Jan Update - Release Date and A Waifu Wonderland "Retrospective"

Happy New Year everyone!

I didn't have time to do a full retrospective look at the year of development of Waifu Wonderland in the last post, so I wanted to talk a little more in-depth about the history and my thoughts on how development has gone this first year. If you'd just like to see the progress, then feel free to jump down.

Some of this I've talked a little bit about before, but here it goes. When I first started Waifu Wonderland, it was actually much much different. It was also started a long time ago. I don't remember exactly when anymore, but it was more than 10 years ago. The game's original build was in RPG Maker VX Ace, and I switched it over to MV to test the engine before starting work on A Perfect Ten. WW was originally inspired by Haramase Simulator, and meant to use existing characters/artwork in the same way. This was long before things like Patreon were well known, and long before it was used the way it is today. At the start, I really just wanted a way to combine all of my favorite CG into a single game. So that way I could still have a game experience with all of them, rather than having to jump around games. I put together a decent build, but then it got tucked away into the back of a HDD. And that's where it sat for a very long time.

Jump forward more than a decade, and my previous games have failed. I made Holiday as a short game as a sort of preview/proof of concept for the MMC series. It was made more as a marketing thing than anything, to try and attract people to future projects, so it was released completed. Then I started working on A Perfect Ten, which has it's own little story of development, and Teach Me. But Holiday didn't really do very well and didn't attract many people. Then APT and Teach Me both didn't do very well either. For context, these are the numbers from Itch. Holiday made $10, and has 1800 downloads as of now. APT made 0$ and has 4000 downloads/plays. Then Teach Me made $10 and has 700 downloads. That's today too, these numbers were much lower during the release windows, and all of them have gotten a boost since Waifu Wonderland released. Needless to say, they were failures. There's a lot of reasons why they didn't do well, and I did my best to learn from them.

So, I decide to go into my projects folder to clean it up and look for a new project . This is where I keep ideas, in progress projects, and finished projects. It was getting pretty out of hand, so I wanted to clear up some space while I decided what to do next. I was sorting things out into, decent, good, great, and the best ideas. Everything else was being deleted.

I got to Waifu Wonderland, and almost just deleted it. I was looking for projects that I could make more legitimate and potentially put out as a retail release. But for fun, I booted it up. To my surprise, it was actually pretty fun. I don't normally enjoy the games I make, since I usually know how to break them, but I was really having fun with it. My mind started racing with ideas of ways to adapt the concept into a new game. Then I realized that I didn't really need to make something completely new. The only thing in this game that was a problem was the artwork. I had always wanted to try making a 2D game again, and at this point I was almost done with art school and felt like I had the skills to do it. That's when I decided to make Waifu Wonderland what it is today.

I spent some time developing an art style for the game, then I converted this page into the Waifu Wonderland Patreon. Originally, this page was for my coloring work, but it never took off. It's old enough that I have access to some things that newer pages don't get, so I wanted to keep it. Anyway, from there you can see the history of the project and how it developed right here. Just go down to the oldest post.

Development did take some turns I wasn't always expecting though. Like I never intended for pregnancy to be such a focus for the game. I wasn't even sure if I was going to include it. I'm glad I did though. The addition of the lab storyline and the pregnancy mechanic are what really made the game start to feel more like a game, rather than a proof of concept. From there, it's been primarily about adding content. At this point, it seems like all the game is really missing is more stuff. The base mechanics are good, there just needs to be more of everything.

Overall, Waifu Wonderland isn't doing as well as I had hoped it would, but I am really happy that the game has been doing decent. It's done well enough that I've been able to keep working on it, which is the best thing I could really ask for.

Progress -

Alright, with that all done, it's time to talk progress!

For those that played the Patron Exclusive version, you'll have gotten to see the collectable rework, new scenes and unlocks for the starters, pregnancy for Kaori and Ayako, and unlock for Mirai's repeatable scene.

Things have started to slow down a little bit at work, so I've been able to get back to working a bit more. If you didn't check out the last Poll Results post, this is the order of priority, and what I'll be working on implementing. I included one more thing I forgot to put in last time too.

Add final lab character (done)
Do lab ending (in progress)
Finish Angela's storyline
Add pregnancy and new scene for working girls
Add new scenes and outfits for Rinko, Freya, and Aoyagi
Add 4 more rare women
Add Random Beach Babes
Open the Hospital with Random Nurses
Finish the office building and add the Office job and Random Office Ladies
Add Seika's final scene and pregnancy
Add Minori (Akari's daughter) and her storyline
Add the rest of the MMC characters and storyline
Add the rest of the rare women
Add collectable sets into the hospital and office building

If I get through all of this and still have time, I'll decide what to do from there. It just depends how much time I have.

