May 2025 Work Report

Hi! May was dedicated to reworking racial assets and other sets of visual content, as well as a bunch of work on the background.

Update of appearances :

This is probably the most boring part... Although I use more advanced models, there are still no opportunities to change the appearance in any way, too many factors influence it, so I will balance between what is in the game and what I can do given the skills and limitations.

This time I can only boast of remastering some features of the races in the form of horns, ears and other things, as well as more advanced skin materials, which allow you to make most changes without having to make them in other programs. At least the same pigment coloring does not make the skin look like foreign matte plastic =)

Overall, I tried to make changes based on the races that are already in the game, without overloading them too much at the moment. I have already started working on the editor for cosmetics and other things that do not affect the base model, it will not be ready at launch, but will definitely appear a little later.

I want to say right away about the facial appearance variation: I literally did not have time to do this given the plan for all the changes, sorry. I decided to postpone it to a later season of development, most likely close to post-production. I am going to make major changes to the roster of items that can be worn on the character, and first I need to decide what catalog of items the game will need. Deciding on the items that will be put on the head and adding new faces by adjusting them to the existing items is less problematic than adding items and faces at the same time, adapting the old to the new, and the new to the old, generally turning the work into a complete mess ...

New races :

The idea was to add new tier 2 characters. This is more of a roster of characters with special skills, appearance, etc. that add more value to them in terms of gameplay, and also this should mainly make them a target for loot (or grind, whatever you want to call it).

As the development plan gets closer to adding a "Contracts" mode (These are special tasks for which you can get a reward, in-game currency, and unlock more content), I am increasingly thinking about the contextual purpose of these tasks and what the player will be able to get at the end of their adventures. The new tier 2 races should be one of these things, naturally, you will still be able to try them out at the start of the update, but in the future they will only be available after fulfilling certain conditions.

"Dragonids" - are a more advanced class of demonids, have a denser constitution, possess enormous strength and scales.

Ability (passive):

• Second Wind: The fatigue bar fills much more slowly.

• Athlete: You can sprint while carrying a passenger.

• Warm-up: You do not spend stamina while sprinting unless you are being pursued.

"Chrysalis" - probably shouldn't think long about where I got the reference =). They were conceived as a dark race from the natural depths of the earth and the habits of the "Bee Hive", which would make them a serious threat.

Ability (Passive):

• "Without Borders": You can hover above the ground, which significantly increases the speed of movement.

• "Call of the Depths": You do not spend stamina and strength while underground or in poorly lit areas.

Ability (Active):

• Blood Ties: You generate resin that can be used to immobilize targets.

Negative effects:

• Tormentor : You spend all replenishable parameters (stamina, strength) twice as fast while in the sun.

• Pain Threshold : The fatigue scale fills twice as fast if you are in the sun.

• Measure : Mana regenerates twice as slowly when exposed to sunlight.

• Carry-on : You cannot fly if you are carrying a passenger.

"Fallen" - they are also celestials, more inclined to pacifism, like dryads.

Ability (passive):

• Martyr - The more restraints are put on the character - the less strength is spent when trying to remove them.

Ability (active):

• Former Greatness - You can impose magical shackles.

• Righteous Anger: You own a tablet that can create magical traps.

Negative effects:

• Taboo - Using restraints costs mana.

Ability descriptions mention mana: some races will have a refillable mana scale, which will be used to use individual means or skills inherent to these races. Such races include Arachnids, Chrysalis, Fallen. I thought that refilling webs or magic shackles as an item in the inventory is a bit strange and even chaotic...

Basic Equipment Update :

Probably the most obvious challenge for me was to make each group of characters look distinct from each other in the screen space. If some characters have racial differences it still doesn't help much, most of them wear tight clothes from head to toe and I don't like this trend too much because this is a project about medieval spies, not Totally Spies...

This time I decided to move away from the "Onion" clothes, because they were extremely poorly combined with new body models, so there was a need for more isolated clothes, which, strangely enough, look like clothes, have their own volume and give new shapes. I did some experiments and came to a result that suits me much better.

For now this will be the basic spy outfit, I know I've redesigned their clothes a million times, but I haven't come to any conclusions about how it should look yet. When designing it, I tried to keep some sophistication of the figure by using thicker and tighter clothes up to the chest line and added a more lush and spacious shape above. Since restraints can now deform clothes - there won't be any problems with this. For fans of the previous costumes, I can say that I haven't thrown these developments in the trash and I will definitely remaster them a little later.

I pay special attention to the slavers, as they play an equally key role. In my mind, they are strong and powerful women, all in latex, chains, spikes, etc. Since the setting allows for liberties in outfits, I worked to make them look close to the idea, adding more revealing outfits to their assortment and using mainly leather materials or materials close to latex.

What can be said about the new slave outfits - this is probably a reworking of already fixed ideas from the media. I can't say that I relied on reliable references, rather it was an extract of the concept of this clothing from anime and art from the Internet. I really wanted to replace the "potato sack" that all slaves without exception wore and add a little variety. So I came up with a tunic with different variations of the belt, as well as baggy pants of different lengths and wear. I also applied small developments with physical assets and added more metal details to their basic wardrobe, for example, broken shackles on the hands or feet.

Regarding the release of the update :

The update will be released at the end of June 2025.

I want to emphasize some points that are worth considering.

1. Some of the gameplay elements, mechanics, utilities that are already in the game may not be available (temporarily cut or blocked) in the game. I have restored most of the work, but I still will not be able to change some elements by the deadline, while I can announce some of these elements:

• Character visual preferences editor (Personal dossier in the shelter), only race selection.

• Cloth Palette, aka the editor for cutting and sewing clothes in the shelter.

• Mannequins for receiving clothes created in Cloth Palette.

• System for saving progress in sandbox mode.

• System for loading progress in the shelter and the main menu.

• The list of restraints will also be cut, all subsequent changes and the final roster of items will be announced later.

The full list will be announced in the post with the new build, I will try to fill in the missing ones in the near future after the release. I think it would be wrong of me to delay the release of the update too much, given that the project literally lives off Patreon sponsors, not very high-priority systems can be restored later in order to have time to release the update on time, I think...

At the moment, I have to restore the AI ​​on all maps, fix bugs during playtests and put the maximum set of functions in order, in general, everything should go fine, without serious delays (Most likely without any delays).

Regarding system requirements :

Overall, everything is fine!

Even if they change, the requirements will not be much higher than what we have now. I did some raw tests and this is what I got:

🖥️ Minimum :

• Windows 10 64-bit (Version 20H2).

• CPU: Intel Core i3 4170 or similar (Mandatory SSE4.2 support).

• GPU: GTX 1070 or similar (5GB Memory).

• RAM: 16GB.

🖥️ Recomended:

• Windows 11 64-bit.

• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-9400 or similar (Mandatory SSE4.2 support).

• GPU: RTX 3070 or similar.

• RAM: 16GB or more.

I still have a few major optimization updates to release after the update with a bunch of tweaks and options to change assets to simplified models and stuff, I think it will be possible to lower the requirements much lower.