BreedTown 3 Retrospective / Character Release (Patreon)

Hey y'all 👋

I've publicly released the character models for BreedTown 3 who I created originally for it (Ellie, Mia) as well as those who I edited heavily enough that I felt they could be released on their own (Noe, Nero)

Pixiv post is here:
https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/118765839

I also think that since it's been a couple months since the release of BreedTown 3, now might be a good time to talk about its development, BreedTown as a series, and some of my plans for BreedTown 4 (be warned, this is going to contain some light spoilers for what I have in mind there).

I'll preface all this by saying that I'm happy with the game for the most part; I DO think it's probably the most directly high-quality thing I've made, it turned out pretty close to my original vision, I learned a lot throughout its development, and most of the feedback I've received has been positive. But that being said, not everybody liked the direction I took in BreedTown 3, and it has some undeniable structural issues.

So let's get into it! Fair warning, this is going to be long, and it may even end up being incomprehensible to anybody besides myself. If you're only interested in the BreedTown 4 info, then feel free to skip to the end. My aim is to answer some questions people have had to the best of my ability, so if you don't feel I've addressed a particular point in a satisfactory manner, then comment down below (though please understand there's some things I'd intentionally like to leave vague / open to interpretation)
And, of course, please make sure you actually PLAY the games before reading this 😅

BreedTown 1: Getting into Game Creation

Let's start with BreedTown as a series; what is it? That's something that's changed a lot since I originally started, but surprisingly little since a certain point after.
I have a tendency to overthink things, and think too far ahead. When I first started making hentai content online, it was barely even a hobby: "Haha, what if I started posting these lewds online? That'd be so cringe. Unless...?" Like that. But then eventually my tendency kicked in, and I started taking it very seriously, and treated making hentai online more like a job. Which is something I'm actually quite happy about, I feel like I really discovered a passion I had never dreamed of before!
The case is more or less the same for BreedTown 1. Even though I was already deep into making hentai online by that point, it was like "Haha, what if I made a hentai game in RPG Maker and posted it online? That'd be so cringe. Unless...?" Like that. It wasn't ACTUALLY my first attempt to make a porn game in RPG Maker, but it WAS my first attempt that I actually saw to completion. The original idea was just for the whole thing to basically be an homage to Meet'n'Fuck Detective RPG, but with an added emphasis on my breeding fetish. At the time I hadn't started college yet and was working two jobs during the day. Developing a game for the first time alongside those "real jobs" was a lot harder than I expected; moreso than making the usual comics/renders I had up until that point. I was used to posting stuff every week or two, so a project that took a few months to complete was crazy for me. But precisely BECAUSE it took so much effort, it was also incredibly exciting, so my tendency to think far ahead kicked in even harder than normal.
By the time I was even just halfway through BreedTown 1, I already had a whole plan for a trilogy (Yes, that's right, trilogy, not quadrilogy. More on that later).

The plot I had in mind for this trilogy, which has changed less than you'd think over time, went roughly like this:

1. Intro to the world: Brandon Reed and his breeding ability are introduced, along with Fertech.

2. Developing the world and rising tension: A scientist researches Brandon to try and understand his ability. She fails to fully comprehend it, because the narrative focus isn't meant to be on the how and why of his ability. Brandon's archnemesis, a cop who wants to bring him to justice, is also introduced.

3. Climax, consequences, and resolution: Brandon's cop rival arrests him, and the last game revolves around the court trial. The cast is made up entirely of girls from the previous games. Unlike the previous games, which had largely static endings, the ending of this game will depend on certain actions the player takes or does not take.

Despite all this thought and effort however, after BreedTown 1 was published, I wasn't entirely sure if pursuing this trilogy would be worthwhile. Making a game at all was an experiment for me, since I had never imagined game development, even something as simple as an RPG Maker game, to be something other people would be interested in seeing from me. But it ended up being my most popular work at the time, and I got a LOT of requests for more BreedTown content. It felt like it would be a waste NOT to make another BreedTown game, and from that point on, it was basically guaranteed that I'd pursue the story I had in mind to the end.

In summary, BreedTown in its original conception was a brief, thoughtless, fun breeding romp, but by the end of the first game I wanted it to be a multi-entry game series with a defined story, characters, arc, and ending. All while still containing plenty of horny breeding action, of course.

