Over a month has passed since Day 6 has been released to the public and over that time I've received feedback on the game and Brendan's route. I want to share my thoughts looking back on it and what development on it was like.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ACT 1 OF BRENDAN'S ROUTE!

Before the first build was released back in 2022, I was intending Kamil's route to be the first route to be updated beyond Day 1. My reasoning was simple: Kamil was the most approachable to the protagonist, his friends are attractive, and he himself was attractive. I thought that he'd be the most popular love interest but, to my surprise, Brendan was the most popular at the time. But it makes sense considering he's got two big qualities on display at all times. Not to mention he has the most memorable scene within Day 1. There are other reasons but you get the gist of it. His popularity made me decide to update his route first instead of Kamil's. It wasn't too hard to make since I was initially planning on updating his route after Kamil's anyways. Considering the amount of work I needed to put into creating art when developing Kamil's route, I'd say I made the right choice as I'd have a whole plate of work to do along with everything I had to do that first half of the year. Development would have definitely been a lot more tuberous, and the route would look very different from what it is now, if I worked on Kamil first. So it was Brendan's route that was being worked on.

Now the update schedule I had planned out for By Your Hands was particular, and got me a good amount of people asking for clarification about it. I planned it like this because a single day doesn't have a lot of content. If it rotated between routes each update then you'd only progress a route by a little bit and then you'd have to wait at least five months before the next update comes out. Also, each of the routes start out slow before becoming more intense as it goes on. Having the schedule rotate between routes each month would have the story progress at a slug's pace before it gets to a point where it's just emotionally intensive update after emotionally intensive update. My point being, it would be very exhausting for my audience. My solution is to have the updates focus on a route until it reaches a "checkpoint", at which point it starts to focus on another character's route. These "checkpoints" would signal the end of an "act" (or "arc" as I keep misnaming them), with three acts in total. This should provide a more pleasant update schedule for people and so far, most people do like this update schedule.

Now onto Brendan. Brendan is a character I have mixed feelings about. I love his character design, I find it incredibly sexy. He's also quite charming, really kind, endearingly nerdy, and cares a lot about his son a lot to boot. The trouble comes when you find out about his major flaw at the end of Day 6 and his apparent irresponsibility, it starts to become harder to be attached to him. I don't like drug addicts and I don't like someone who can't control their urges. Considering he's a father and a professor, I just find it careless. The initial concept of Brendan was basically my ideal guy (DILF, middle age, submissive bottom, musclegut, kind)… and then emphasizing the potential problems that could come with that type of guy. Because of this, Brendan is in the weird place where he checks a lot of boxes for me but his flaws keep me from growing too fond of him. It's partially why I was initially surprised at how he was such a big hit with my audience. When people read Day 6, it was quite the experience to see people share their thoughts on how they felt about Brendan's alcoholism and how they dealt with the revelation. But it was necessary for people to see the story I wanted to make with Nemo. Day 6 was really important in showing what type of VN By Your Hands is. To be honest, I wish more stuff happened in Brendan's route, particularly during Day 4, and that Rex was able to guide the narrative more than he ended up doing. But I think some people do like the slower approach to storytelling, so I don't think it's too big a loss.

Developing Brendan's route was strange as it was happening during a bunch of stuff. Ramadan was going on, I was participating in a game jam, I had a somewhat busy semester in college, and I had issues with hand pain. And I wanted to redo some art as well as implement some stuff that didn't have to do with developing the new content. I had a lot on my plate despite how simple and few art assets Brendan's Act 1 needed. This is why I ended up taking two month-long breaks during this period. I really wanted to get as much of the old stuff done as soon as possible so I could focus on the new stuff. Brendan's route alongside Kamil's Day 2 and 3 makes me realize that I really should have focused on doing the necessary assets first before I worked on redoing the old stuff. It's really tempting to just make sure that there's no stone left unturned before working on new stuff. But well, people are paying me to work on new stuff, not redo old stuff. I do want to dedicate a month solely on polishing what's in the game so far, but I can't find a good time to do just that. People are pretty content with new features being trickled in each month rather than big updates being added all at once, even if I did have people say they wanted bigger and less frequent updates.

