6/10 Status Update (Patreon)

I'm writing this in an airport waiting for my flight right now so this'll probably be a longer update since I'm just killing time here anyway. So let's go over all the projects currently being worked on.

I'll start with Netoria. My plan for this update is to get it in June. Now, since it' just one half finished level that should be pretty easy. But rather than just release the last level, I'm going to use this time to add some other improvements. The main one is adjusting how gropes work a bit in the final chapter. They kind of go away a bit, a I think I could make better use of them. For NTR routes, that means adding new ones that escalate the interactions a bit for the higher relationship levels. And for the pure route, I want to add in another NTR back door. I had one planned when the war content was still in the game, but I think I've thought of something to replace it. So on the Carwyn-Gwen route, keeping the guys away from her in those final few levels will still matter. This additional wrinkle will be pretty short, with only one extra scene and epilogue changes. The theme of it will be netorase, since people have been asking for that a lot and this would be a good place to fit it in. The problem with netorase in this game in general is that Carwyn and Gwen don't get together until later in the game and you rally can't have netorase with a crush, at least not to the same extant you can regular netorare. So in this new "route" there'll be one big netorase scene at the end, and then more in the epilogues. Like I said it's pretty limited but it will add a nice wrinkle and a reason to pay attention to spacing even up until the last level.

The other changes I want to make are integrating a few routes better. Specifically the Gwen slut route because that got added mid development and isn't really referenced in the beginning at all. I feel some of those scenes still have a tinge of the more pure and innocent Gwen that was around early on. Rather than the very sexually active one that's in the story now. There's also some inter-route interactions that could be cleaned up, especially with female Carwyn. So that's the plan. Get the final level done, and spend any extra time this month on some story improvements.

Next up is At the Mountains of Friendship. I put out some preview builds yesterday, so if anyone has any comments about those please let me know. We're getting pretty close to the launch of the game now, I'm still targeting next month. Things are getting pretty solidified. Almost all the art is done, all 12 girls are implemented, the majority of the writing is in place. Sound is lagging behind, with only 7 of the 12 needed voice actors having their lines recorded and music and sound effects needing a good amount of work. But a lot of stuff is more or less done, which is exciting.

This is the biggest game I've ever made in terms of an investment of time and money, even more than The Monster Within. So a lot is riding on the success of this game. I've been doing my best to make sure it's as good as it can be, but in the end I'll only know if it resonates with people once it's out. Early feedback has been pretty positive. I've heard lots of "I like the game a lot" and not very much "this sucks", but the general public cares a lot less about my feelings than the kind of people I give the game out to playtest. I guess we won't know until we know. At this point it's too late to significantly change anything regardless so I sure hope I've made the right design and artistic choices.

Lastly, there's Naked Ambition. And Futa Oasis too, but I'm not going to talk about that one publicly until we're close to the Steam launch. The first Naked Ambition release since the hiatus is going to come out soon. Either right after the Netoria epilogues update, or before it if it ends up getting delayed a bit. That update is more random events and has been done for a while. I didn't want to release anything until content was coming out regularly. Having one update, and then another six months before the next one seemed worse than just one long break. The plan for content updates is the same as it was before I paused work on the game. It's the end game crisis, and then endings. With Ulric being the first to get them based off a poll that must be at least a year old at this point.

The only hangup is I need to find a new artist again. The old one hasn't answered my emails. It's actually kind of tricky to find erotic pixel art artists, but I'll manage. I'm happy to start working on this game again, I think any burn out I felt towards it have been refreshed. It better be since it's been on hiatus for a year. Everyone who's still following mainly of Naked Ambition, thank you for your patience. With my new game production schedule, I shouldn't have any long breaks like this again. I'm going to try to hold firm to my one main project and one side project system. This will mean less surprise games like Netoria and Futa Oasis were, but also that the public ones will get finished faster and more consistently. The one side project at a time system does have a problem in that games have a long lead in time before they're public ready. ATMOF will take like a year and a half, for side projects it's usually at least three or for months of solid work. I think the solution to that is to continue with sporadic updates to the finished side project while the new one is ramping up.

Well it looks like my flight is boarding pretty soon. I got to burn some time and you got to get an update. Everybody wins, at least if you actually like reading these. I hope you do, but if you're just hear to play the games and see preview images this one was probably pretty boring. Sorry, more pictures of people fucking each other soon!