BreedTown 2: The World Expands

Relatively speaking, it wasn't all that long (maybe a few months?) after finishing BreedTown 1 that I started on BreedTown 2. I was very excited to make another erotic game, and to further develop the world and characters I had established in the first game. I figured this sequel should be bigger and better, so I was aiming right off the bat for close to double the number of girls Brandon could impregnate, with nearly all of them being newcomers. But the majority of the girls in BreedTown 1 I had made all myself over the course of a couple years, and had used up most of the ones that I thought would work for the setting. I could make a few new ones, but not THAT many. So I opted to mostly use characters by other creators (asking for permission first if I could, of course).
I gathered up a list of potential character models scraped from around Pixiv, Kenzato, and the Illusion booru. The list was probably over 100 girls long. From there, the development of BreedTown 2 was pretty freeform; I made the map, and then worked on filling it up with encounters with a variety of girls. I'd make a location, look through my list of girls, and choose whoever felt right for the spot (more like whoever I felt like using). This process was also interspersed with reaching out to the creators of the girls and asking permission to use their characters in my free game. While most of them were fine with it, or even excited about their card getting used, there WERE some creators who asked me not to use their character. This didn't change the overall roster size at all, but some of the girls who made it into the final game weren't my first choice for a certain location (the purple haired nurse, for example, was originally going to be a completely different character model)

So, let's talk about Nero's role in BreedTown 2!
As it is, they only appear in the post credits scene through voice, swearing to bring Brandon Reed to justice. But my original plan was for Nero to show up throughout the game in disguise (wearing a fake moustache and glasses), pestering and questioning Brandon after a few of the sex scenes. The character would remain an enigma until the post credits scene, when this strange figure removed their disguise, revealing themself to be somebody who was actively hunting Brandon. That would then segue into the final game of the trilogy, when Brandon is arrested.
The only problem was the character model itself.
Very often, I envision a character before I choose or create a model for that character. With Nero, however, it was the opposite: when I saw the model by Number32, I fell in love, and the character of Brandon's rival formed AROUND the model, rather than the other way around. I reached out to him through Discord in February as I was beginning development on BreedTown 2 and asked permission to use Nero. For this character in particular, who would have big story significance, I felt it was EXTRA important to get the go-ahead from the creator.
I didn't get a response from him until July, as BreedTown 2 was wrapping up development. He DID give the okay, fortunately, but unfortunately it was too late for me to implement my original plan for Nero (in retrospect I definitely could've added even a little SOMETHING with Nero's model to BreedTown 2, but I think at the time I felt that since my original plan hadn't worked there was now no point. Amateur mistakes abound)

By this point as well, I had left one of my two day jobs and started attending college. This meant I had more free time than before, so I could start thinking more ambitiously about the types of games I wanted to develop. I got into animation, and wanted to make animated games. And, I wanted to make BreedTown 3.
But the main problem was that I didn't feel like I had gotten the chance to properly set up Nero as an antagonist to Brandon for the final game of my first trilogy. Then, I had a thought: What if I made it a quadrilogy instead, and had the next entry star Nero?

BreedTown 3: Hits and Misses

As I said, the primary goal of the NEW BreedTown 3 from the outset was to establish Brandon's rival, and set up events for the final, FOURTH game. Both of these things were meant to have been done in BreedTown 2, but I suppose I had just gotten carried away with making breeding scenes, haha.
But, I figured, this game being solely dedicated to those two things might be more effective than if they WERE just subplots in BreedTown 2. So I tried to capitalize on that in a few ways, which mainly involved changing the formula of the previous games. I've gotten a lot of feedback over BreedTown 3, and I'd like to try and address some things in a list format:

The setting
BreedTown 1 and 2's settings (a small town and a red light district) were more lighthearted and horny, which was fitting since playing as Brandon is mostly a lighthearted and horny experience. But since the player was now seeing things from the perspective of Nero, somebody who hates his guts and thinks he's a purely destructive force, I wanted to use a setting that was more depressing. Additionally, I wanted to draw attention to a certain aspect of Brandon's character with the setting: Since he is a tool of a corporation (Fertech) who uses pregnancy to control the lives of others, the setting of BreedTown 3 should parallel that. Thus, I conceived of a Yuland office which controls the lives of its employees.
On a technical level too, since a complaint I've seen with BreedTown 2 is that it's too big and eye-searing, I thought a single dull building would be an interesting change of pace. Since publishing BreedTown 3 however, I've been told that the setting is interesting, but too depressing to be horny. This will be a recurring theme.

