Slice of Venture Remake Announcement (Pixiv Fanbox)

Hello everyone!

Some of you maybe saw it coming from the teaser pic I posted a few weeks ago, maybe you weren't expecting this announcement at all (at least, not now) but here it is.

This post is going to be LONG, because there are many things I want to share with you about my plans for the future and questions to answer as well. Let's not waste time and start right away.

About Slice of Venture Remake

It's a secret to no one, I've often mentioned it through the past years, I've always wanted to do a remake of the first SoV. Unlike Vitamin Plus which was my very first game and didn't age well at all, the original SoV isn't a game I want to delete at all. It has lots of flaws but that's part of the charm, I guess. Now, in terms of graphical coherence, we've reached a state where Slice of Venture = PeakJump. So having the first game remade with him sounded like an obvious thing to do.

It's also a chance for me to change a lot of things I dislike about the game and I've wanted to change for years. Those of you who weren't there back then need to understand that SoV was made at a time where 1) I had no Patreon and 2) Few people knew about me. I relied on donations only and paid more than half of the cost of the game with my own money (I had a full-time job back then.) To attract people for donations, I held polls on a dedicated forums where people could vote for designs etc...

If you've ever opened the artbook, you know what I'm talking about. Even Reiko and Naomi's design (full design, not just the clothes) were decided by the biggest donators (one of them still being around ;) so I didn't have much control over the look of the game. Back then, it wasn't a problem to me. I was happy enough to be able to make my own game with my own assets instead of borrowing ones from a Japanese artist (I'll be forever thankfull to SkullTiti for joining me AND staying till the end. Back then, I didn't know how artists could... "disappear" so easily :x)

But things have evolved. SoV2 came out, The Hunter, Naomi's Past, SoVO... Now, I have a bit more experience and I tend to know more easily where I want to go. That's why, if the original SoV was a game with a part of it "made by the community" (if I can express it that way), this one will be just mine. Sounds selfish, I know, but hey, it's because I am selfish that I keep implementing stuff in my games preventing them from being widely known 8D

You also have to understand that I don't have the same level in english either, and my story telling (hopefully) improved, so basically everything should be better (I stay in conditional because I know some people reported that they prefered VP over SoVO and while it's beyond my understanding, I suppose there WILL be people who'll be disappointed in that remake no matter what I do.)

How do I envision this remake?

I won't detail things too much for the moment because there will be time to explain things in detail later, but I still wanted to go over a quick overview of what I want to do with that remake. I'm not planning to go wild. I don't plan to make SoV Remake an SoV2-like game (in terms of content/length). SoV was kinda short. SoV Remake will also be kinda short (albeit longer, though.)

I always plan very long games so it will be a good thing to focus on a shorter one for once. Everything will be updated, of course. Graphics, maps, resolution etc... We're also trying things with Peak. For example, the game won't be in 16:9 but in 4:3. The game won't be 1920*1080 but 1600*1200. It's mainly due to the fact we want something closer to square images as it's not always easy to fill wide images like 16:9 are.

I've been working on the preparation work of this release since roughly May and one of the biggest interrogation I've had was the following: do I keep the "hardcore selector"?. Those of you who haven't played the game (or don't remember) might want to know that in the original game, you could play it in hardcore mode (most fetish presents), hardcore + (Watersports & Smegma added) and hardcore X (scat added). While it was nice because everyone could have its treat, it was bothering me that you could play the game in two non-canon ways without even knowing those were non-canon. So you'd play SoV with the girls bathing in urine while in SoV2 they were back to step one. I've never been satisfied with it. So I'll change it. The big lines are the following. You'll play the base story (which will be more or less the same) and the scenes will be like the original hardcore mode. This way, it will bridge properly between SoVO and SoV2. BUT, there will be post-game content. And everything extra naughty will be in that post-game content as it'll be clear it's non-canon.

Separating the base story and non-canon content was the most satisfying way I've found to keep both elements from the original game. And between us, having a specific non-canon post-game story is also a great way to implement whatever I want, since it's non-canon. And oh boy... You're not ready. This remake will contain the sickest shit I've implemented in a 2D game yet :x

Why not going back to Slice of School instead?

