In the beginning NL was a side project, it was developed as a hobby mostly on the weekends so the progress was inherently slow for a while, it was not until the start of 2018 that i decided to dedicate a certain amount of time, per week, to work exclusively on this project in order to finish the demo also known as  the ‘Showcase’ experience, and that worked quite well, with a closed early alpha released to close friends & colleagues and a closed beta available by request completely free, both instances gave me some really useful feedback.

After the first stable version of the Demo was publicly available i focused on  building the community and the public Discord Channel was created (you can join here btw). Growing a strong community is really important for this project because one of the main goals for the future is to have a complete Feature/Community Driven Development project, just imagine be able to directly help shaping this game as a player, participating in the selection of features that you would like to be implemented, that’s crazily great and that’s why is one of the main goals for the near future (2019).

Also, to help to the community growing, experimental builds were released for both linux and mac so the project could reach as many users as possible.

This allowed the project to achieve small, but very important goals, that i want to share with you:

• The project was released to the public (by request at first) on it first 0.9 stable version.
• Since 0.9, 4 new major releases were made, every one of them with fixes and cool new features.
• More than 70 keys were given for free, so the users could take a look, test the Game and make suggestions and give feedback.
• Linux and Mac experimental versions were made.
• The project was downloaded more than 120 times.
• The community grew, with more than 30 new members.
• The new Discord Channel was created.
• The new Subreddit was created.
• The Patreon campaign got it first patron, thanks to phenomxtreme!, you are the best!, thanks for believing in the project.

All of the above really inspire me to continue working on NLab, making this project bigger and better with every release full of new features.

Showcase, the tech Demo is just the beginning, regarding the development of NLab there are 3 main goals.

• The creation and release of the next seasonal update for Saint Valentine's Day.
• The creation and release of the next simulation (Codename: Overdrive).
• The full implementation of VR.

Also i would like to add 3 Goals for the project itself:

• A 200% grow in the community by 2019 Q3.
• The achievement of the first Patreon Goal by 2019 Q2.
• 200 Downloads by 2019 Q1.

To be able to reach those goals, this is the plan:

• On 1 of February is going to be released the new Valentine’s update, this version comes with visual improvements for both the main scene in Showcase and her hostess NALA, also with a new ‘energy system’ that is going to be a key element when the interactive machines are implemented.
• After the seasonal update is released, i will continue working on a few issues that needs to be addressed before any major animation work is done, updates regarding this are going to be released periodically.
• About VR, although the project's original concept included the implementation of VR, i didn’t had a VR headset at that time, so every component has been made so the migration to a VR setup wouldn’t be too troublesome but also it worked in a non-VR setup. A few weeks ago i got my hands on an Oculus Rift CV1 and i implement a few quick interactions, and i must say, in VR it looks completely different, NALA looked more gorgeous than ever and the (minimal) scene looked great too but a full VR implementation requires a lot more work, some optimizations needs to be made, some interactions needs to be programmed, some assets and interfaces needs to be modified and so on, so since i have limited time for this project (at least right now) and considering that the community is requesting a more ‘interactive and adult-oriented’ virtual experience, vr is going to be halted for a while, but a Patreon goal is going to be made with the vr implementation as a goal, that is going to help to get an idea about the level of interest of the community on this particular feature.
• The Goals and Perks of the Patreon Campaign are going to be modified and the details are going to be announced in the Valentine's update.

To Conclude, i have to say, thank you very much to all of you that had support the project through itch.io and Patreon , thank you very much to the Community for the precious feedback and the project is ready to face the New Challenges that comes with 2019.