Direction Update (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

Today we’re updating the public build of SU from 2.1.3 to 2.1.6, which you can find on the Discord server under the Downloads section as per usual. 

Almost more importantly though, we’re also making a few announcements. Most of these won’t come as a surprise to regular perusers of the Discord channel, but we feel like a more formal announcement and explanation is in order. 

Starting with update 2.1.9, we’re going to focus on finishing current character paths – beginning with a focus on Terra. Our goal is to hopefully bring at least one girl’s story and scenes to completion per update. 

We’re going to do this by suspending animation work until the game is closer to completion. Animations take a LOT of time and effort to get right. We know we’ve created the expectation that most sexual interaction in the cell content is meant to be animated, but it’s just not feasible with the amount of content we have left to go. 

We are NOT cutting content from the game. Every girl will be taken through her full story arc as intended, following the pattern we’ve created. The scenes will just be still images, for now, instead of animations. This will hopefully allow us to deliver a lot more content per update and start providing the material we know fans have been wanting for a while. 

Right now we don't know if Sunset will be able to fully complete one character per update. We won't have a solid idea of how smoothly these completion updates are going to go until after the yacht event is done and Sunset can start moving in that direction. Once he has a better idea on how much he can deliver per update cycle, we’ll let you know. 

Of course, as we move forward, our fans and especially our patrons – a lot of you likely reading this – will have a say in the content/arcs we focus on completing first. So be sure to be on the look out for polls and discussions along those lines. 

The Main Issue with SU’s Development

There seems to be a lot of confusion about our resources and how SU is created, so we’d like to make something abundantly clear…

Sunset is the only person who has ever done any work related to SU, from the art to the code. It's all him. 

Getting someone else into SU is really difficult at this point. Art-wise, it's neigh on impossible to find someone who can draw in the same style at the same quality level - even harder to find someone who can do it remotely as fast as Sunset can too. 

Code-wise, the game is made via a visual editor and is ALL kinds of tangled up and glued together. So for another developer to come in and start helping out, it'd take a while for him/her to get caught up on all the nuances and knots - on top of creating a brand new development process. This would cause a chain reaction of setbacks, and we know people would riot if we missed an update or pushed the update schedule back further. Hell, people lose their shit if there's just a few less pictures in an update because Sunset got deathly ill for two weeks. 

So we're in a bit of a Catch 22 when it comes to SU's development and the simple fact is that it's going to remain a one-man show.

Have there been mis-steps? Has priority maybe not gone in the right direction to please most people? Maybe. But no one can really take away the amount of work Sunset has, and will continue, to put into SU. And as long as you have someone like that on a game, the rest just takes time and tweaks.

“What’s My Money Going Towards Then?!”

We’re glad you asked! 

If we wind up with enough money to literally throw it at SU and solve some of the aforementioned issues, we’ll happily do that – and we’re currently in the process of evaluating stretch goal options to that effect. 

That being said, this new shift in development focus is largely due to a shift in our business model and goals. We want to grow a studio – not just a single game – that people can get behind and trust to deliver solid consumer-friendly NSFW gaming experiences. (Consumer-friendly in-so-far as pricing and value propositions for our patrons. We’re not watering down our content, planning to go strictly vanilla or anything like that! XD)

We’re currently finishing up work on a small Scooby-Doo parody game that we have slated for release later this year. The highly talented artist behind the project is Newman, who’s also been working on his own game – Ben X Slave Quest. If you’re really into parody projects then you should definitely go check out his Patreon page too.

We’re also in the midst of planning an OC project following Scooby, which Sunset will be the primary artist and art director on – only this time, he’ll be part of a team and that’s all he’ll have to handle. To be completely honest, parody is a really volatile grey-area to work in. At any point someone could come in and shut us down on a whim, so we’re looking to test the waters in the OC realm. We’re grateful that our parody work has created a foundation for us to grow a small studio, but we feel it may be time for us to graduate from parody following the publication of our Scooby title and the completion of SU. 

We’re really excited about the future of our studio and using everything we’ve learned from our work thus far to bring you OC NSFW games like you’ve never seen before. (Maybe it’s a little soon for us to be talking about this but we’re too excited to contain it!)

Our hope is that many of you will join us for the ride and help support our studio as we expand in a brand new direction. The support of our fans, patrons and non-patrons alike, are the only reason we’ve been able to make it this far and we intend to do the best we can by all of you every step of the way.  

We hope you enjoy the latest public build of SU and want to sincerely thank everyone who’s helped us begin to achieve dreams we never thought were possible. 

To the fulfillment of old promises and founding of new beginnings!

Sincerely,

- Gunsmoke Games