The final EDB has been programmed in, including her repeatable scene. I'm working on finishing up the ending to the lab storyline. The actual lab story stuff is done, but I still need to implement Hikari's repeatable scene, pregnancy, and then make a credits sequence to include. From there, I just need to do some testing to make sure everything works. Much like the lab opening, this part is pretty long compared to everything else in the game. This section should take the longest up until the office building. Once it's done I should start speeding through a lot of it. I also started adding in Freya's new outfit. It ties in with the lab story, so it was natural to add in the intro while working on the other lab stuff. It's going to involve a short little quest and have some specific unlock conditions, so that will all be put in once I get through the other stuff. But it's been started. I'm really hoping to get through all of this, and be able to do even more, but it just depends on my work schedule. Things have slowed down a little bit, so it should be more than possible to get through everything in the list before I move.

Oh, you want to know who ended up being the final lab character? Well, there's no official artwork yet, but I did put together a quick sketch.

Introducing Juno -

The final lab character's name is Juno, she's a minotaur!

I went back and forth a lot on who I wanted the final lab character to be. But decided on going with what I thought was the most unique. A lot of the other ideas would work as just a costume or a girl wearing a headband. So I can potentially include them later as just normal women. What I can't really add in later, is a really big character. So I went with the minotaur. I've never really been into muscular women, so I just went with a thicc and tall design instead. I thought that would fit a bit better with the game anyway. Besides, if I'm able to find a new computer that runs MV, and am able to continue the story, I'll need some shelved ideas to pull from. So the others may eventually make it in. As for Juno's backstory...

Juno is on the hunt for a husband. Unlike other monster girls, minotaurs mate for life. However, they still need to eat cum like other monster girls. So to find a mate who can... withstand their love, they go around sleeping with men until they either break or become satisfied. If the minotaur is satisfied, they take the man as their husband. Despite being somewhat rough when looking for a mate, minotaurs are known as great wives who will do anything and everything for their husband. Juno has yet to find a husband...

And that's the backstory for Juno! Like all EDBs, you'll have the option of just sending her home. I plan on doing the artwork to finish out the lab story first, so I hope you look forward to seeing the full completed artwork!

For an idea of what she's going to look like, her main inspirations are Janner's character Tuli, and then the character Excellia from Corruption of Champions. Juno will be most similar to Excellia, but Tuli is what gave me the initial idea. Here's a couple of reference images I'm using.

Excellia - artwork by LMSketch

Tuli - artwork by Janner

Juno will be thicc and dark skinned with red hair like Excellia, and will be tall like Tuli, but things will change from there. For one, I'm not going to be giving Juno any kind of tattoos or anything. I'm also not going to be giving Juno the two toned hair like Excellia has. Juno will be wearing a cowgirl inspired outfit with booty shorts, chaps, and a bikini style top. Then she's going to have a somewhat messy ponytail and bangs. I plan on giving her red lips instead of the yellow, but I may change that depending on how it looks. Red on dark skin can be a bit tricky to get right, and with Freya already being mostly red with dark skin, I may go with an entirely different color scheme to make Juno standout a bit more and be more unique. I feel like the dark skin is the way to go though. It makes her feel more like a minotaur specifically. But we'll see what happens when I see it. Then lastly, I'm planning on giving Juno black horns that are more on the side of her head pointing up, instead of white ones going forward like Excellia or the ones on front like with Tuli. I haven't decided if i'm going to go with the more elf-style ears or not. I probably will, it just depends what they look like with the horns.

Anyway, I hope that gives a good idea of what she's planned to look like. Since I couldn't do the artwork right now, I wanted to at least give some kind of description. I hope you look forward to her completed artwork!

New Poll Soon -

Lastly, I wanted to talk a little bit about another poll I'm going to be doing soon.

Basically, since all I'll be able to do for Waifu Wonderland is work on the artwork, I'm going to be working on the project I briefly mentioned in the previous poll. Where I'd be doing 3D animations. I have a couple of ideas on where to go with it, but I wanted to get people's opinions before moving forward with it.

I'm also planning on doing at least one poll to decide the order some characters get their artwork added in.

Release Date -

To ensure that the potential final build of the game is out before I move with time to fix any bugs and go through the proper release schedule, these will be the release dates for what I'm calling v0.5.

Waifu Early Access - February 15th 2025

Waifu WIP - February 22nd 2025

Waifu Fan - February 26th 2025

Public Release - March 1st 2025

After this release, updates will only include artwork until all of the content in the game gets artwork. The idea from there is to do 5 more updates to get the game to 1.0. With each update completing a different batch of content. Like one to finish the lab, one to finish Angela's storyline, one for the new areas, etc. With each one including some random/rare characters as well.

Donezo -

Next month will be the last update before releasing what may end up being the final build of Waifu Wonderland (minus the artwork). I'll talk more about specifics then on how to identify placeholder characters then. In case you want to wait until the artwork is finished before you try to seduce them/do their story. I also want to mention that I am still trying to figure out ways to continue development. I've been trying any new possible solutions to get MV to work, and am going to be checking thrift stores for laptops. MV doesn't have high system requirements, so basically any laptop made in the last 10 years should be able to run it. Assuming it will launch.

And that's it for this month's update!

Thank you everyone for supporting Waifu Wonderland this first year! I hope you look forward to where the game goes from here!