Some other stuff I learned is that while being polite and nice when working with others is important, what's more important is making sure you're communicating everything you want. You want to be clear on what direction you want them to take. Miscommunication just leads to more stressful development. It took me a while to realize that I should be telling Nemo basically everything I expect from him. Particularly, I wanted him to have freedom in what he was writing and let him direct the flow. I didn't want to mess with his craft but then he told me that it was better if I told him as much as possible so he'd have a clear direction in the story. I gave a lot more input into Kamil's route, and the difference between Kamil's Days 2 and 3 and Brendan's Act 1 are very apparent. Now don't micromanage every single little thing, but make sure your needs are being met while they get to have enough freedom to allow their creativity to flow within your needs.

There was also the issue of meeting people's expectations. People in my discord server had certain expectations for Brendan's route. While they were relatively easy to meet, it was something we had to take into account while developing. One thing I learned is that your audience tends to be understanding of any setbacks as long as you're being honest with them. If anything, people have been telling me to take more breaks, but I frankly suck at taking breaks, so I'm wary about that. The VN has been growing its audience at a steady rate, both in terms of Patreon money and itch.io stats. I do wish that the game was talked about more, but I can't be greedy, and I can only hope that it gets a lot more eyes on it eventually. Another thing I've learned is that I know a lot more than what my audience knows. Obviously, I know what's going to happen later on in the story and I have to keep my lips sealed whenever people are theorizing on what's going to happen. It's certainly entertaining to see people guess what will happen and maybe even get a few things right. But another thing is that you know every line of code… but your audience doesn't see that. Most (if not all) readers don't know 100% of the game, therefore there's going to be stuff that they don't know about. Because of this, every person's experience with the game is going to be different and yet they discuss the game with each other. Most people don't know exactly what triggers what, the different consequences of certain actions, and what this all means. I used to be more open about what's happening under the hood initially before I realized I should tread carefully talking about these things.

The story's a little hodgepodge at the moment. We were still figuring out what development process works so things got a bit messy. When Nemo was writing Day 4 for Brendan's route, the plan for Kamil's Day 3 was completely different from the actual Day 3 we got, so that's why some things may seem a bit odd. Stuff can and often changes. We can plan something one day and then the next day one or the other decide it's better if we do something completely different. As long as it improves the game then it works for us. I can never get behind planning every single aspect for a project and sticking to it no matter what when I tend to enjoy doing creative work better when I get to be spontateous. It's just not my style, and I'm pretty sure it's not Nemo's either. It's simply how we do things. Like, all this time I thought I was crafting this emotional and impactful story when really I was just being a pervert. Now I want to create an emotional and impactful story while also being a pervert at the same time. I hope things go well for Nemo and I.

One last thing I want to talk about is how I kinda regret making fun of wolves and big cats in the game. I do enjoy the cast, and I do think the species of Tucker, Liam, and Wyatt work well for the story we're trying to weave. But I wish we were a bit more, how should I say this, subtle about it? Like, I think we ended up attracted a group of people who were fond of the game just because it made fun of popular species, which I don't think is a good reason to get into the game. Like yeah, wolves are everywhere, but you shouldn't like this game simply because the sole wolf in it is just an antagonistic side character. Like honestly, I've grown to like Wyatt over these past few months and he didn't even have any new dialogue. But yeah, wolves and big cats are cool. And so are chickens, karkadann, bison, orca, and black vultures.

Overall, I learned a lot about what works for me and what doesn't. I've learned ways to make development smoother and I streamlined my Patreon to something that's manageable to me. With Brendan's Act 1 done, I think Nemo and I are more confident in getting the other Act 1s done in a more efficient manner. So far we've had some hurdles with developing Kamil's route, but things are looking up for us. I think I'm close at figuring out a development cycle that is a good fit for me. I'm glad with how Brendan's Act 1 came out, but I'm more grateful for how it made both me and Nemo grow in our skills. It was an essential step in becoming better devs. With that, I hope By Your Hands continues to flourish within this nice little niche.

Thank you for reading and have a good day!