Many of you will wonder this and the answer is simpler than you can think. I've already answered part of it in the previous part: SoV remake is meant to be a short game. There's a beginning, an end. I know where I go, what I want to do. Slice of School has ALWAYS been thought as a "we'll keep on as long as there's support" game. The game could be finished in two updates or in ten. I have no idea how long or how much content I want to put in the game (that's why the setting allows lots of things.) I want to take a break from long projects because I want to release at least one finished game sooner than in 5 years.

SoV remake (I'll call it SoVR now) is the best way to do that. And before you ask: no, it doesn't mean I'm abandonning Slice of School. It means I'm doing SoVR first. SoS is in my list. You already know the list of projects I plan to finish. I don't know when, but I'll go back to SoS, don't worry.

What does it mean in terms of Schedule?

Ah, that's maybe the most important part of the whole post. Right now, it's been more than a year that I've been working on TH2 exclusively. I kinda feared it last year because I've been switching between projects ever since I started working on SoV2 and TH at the same time and it went surprisingly well. I'm only starting to get tired of it and I don't think the problem comes from the game itself, but more to my anticipation on working on SoVR. So I've decided that things will be scheduled the following way:

- I'll work on TH2 v0.30 until mid-December (taking one week for bug testing etc...)

- Then it'll be Christmas week (usually I release my games around Christmas, this time, I'll try to release it one week earlier to keep the week for myself (I'll only correct reported bugs during that period.))

- Then, hold on, read carefully: PeakJump, JFC, Hime and I will go to Japan for two weeks. The Blue Axolotl Team will take a full break from work and we'll finally meet each other IRL :D. Any of you who work in a state remotely close to ours (where internet is in the equation) know that you're never really disconnected from work. Well here we sure as hell plan to be. So the first two weeks of January, we'll be resting for real (I'll try to resist the temptation of checking Discord every day :x)

- When we'll come back fresh and ready for work, then things couldn't be simpler: I'll work on SoVR until the whole game is done. Without switching to another project. Basically, the game will be done in one go. Of course I'll post updates like I always do, don't worry. But since it's meant to be a short game, I have high hopes to finish everything in less than a year.

- And if everything works well, normally, after SoVR, I should switch to another short game that I'll also work on in a single stroke: Fubuki's Challenge. But that will be for later...

You're probably wondering where's TH2 in all that? It's nowhere. I will not work on The Hunter 2 for the whole 2024 year. It will sadden some of you, but I estimate that I've spent the last 13 months well on the game and it improved a lot (I'm going to make a recap post during December to show everything that happened through this year of dev for TH2). And I said earlier, I want to prioritize short quicker-to-finish games for now. After all, I've ALWAYS said TH2 would be the last game I'll finish anyway. I still have LOTS of things planned for it ^^'

A few words of warning though...

I'm not going to lie to you. I've always been transparent and I will keep being even if I know honesty is NOT rewarded :x We currently have no colorist and I've JUST hired a background designer. Kai disappeared (like the majority of colorists actually, only two of them mentionned their will to leave.) And I've been searching for a colorist for more than a month to no avail (I got applications but not good enough for what we want.) So I'm still going to search. I'll keep you updated about this but the worst possible case would be that by the time I can release the first playable version of SoVR we still haven't found anyone, in which case, I'll keep working on the game until we find someone.

So on that part, things are tricky. Even on PeakJump's side, things will probably be irregular. He's switching between different projects so updates will kinda be bound to his pace. There could be cases of updates taking 3 months when others would take only 1. Please bear with us on that side as well ^^'

I also want to mention that since SoVR is planned to be a completed game meant to be sold when it's finished, there will be a small period of time where I'll work on things that are of no interest to you guys (translating the game in Japanese, preparing the advertisement for an official release, censoring pics for DLsite etc...) So please, bear with this as well. I REALLY need this release to work so people can be reminded of me (or discover me.)

That's all for this post. Starting next post, I'll go back to TH2 until the end of the year. And when I'll come back from Japan, I'll start posting stuff about Slice of Venture Remake so you can see the progress, what I'm planning to do etc...