Schedule update for 2024

Here's an update on how things have been going for the studio so far, and what the plans for next year are!

Cufflinks & Cages

C&C Just launched on Patreon, Itch, and on Steam, and it felt like we were taking a risk on a niche outside our core audience, and also a new non-linear formatting. So far things have been going really well, feedback has been positive, more-so than expected.

We've just launched our second update, which introduced a post-it note system which would tell you when you had a scene unlocked, and ready to show up. The nature of all of the scenes are currently RNG based, but as time goes on the game will become more and more structured, where as you unlock things, you will be less likely to repeat the same things, and be guided into unseen content.

For the future we're looking at a few features to help guide the player through the game, including a milestone check menu, where you can see exactly how much of the game you've experienced, as each scene is broken up into multiple different outcomes, you can see what percentage of each scene you've completed. We will also be adding more scenes of the in-game characters instructing you on what you should be doing, especially as this is thematic but it will give you direction in your choices, as well as a sequential main plotline of interlinked scenes. The goal is to make the game feel like there's a lot to explore, without specifically making you feel like you're in full control, you're a submissive after all.

Sleeve Shock

Sleeve Shock has now been live for four updates, and has been designed around changing what we've learned from Shackles, as a narrative driven game. The newest feature that we're currently expanding on, and has only just recently been introduced to the game, is a map feature that helps you more clearly visualize what route you are pursuing. In Shackles each dialogue option is marked by the character route it sends you on, in Sleeve Shock multiple parallel map locations are activated based on what choices you've made so far, so that your routing is clear. It also feels more thematic that you're traveling around the different places in the city, rather than confined to one central location.

The game is still very new, and while C&C has the advantage of an extra writer to make its development faster, narrative wise. Sleeve Shock has been focusing more on making the gameplay feel like a sequence of impactful scenes one-after-another, and is opening up to a more expanded over-arching plot, and slowly introducing more characters as you visit new places. The goal is to make Sleeve Shock feel a lot like a living world with many options on how to move through it, which is one of my concerns for Shackles where there is 3 main characters for you to show interest in, filled out by a small contingent of disposable background characters.

I'm excited to see how Sleeve Shock develops in 2024 as the character art and background art together have an amazing look that keeps me excited about writing in the cyberpunk genre.

Shackles of Ellswyn

It's hard to deny that Shackles struggled to keep its footing this year. Cubze abandoning the project without warning, left me struggling to find a replacement artist, and the one that I felt was a good fit for the job, was very heavily criticized by the fans. Then after trying a new artist again, we were criticized that the art direction wasn't consistent, which felt a little bit like a no-win scenario. 

That said, I still believe that ExecutePhase's more angular style matched the dominant, and aggressive dungeon scenes, and that Miggy's softer style matches the feminization content very well. The current plan is to expand on the current feminization arc with the witch, and slowly intertwining the queen into the plot line, Keeping Miggy on as the main artist for the game. Once this is played out, we will revisit Jane as Jane currently has the least 'screen time' of the three.

We also have plans to go back and give some more quality of life changes, we recently did a big JOI overhaul, and will continue to do more things like this as monthly updates are released.  Some of these features are a pain to do a small update every month, and are better to do a big batch from time to time. One of these features is VA, which we will be doing a big VA overhaul and coming back and adding a lot of voiced content to the existing scenes to help them be more consistent with the earlier scenes. Especially with some of the more impactful scenes getting full lines read, rather than repeatable asides, for example MC's final feminization is an impactful scene for both MC and the Witch, and it should treated as such.

Overall Scheduling for game releases

Finally the scheduling update, as the image reads, we're now moving towards a more consistent release schedule that is evenly distributed through the month, so that you'll have more regular content released for you to play through. These windows snapped into place, based on where the update cycle was for each project at the time, but for the last few months we've been upholding this window, with the plan to continue to do so through out the year.

The main, thing to note is that C&C's 'third Monday' is the most volatile of the three, as some months has 5 Mondays, and some have 4, meaning that C&C is either dead centre of the month, or is slightly towards the back end. All of these update windows are based on AEST, which means that it will be Sunday's for a lot of folks.

You might also notice that tomorrow, Christmas Day, is a Monday, and the day that Shackles of Ellswyn is supposed to be updated, and we'll have our update live, for you to fuck yourself silly during destroy dick December, whenever you're ready for it.

Final notes

It's been a big year, and things move really slowly, but we're committed to consistently releasing content for you as fast as the artists can draw it, maintaining a high quality. We've grown a lot in the second half of this year, being able to start two new game projects, and we have plans for more in the future that we hope you'll stick around for. Our commitment is to providing a high quality game experience in an underserved niche, while creating interesting and immersive stories.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and enjoy a moment of rest before starting the new year.