The mystery
In BreedTown 1, Olivia was behind everything, and in BreedTown 2, Natasha was behind everything. Since in BreedTown 3 you'd be playing as a detective, I was deeply attracted to the idea of the player having to DISCOVER who was "behind everything" this time (I think my love of Persona 4 influenced this). The mystery wasn't supposed to be insanely difficult to solve, just enough of a head-scratcher to be rewarding for a properly attentive player. I have no experience writing mysteries, but the general feedback I've gotten is that I did pretty good considering that fact (although the need for Noe to spout so much exposition after you catch her is definitely a sign that I failed to properly set up and foreshadow way too much information. I'm a firm believer that the best twists are ones which require little explanation after their reveal, and I did not achieve that here).
The other problem with the mystery plot starring Nero is that most of the dialogue couldn't be as flirtatious and fun as in the previous games. Again, I've been told that the plot is interesting, but not really horny.

The cast size
The idea to jump from BreedTown 2's cast size of 33 women, the largest in the series, to 10, the lowest, wasn't a technical limitation. Even if the game hadn't featured the shift to animation, I still would have kept it that low. My goal was never for every entry in BreedTown to be bigger than the one before; that was supposed to be something specific to BreedTown 2. I want each entry in the series to have its own 'flavor'. Since BreedTown 3 has extra story emphasis on the damage caused by Brandon, I wanted to try making a smaller cast who the player gets to know more personally. And for the sake of a mystery plot, I also thought a smaller cast would be more compelling. Quality over quantity, as they say.
I don't regret the cast size at all. But I DID want the game to have more sex scenes; originally I intended for each girl to be breedable multiple times. Part of why I dialed that down WAS a technical limitation; animated scenes are much more time consuming to make, and have much bigger files. Since I can only post a game on Itch if it's under 1 GB, filesize IS something I have to keep a close eye on. Another part of the reason is that the development time of BreedTown 3 was several months longer than I had anticipated when I began (half of this was the animations, the other half was irl events).
But the MAIN reason I dialed back the number of sex scenes is...

The sex scene format: flashbacks galore
This is the biggest misstep in BreedTown 3 bar none. The core problem. The flashback format for the breeding scenes sounded really interesting on paper, especially for a mystery game, but by only about halfway through BreedTown 3's development I regretted it. It was highly restrictive for the scenarios I could write, it made character development harder to portray (especially a problem since the cast was smaller and supposed to be more developed) and worst of all, it interrupted the more 'freeform' style of development I used for BreedTown 1 and 2. Since a big part of the mystery is establishing a timeline of events, I had to carefully plan all the scenes' times and locations. In the previous games the player can just walk around and get multiple sex scenes within five minutes without thinking too hard about how Brandon is doing all this so fast. But when the game revolves around the player thinking hard about the order in which girls are impregnated, and how long Brandon spends with each one, all in the span of a single day, the old style of gameplay becomes impossible.
In BreedTown 1 and 2, when it comes to a character I want the player to fuck, I'd just have her standing somewhere wearing a sexy outfit, you'd rizz her up, then knock her up, usually while she wears said skimpy outfit. Sometimes this would take a single conversation, other times it'd require completing some task. But I couldn't do that in BreedTown 3, because the sex scene itself took place in a different time and place. For example, Hellen Smith wears skimpy gym clothes for a good chunk of the game, but I couldn't do anything with that, because it wasn't what she was wearing when Brandon fucked her. Ultimately, even though I WANTED to add more sex scenes, the format of flashbacks, all taking place on a set schedule which the player is required to piece together, made it so that it wouldn't make sense to add more than I did without overcomplicating the mystery
Some months ago I ran a poll to decide whether I should focus on finishing the game first and patching in content later, or take more time to just add everything in before release. There were potentially two sex scenes affected by that, both of which were threesomes; Hellen and Mia, and Caroline and Noe. While I DID add Hellen and Mia's threesome, I eventually realized, to my great dismay, that there was absolutely no way I could fit in a Caroline and Noe threesome in the timeline of events I had established. Yet more amateur mistakes abound.
I had an idea at some point that the format for BreedTown 3 could have, rather than being flashback based, involved you playing as Nero following Brandon around impregnating girls, spying and taking notes all the while. At least that way, you'd be seeing things in real-time, and I'd have more flexibility on the sex scenes. But I convinced myself out of it because I reasoned "There's no way Nero would just stand by and watch hapless girls get knocked up from the sidelines, even if it WAS to catch Brandon Reed." But it's only now, as I type all this out, that I realize that's EXACTLY WHAT THE ORIGINAL PLAN WAS IN BREEDTOWN 2, SO YES NERO WOULD DO THAT!
Towards the end of BreedTown 3's development I had an idea for one extra, optional sex scene: when you turned on the power in office 3875 next door, you could go into the camera room there and find old footage of Brandon Reed knocking up Trudy Stork. But to be honest, by that point, I was sick of writing flashback sex scenes, so I scrapped it.
I've seen at least a few people say they really liked this style for the sex scenes. If you're one of those people, I'm glad you do! I'm happy some people got enjoyment out of it! But I won't be likely to reuse it ever again, and if I were to do BreedTown 3 all over, I wouldn't do it this way. Once again, it's more interesting than horny.

