0.30 Reflection and 0.31 Preview

Hi, perverts! Thank you so much for your understanding after a slow month. It's been a super rough time in the US lately and October hit me especially hard. With a bunch of other things going on in my life and a struggle to make ends meet personal-budget-wise, I also had an unexpected amount of difficulty with this expedition.

Before I get into that, I'll note that I've put up a poll asking about how much audio should be in the game. Options range from removing all sound from the opening to adding full ambience. If you want to weigh in and support me at the $5 tier, please share your feelings!

Thoughts on "The Empty Hull"

While I'm satisfied with the most recent release, I feel like it isn't my best work. I really struggled with how to tell the story I wanted and make it a good fit for the game.

If you haven't played yet, I won't spoil it, but "The Empty Hull" is an expedition where you set to sea with Cathy Liu to investigate an apparent ghost ship. I wanted to make some direct use of Barrowport being a fishing town and also bring in some of the classic boat-based horror of (big racist) Lovecraft, (medium racist) Poe, and the general tradition of ghost pirates and maritime mystery. Additionally, I like the idea of tying each major character to at least one expedition in each act, and this is a good one for Cathy in Act II.

The immediate challenge is that a sea voyage doesn't fit the standard pattern for Ruin Me expeditions. Most expeditions are three major parts that can be undertaken at your own pace, each of which takes one chunk of time, with a nightmare for the beginning and for the end. However, it would be super awkward to set out to sea and return three times, and I wanted a scene of being stranded, which doesn't really fit that pacing. I settled for having the bulk of the expedition in one big continuous sequence, which meant it was a daunting size and had challenges around maintaining player attention.

Another big issue is that the story has a lot of moving narrative parts: multiple vessels, a companion character, a twist about the identity of the supernatural agent, and difficulties with transportation. I try to have at least one erotic scene in each expedition, but I didn't ever get a good concept for how you'd fuck the "monster" in this one. It still has a sex scene, and I don't think it feels too out of place, but it's still a bit awkward.

Finally, I deliberately chose to tell, not show, the conclusion. I struggled for some time with how to wrap up the expedition. The interesting part to me about the ending was the confrontation on the rocks, and with how long the writing had taken me already, I didn't want to delay it further with a bunch of discussion and logistical negotiation. I'm actually pretty content with using the Theresa postmortem as a way to wrap things up, but it would have been nice to have a more interesting coda.

Next Release

I have no idea what the next couple weeks will be like for me! I don't want November to go as slow as October, but I also don't want to set any overambitious expectations. That said, I'm already roughly half done with a Theresa training scene in analingus, and I have strong ideas about revisions to the journal user interface. I also have a few ideas from the patron polls that I like: a Theresa play scene in flogging, and a minor ruination sequence in orgasm denial.

We'll see how things go! I hope you are all as content and healthy and hopeful as you can be. I hope my work makes things a bit better. If you have any comments, questions, concerns, or suggestions, I'm always happy to hear from you in the comments, the DMs, or via email at: phanes@phanes.me