October 2025 Devlog

The Sunken Chasm is finally finished - save for the sex scenes - and I haven't written a proper devlog in a couple months now.

My work has been haphazard since July or so. Without going into detail, I had a lot of time taken up around then by online friends wanting to meet up with me for my birthday. Things went sideways, and I didn't get a whole lot done with the game. Around the same time, both "credit card gate" (Credit card companies began pushing back against NSFW games on Steam and Itchio, to this day any paid games are still hidden on Itch.) happened, as well as our (now previous) landlord basically telling us to get out because he wanted to give his house to his daughter.

So, from July until around midway through last month, my life has been pretty hectic and I've been trying to work on the game as much as I can throughout it. This was the first month since June I've been able to really sit down and settle into just focusing on the game, and I managed to get a ton of things done. Skipping the art poll helped save a lot of time - though I did lose some time to those commissions I had done. (So, I can probably bring back monthly art polls)

One of the biggest things I've been working on (when I've had time to work on the game) throughout the past few months has been the story, and I finally sat down to tweak and refine everything I had going on after last month's build. Something I wanted to avoid was making the plot feel aimless, I know it's both porn and a video game, so plot isn't something a lot of people are going to pay attention to. Personally, I care a lot about a game's story, as well as porn stories (when they bother to write them), so it's something that's been troubling me.

The Sunken Chasm was honestly just meant to be more of a transitory area between Direhook and Valenrim. While working on the original demo, I hadn't given much thought to it and only sort of knew how it'd link to Valenrim, with a vague idea of how they'd connect plot-wise. That kind of mindset, especially while working on something as huge as a game, is wasteful. It took me too long to realize that if I'm going to do anything in the game, it must be purposeful, else it'll be wasted effort and not only will I feel it subconsciously, but it will kill my motivation to work. I can't just have what's effectively a long hallway, with the thought in my mind "Oh don't worry - things will pick up right after this part!" For one, I'm the one who has to spend hundreds of hours building it, but players also have to play through it! Why would I knowingly have "fluff" areas? It's nonsense.

I think part of that mindset has grown from not wanting to "rush into" things, but that's just the thing - stories, games, comics and whatever else need that momentum. If they tepidly trod along, it'll lose both my own interest and the audience's.

So, I wrote. I figured out how the Sunken Chasm could support the plot in other ways than just getting Naomi from point A to B. I started thinking about events that happen later, things I could set up or establish, etc. Ultimately, it lead me to thinking more about how the game ends, and how I could make it more satisfying. The game's ending, of course, is the nucleus for the entire story, I had thought it out about a week into making the game.

But, it wouldn't have landed correctly. Naomi would've just been knocked up by the final boss and that would've been that. No build up, tension, nothing. Sure it'd work for a porn game, but it'd be unsatisfying for something that's shaping up to be a multi-hour adventure.

Tailbound actually had a similar issue, and in a way, so did Gunwhale. In Tailbound, Ren and Jonas end up as a couple by the end... Just because. Jonas was there, Ren was there, I didn't have any other characters to work with (besides Ashe, who canonically died with no way to save him until fans begged for an alternative ending where you save him) and I wanted some kind of reward for all of Ren's efforts.

In Gunwhale, a big reason I quit working on it was because I had spent all this time building up this threat in the titular gunwhale. I had spent three and a half chapters talking about this thing, showing the destruction it had done, really hyping it up - only to have never actually designed the damn thing! When I started thinking about how it actually functioned or looked I was completely stumped, and the name itself is just retarded and non-threatening when you think about it for even a second.

Tailbound suffered from a lack of foreshadowing and tension, with things sort of just happening around the protagonist. Gunwhale ironically suffered from the inverse, where nothing was happening fast but things were being established and alluded toward. (This is likely because I had noticed this problem while making Tailbound, and a lot of Gunwhale was written during the latter half of Tailbound's development.)

I think I have a very "natural" way of letting things flow. While both of these scenarios have a fatal flaw, that flaw isn't one of believability or character interaction. Ever since I was a kid and up until now I've always been told that my dialogue and characters have a sense of realism to them, which is something I've maybe taken for granted in my stories. What I've struggled with is having that same level of flow in the plots themselves. Again, I think I've been for whatever reason afraid of "rushing things" - or just having anything in general happen.

So, while Naomi's adventure is one of spontaneity, it must be meaningful. Things have to happen, and Naomi has to be the cause of that action - as well as effected by it. Crazy, I know. But for whatever reason, I've always found it unbelievable when writing my own stories that anything could be changed by anyone - maybe I'm a terminal pessimist.

This problem of purpose I've uncovered and have ran into over and over again has really had an unintentional trickle-down effect throughout the entire game. It's made me reconsider every aspect of things I'm adding to the game, weighing how purposeful they are to the player, the story, the gameplay, and whatever else. I think tackling this is really helping me maintain - and even grow - my motivation toward the project.

Usually around the point of a game's development where I have to start adding content is the worst. I love the spontaneity of early development, being able to quickly add in ideas and mechanics, it's always been building off of that I've had trouble with. Continuing the mindset of spontaneous addition is what ends up bogging down development, at some point there has to be a toggle between that mode of thinking, and a mode of considering purpose instead of just doing stuff because it's cool. (Though, the rule of cool still dictates a lot of my early decision making, which is then refined into better ideas.)