Nero
Overwhelmingly, people seem to like Nero a lot, which I'm quite happy about. Changing protagonists mid-series can be risky, and not everybody appreciated the change in perspective (I've seen at least a couple people say they think Nero is boring or overly edgy), but they seem to be the minority. Thank you for liking Nero :D
That being said, I think when it comes to a porn game, the player character should be the focus in most sex scenes; whether they're doing the fucking, or getting fucked. It's a bit awkward for the player to constantly be on the sidelines. I was already planning on Brandon being the player character again in the next BreedTown game, but learning this the hard way has made me think more carefully about other game ideas I have.

Nero's abortion
Again, this is one of those things that was basically guaranteed to happen, even if I DID have all the events of the story happening in real-time.
Since BreedTown 3 as it currently stands is an 'extra' in the original series outline I had, and the true confrontation between Nero and Brandon is yet to come, there was never any possibility of me having Nero get pregnant and give birth to Brandon's baby in this game. That would just be jumping the gun! The only other alternative would have been to skip a Nero sex scene in BreedTown 3 altogether, and I'm sorry but that just wasn't on the table either. I wanted to animate Nero getting fucked, dammit!
As it stands, I'm content with Nero being the only character in the series capable of directly countering Brandon's ability via abortion. They are Brandon's archnemesis, after all! I understand some people really really REALLY dislike this aspect, and I understand why it can be a turn-off in a game focused around the breeding fetish. But I hope you can at least understand why, from a narrative position, I made the decision.

As for the technical "how" Nero was able to do so, the in-universe explanation, you'll just have to look forward to BreedTown 4.

Also, a minor but interesting criticism I received here is that when it's revealed that Nero had an abortion, the reveal is rather casual, and isn't given proper narrative weight. My response to that is that it is revealed in a Yuland report being read by Police Chief Steinbrenner. Neither the Yuland report writer nor Steinbrenner are aware (at least not of the full extent) of Brandon Reed's breeding ability. Therefore, neither of them know how strange it is that Nero didn't become a loving mother (and if the Yuland report writer DOES know, then it isn't information they chose to disclose to Steinbrenner). But I trusted the audience to catch that detail and be surprised!

Hellen Smith: Queen Racist
A less significant point than the others, but I still feel like I should address this.
So I knew since BreedTown 1 that at some point in the series, Brandon was gonna knock up an overtly racist girl. I want him to nail women from all walks of life over the course of the games, whether they be good or bad, and some people find the idea of a racist getting impregnated by a person from the group they hate hot, so, I figure it was a character type that I should include.
I had considered making the Country Gal in BreedTown 1 that character, but reasoned that it didn't fit the character: she's not overtly racist, she's folksy.
In BreedTown 2 I also didn't think it would make much sense, since the people of the red light district are generally pretty open-minded. I probably COULD have contrived an explanation for an uber-racist to show up, but it just didn't feel like it fit the tone of the game. Since BreedTown 4 is intended to be made up of girls from past games, that meant 3 was my last chance. Her being British is honestly incidental, I could've written the character basically the exact same but with her being American.
There was a point in time when I would have made this character more subtle in their bigotry, but to be perfectly transparent, I get a lot of weird DMs and comments from white nationalist types, and ever since Elon took over Twitter, I see a lot of "Hellen Smiths" around the timeline. My disdain for this type of creature has increased a lot over the last couple years, which may have come through in the character of Hellen Smith.

Why the Yandere?
I wanted one of the cast members to be a returning character. I ALSO knew I wanted to have a horror segment where the player went to a neighboring building. So, bringing back the Yandere just sort of made sense for what I had in mind. Some people seem to wish I had brought a different character back, and I certainly could have picked a past girl out who was now a Yuland employee, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Conclusion
The BreedTown 3 we have is not the BreedTown 3 in my original outline for the series, which would have been the last game. It's an extra, meant to accomplish some things I didn't feel I was able to adequately do in 2. I may have been better off NOT naming it BreedTown 3, and instead naming it something like "BreedTown: Another Story". You know, really lean into it being a side-game. Or maybe someday down the line, I'll feel more strongly that this was the right course of action.
If my original goal was for it to be setup for the finale, then I think I succeeded. But, I think it could have been better (and hornier) on its own merits too.

