New Playable Female Character and Early Access Exit Update

We’ve noticed a lot of you have been asking about the details of the playable female character and how it ties in with us leaving Early Access.  We have already made some strides toward implementation, and we thought since there was so much interest, we could share some behind the scenes peeks and information about where we’re at.

So first off, we’ll just leave this small teaser here.

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s a wall of text and some things to note for those of you hungry for more details 🙂

1. The playable female character will NOT be a DLC, and WILL be included in the base House Party game.
2. The female playable character and the new mystery guest we have planned for next year are NOT the same thing.  The mystery guest will be a new non-player character that can be added to the game via DLC after we exit Early Access.  We’ll have more news on that later on.
3. After our next update (Vickie Vixen’s end game content), which is estimated to be finished in the next few months, the playable female character will be our main priority, alongside full controller support, and various other tweaks and polish as we head toward existing Early Access.
4. The female playthrough will be similar to the male playthrough in many ways, but there will be new core game mechanics, and exclusive content that will only be available if playing as a female.
5. We are aiming to get the playable female character out BEFORE we leave Early Access, which is tentatively scheduled for March of 2022.  We are working diligently to hit those goals, but of course as you know, things can spring up unexpectedly, and our main priority is putting out a great player experience first and foremost, so everything is potentially subject to change.
6. Just because we are exiting Early Access doesn’t mean we are going to stop working on House Party.  We feel that the game has come a long way and is finally in a state where the content will be finalized, but that doesn’t mean we won’t continue to polish it up or fix bugs or release quality of life updates in the future.  We also have a lot of ideas of things to add to House Party, but we will be transitioning to doing so in the form of DLC after we leave Early Access, as the core game mechanics that we originally envisioned for the game have already been added, and we also added a bunch of stuff along the way that we never intended to originally, like combat, cutscenes, controller support, and localization to list a few.
7. Our pricing may change as we transition to leave Early Access.  Though this is pretty typical for most games, for us, it’s because we have a LOT in the works for the future of House Party, and our studio in general, some of which we have just been starting to hint at.  Things are evolving rather quickly, and some of you might be very surprised to see what we have in store for you.  That being said, part of that process involves continually taking inventory of what we need and who we need to reach our goals, and as the scope of this project has changed over the years, so has our need to continually expand our team.  We aren’t talking about any major changes to pricing here, but probably small tweaks and reassessment to make sure we can continue to bring new content to this game and future games consistently.

We’re working hard on all of these things, and we appreciate all of your support and patience as we figure all this stuff out.  We have more exciting announcements coming soon.  Enjoy!