Anyway, uh, Skantish. The game I'm making. I added a few new characters: Aja, Linia, and Keith. Aja and Linia have been in the works for a while if I recall. Of course, Aja was added in last month's build, and while Linia's immediate role in the story isn't much changed from how I initially envisioned her, she'll play a larger part in the next area's story than I originally intended. That problem of purpose I just rambled about crept up with Linia in particular, and Aja to a lesser extent. I figure, if I'm going to spend all this time designing, spriting, and drawing portraits and sex scenes for a character, they should have a larger role in the plot than something that's just thrown away! So... You'll be seeing more of Aja and Linia later on.

Sunken Chasm exists mostly to establish important characters. I kind of missed that opportunity with Direhook as it's entirely Kobolds, however there's a few allusions to later events there, and it works well enough as a tutorial area that at least establishes the setting itself.

I hate to spoil what I'm planning, but Keith is going to be the love interest for the game. He's easily what I've spent the most time writing and thinking about, with his and Naomi's dynamic and relationship being the second. I established early on that Naomi is from an exiled tribe, but still a Zahnel. (I think in early builds, referred to as a Fenrikin) The primary Zahnel tribe which still inhabits Rythe is very advanced, having near total dominion of the Rythe mainland. However, they aren't particularly common to see outside of Rythe, they keep to themselves and look down on the other clans (Usagi, Vexoi, Nekomi, and monster tribes like the Kobolds.) Their rapid advancement has come at the cost of the... "Naturalistic" tendencies of other tribes. The reason Naomi's tribe splintered away from the main Rythian Zahnel tribe is due to this conservatism.

Keith initially acts as a foil to Naomi, and allow both her and the player a glimpse into what typical Zahnels are like. Of course, Keith is a somewhat extraordinary example of Zahnel excellence, as he's the prince to the entire Zahnel kingdom on Rythe. Giving him more reason to act the way he does, and driving the initial conflict between him and Naomi. (And of course, the fact that all of the tribes are on the verge of a massive war mostly propagated by the Zahnel.) Both characters will grow and learn from each other throughout the course of the story, with a really cool finale in terms of both plot and gameplay that I don't want to spoil.

I was also going to work in this character named Rhodie, to make up for making Linia non-futa (Despite introducing her as futa in that old dev log.) Rhodie would be a hyena, which is a tribe I haven't come up with a name for yet. I still think I might add her in the next build, as she could be useful for that area's story, in which she'd act as Erik's captain.

Speaking of Erik, one of the last things I did with October's build was go back and re-write his dialogue during the game's intro to make it more consistent with how a Usagi (especially one that's a pyrate) would react to seeing a Zahnel. Before, he was way too jovial and just happy to see Naomi, which is completely alien to how someone in this world would actually react to her.

So, the Sunken Chasm gives us a glimpse of Naomi's eventual love interest, and it also gives a (very small) peek at a much larger problem that will crop up again later on in the story. Naomi's insatiable heat may be a small thing, but Rythe and the world around it would be much worse off without it, in the end.

If you haven't yet, you can get Monthly Build 8 by clicking the above image.

Besides finishing up the cutscenes and quest lines in the Sunken Chasm, I also spent a lot of time re-balancing the entire game. This was a rather painstaking experience, and I probably didn't ace it, but I hope it's a step in the right direction. Many people now have commented on how easy the game is, and what I at first thought would be a simple matter of balancing numbers turned into days of theory crafting and thinking, followed by two full days of testing the entire game and re-playing it multiple times.

I've taken some other feedback into account as well, such as some people getting mad at the game for certain things feeling Dark Souls-esque, while at its core it wants to be a fast paced experience. This is true, in the sense that at first I imagined Skantish as a sort of methodical game. But after playing it over 5 times before releasing this month's build, it's stuck just how much Skantish will never be that kind of game... And it's better for it.

I've tweaked and reworked certain mechanics, even adding animation cancelling into the game to make it feel less stiff. A lot of rebalancing, as well, came from really thinking in terms of how useful certain weapons/modifiers/items are, and how they fit into gameplay. For example, I don't think I had ever rebalanced the damage swords deal after adding their new three hit combo. Which means, of course, they've been dealing three times as much damage in the same amount of time you could only get off one swing previously. There's little changes like that everywhere that I've had to sit and really think about, play with, and tinker on to get the game feeling better.

Balancing and getting Skantish to feel completely right will probably be something that takes the entirety of development, but I figure it's better to start now than later - especially when I've got supporters like you playing the game right now.

That's all I've really got to say, though. All that's left to do for v0.2.0 are the sex scenes, and I'm going to change something about how the gallery system works internally - but that's boring. Though, I also plan on retroactively adding Boss Defeat sex scenes, since it feels weird being killed by Zarok or Simasix but still getting the normal game over.

I'm not sure how long the scenes will take to make, but I anticipate them being done before November 15th. (Or a little later.) Either way, there will not be a monthly build next month, only the v0.2.0 Zone Build: Sunken Chasm and related hoxfixes and patches until December's monthly build.

Thank you for your continued support and encouragement!