BreedTown 4: Nothing Lasts 4ever

Well, regardless of whether you loved BreedTown 3 completely or wish it was different, I should hope you're excited for the finale! My plan for it hasn't really changed that much since my original outline, even now with it being the ending to a quadrilogy rather than a trilogy.

The idea goes like this (light spoilers here):

In the beginning of BreedTown 4, Brandon Reed will be arrested. From there, a trial will occur to determine his guilt or innocence. A trial which will take place in Mathersville itself: the location of the first BreedTown, but now a very different place compared to the small town it used to be.
Brandon gets out on bail, and as the trial occurs in the background, with Fertech lawyers duking it out against the prosecution, Brandon is encouraged to win the battle in the court of public opinion. This, of course, entails going around Neo-Mathersville impregnating girls to show that there's nothing wrong with what he does for a living.
The cast is made up entirely of girls from past games, who have all come into town as witnesses for the trial. It wouldn't be EVERY character who has been bred before of course (that would be infeasible) but would include: Olivia and her maid, Roxanne, Nene, Vivian, Natasha, Takano, BreedBot, at the very least.
Also, as Brandon is out on bail in a high-profile court case, it's only natural that Nero is assigned to him as a bodyguard/watchdog, making sure he doesn't try to skip town or do anything unlawful. In gameplay terms, Nero will function as a second party member to Brandon.
There'll be a day/night cycle, in which breeding a girl during the day will progress things to night, and breeding a girl at night will progress things to day. Different girls are available at different times, and even different days. I haven't fully decided how many days the game will take place over, but it'll be somewhere between 3-7. This means that it won't be possible to get every sex scene in a single playthrough, you'll have to replay it to get them all (figuring out how to make a main menu sex scene gallery is a must).
Unlike the previous games, which had largely static endings, the ending of this game will depend on certain actions the player takes or does not take. Both Brandon and Nero may live, be free, end up behind bars, or die.

There are two HUGE concerns for me as the developer for BreedTown 4: filesize, and dev time. In case it isn't clear from that description, I want BreedTown 4 to be fucking gigantic. Like, as big or bigger than BreedTown 2. BreedTown 2 took less time to develop than BreedTown 3 despite being bigger, but it didn't have animations. In fact, despite its map and roster size, the lack of animations made it so that even filesize wasn't a problem. I could potentially kill both these birds with one stone by making BreedTown 4 have static images for the sex scenes again. But I'm not incredibly keen on that, and I don't know if the majority of fans would be either.
If I make BreedTown 4 as big and complicated as I want, and have fully animated sex scenes like I did for BreedTown 3, then I expect it could take 2 years to develop from start to finish, and be multiple gigabytes in size. 2 years is a long time for me to spend working a single project, as somebody who fondly reminisces about the days when I was posting content on Pixiv every couple weeks (and that's just 2 years when I START on it, there's projects I have in mind before I even get to that point, which could mean that BreedTown 4 would be 3-4 years out). And, I don't know if fans would be down for that either. As for the filesize in that situtation, it couldn't be posted on Itch, which basically kills the game right away. Apparently it's possible for Itch to give permission to some people to post games that are over a gigabyte, but I dunno if they'd make that exception for me, haha

Down the line, I like the idea of making small animated games, and big games with static pictures. Ironically, it makes me wonder if having BreedTown 3 ALSO have static images like 1 and 2 would have been a better move, at least for the sake of stylistic continuity.

Make no mistake: I'll do everything in my power to make BreedTown 4 happen someday. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that it will be the magnum opus of my life, and will be so amazing that the brains of all who play it are superheated into a gaseous state from pure hype and horny energy.
But, I haven't figured out the logistics quite yet. And for the time being, I'm happy to be taking a break to work on smaller things.

Anyways, that's about all for now. If you've read all this rambling, then you have my thanks. I hope I was able to clarify some questions you have, or this was at least an interesting read. If you have any other questions, feel free to comment down below. Though like I said at the start, please understand there's some things I'd intentionally like to leave vague / open to interpretation.

I've got a lot more planned for the future, so as always, please look forward! ^^