advanced and Blooming Tier patrons. I have to manually join patrons so they can have access to the folder but I get non-Basic tier patrons at a slower rate so it's not as annoying for me. I don't actually use Photoshop. I use Clip Studio Paint, but I make the files PSDs because both programs can open PSDs while I'm not sure if Photoshop can open clip files. I haven't seen anyone say they have downloaded any of the files, but it's still available for anyone interested.

Previews of Art WIPs on my Discord server: In my Discord server, which Patreon will automatically invite you to when you become a patron, you get exclusive access to a channel where you get to see my current WIP on any art I'm doing. This includes both the art assets I do for both of my VNs as well as the monthly pin-ups I do which I'll explain more about in just a second. I also post the WIP art on my Patreon every week or so for those who don't have a Discord, but you get updated more with the Discord channel so it's recommended that you join the server when you become a patron.

Access to alts of the pin-up: This is a recent thing. I've started doing pin-ups of various characters from other works each month. The clothed version is available to the public while the naked and "messy" versions are only available to Advanced Tier and Blooming Tier patrons. Here's an example of what these look like:

I'll post the pin-ups with the alts on my Patreonand then after a month or so I'll delete them and send a file containing these images to everyone who's an Advanced or Blooming patron at the time. If you missed the chance to see those pics, you can buy them on my Gumroad over here.

Blooming Tier

Access to test builds: All Blooming tier patrons get access to test builds. These aren't "official" builds. These builds haven't been tested, they usually don't include all the final art assets, they don't add any new music, and the text hasn't finished being edited. There's also no standard release date for these test builds. But if you really want to know what happens next in the story, you can play through these builds before the official release of the monthly build as these contain all the story content that the official build adds. I'd just recommend reading the official build as well, as that's how you're intended to read through the game, unfinished art and sound assets notwithstanding.

Access to the polls relating to the monthly pin-up: I give you a set of characters and all Blooming patrons get to vote on who gets to be the monthly pin-up guy. It will take about a week to see who wins and then I'll start to work on it. That should be explanatory enough.

Access to miscellaneous assets relating to the game: What this means is that sometimes the game will receive custom-made music tracks or backgrounds made for the game. Basically, any assets that are not writing or art made by me. Blooming Tier patrons are able to view those assets as they're being made. Custom-made backgrounds probably won't be a thing in BYH for a while, but there is already music made specifically for the VN, so look forward to that.

Commentary on the game past the first build: This isn't the commentary for the first build, but rather commentary on everything past the first build. Essentially for every build, there will be a PDF included that does a quick commentary on that build. It will be more condensed as well as focus on more developmental stuff rather than making jokes and stuff like that. It will also have screenshots so it can be easier to read. Now I will say that currently there's no commentary for builds 0.2.0 or 0.3.0. The reason for this is that I didn't have time to make any commentary for those builds because I was too busy making commentary for the first build. But it should come in the late-mid part of the month. Later commentary should happen somewhere after a week has passed since the build has been released. Click here to see what you can expect my commentary to look like.

The last thing I'll mention is that I originally had a $25 tier where I would draw a headshot of any character they wanted. I dropped that because I was really nervous about the idea of someone becoming a patron to that tier and me having to draw something I might not want to draw. I do want to add a $25+ tier to my Patreon someday, but right now is just not a good time.

And that's everything. I hope this was informative to you guys. If you have any suggestions on how I can improve my Patreon and what benefits I should be giving my patrons, please let it be known. I'll edit this devlog whenever I have new benefits or existing benefits have been changed to reflect my current Patreon more closely. Again you can become a patron here.

Have a good day and see you later!