State of the Game for January 2024

Hey, folks!

The State of the Game post is way overdue, so let's get to it.

A House in the Rift

I remember thinking to myself a year ago that there were about two years of development left for A House in the Rift. And after a year, it still looks to me like there are about two years of development left to finish the story. And if I were to guess, in early 2025 I'll be thinking, yeah, there are about two years of story left.

So, I'm not going to commit to a timetable. The show goes on! We have a lot of main story events planned for 2024, and while some of the girls' stories are getting close to their resolutions, there's still plenty of content left for each and every one of them.

Regular updates with new content obviously take priority over everything else, but in addition to that, we'll continue updating and improving the game as a whole. We're already working on a UI update, and we're planning a lot of improvements for other core components of the game. Better scheduling, better repeatable events, new mechanics, it's all coming.

We will keep remastering old content as time permits. Our current abilities are miles ahead of what we could do at the beginning when it comes to visuals, and I'm sure those of you who checked out the recent remaster of Rae's first animation can attest to the difference. Eventually, we will bring up everything we can to the same level of quality.

Riften Productions

By this point, we're pretty much a proper studio! Our core team expanded a lot over the last year. We are up to five people working on AHITR full-time, and a few more part-timers. And we will continue expanding into the coming year.

Not going to lie, we went through considerable growing pains, and there are still some aspects that need improving. We'll keep working on communications both within our team and on the outside. The dev updates will become much more frequent, we have big plans for our Discord server, and we're going to do our best to talk and listen better to you, folks.

All that said, our output has improved massively. The updates are getting bigger and bigger, the animations are the best they have ever been, and we're not stopping here. As we learn to better apply our growing team, we'll keep raising the bar. Our best work is ahead of us, I'm sure of it.

Bonus content in the Rift

I'm sure it's safe to say that you folks liked the bonus content we commissioned over the last year. The artbooks were a huge success, so we're going to continue producing them. They are fun, they do not detract from the development of the game at all, and there's so much more we could do with our girls! Oh, and we will be super happy to hear your thoughts about artbooks and any suggestions you might have!

Last year's Valentine artbook is coming back for a limited time in February after a year of exclusivity, and it's going to be accompanied by another kind of bonus thing. Just wait and see!

Into the Riftverse

And we have lots of other stuff planned. Some things like the casting couch series on Twitter are just asking to be made into a neat side project. If we ever get to a point where a part of our core team has some free time to work on something other than the main game, we'll definitely try doing some in-house side projects.

We recently did an experiment with the Halloween dream by cutting it out from the game proper and packaging it up as a minigame. I think this approach has some promise. The Space Dream, Rina's bonus game, and maybe even the Bunny Lounge could be separated into self-contained games, and then we could properly go to town with them. Expand them, add some new mechanics, storylines, etc., while not being confined to a dream within an already huge game.

We'll also see if we can cooperate with other teams on making new, even more distinct side projects. New perspectives could be fun. We could try out new tech and maybe even whole new genres of games. A real-time 3D game featuring a very embarrassed yet soaking wet Lyriel, anyone? This might even give us a headstart on one of our future projects!

Riften U

We haven't forgotten about it! Let me tell you what happened and what's going to happen with this little nightmare of a game.

When I first started planning the content for it (back when it was still just a bonus dream within the game), the storyline and the general structure were very simple by necessity. Basically, it was a Space Dream, but with all six girls featured in it. And even then there were problems. It was never going to look that good since our current rendering environment really struggles with crowded scenes. The amount of work required was still enormous. The story was basically nonexistent.

And while we were at it, you folks seemed to like both the Valentine and the Summer artbooks, so I decided to try and spin it off as a 2D game. No more pressure for our 3D team, more freedom when it comes to the story, all seemed good. And we were no longer limited by the constraints of the in-game dream, so we could add more story. And then a little more story. And hey, this is a neat idea, how about we work that one in as well.

And eventually, it all crumbled under its own weight pretty much right after I announced it. It hurt a fair bit since I was pretty sure it was going reasonably well. But no, the original concept just couldn't bear the weight of the additions, and the art direction took a wrong turn as well.

As of this moment, we're back to the drawing board. That's not to say that we binned everything we had, but we're making major changes to the plot, and we're redoing the artworks starting with character concepts. I'm hoping to unveil the new look for the game in the early Spring.

Out of the Riftverse

Over the last few years, I've been trying to diversify both our output and our income sources. One of our early investments into a friendly team already turned a fair bit of profit, and this in turn allowed us to continue expanding the studio even as the Patreon income was in a bit of a slump from 2022 through the first half of 2023. We've even benefited a fair bit from their expertise for the artbooks and Riften U.

Right now, our plan is to ramp up these efforts to diversify, and we already have a few things in the works. There's a media project getting close to the unveiling, there will be new games, and maybe even something unexpected. Our aim is to keep the core team working on AHITR until it's finished. For the new projects, we will either be cooperating with other studios or we will be assembling new in-house teams. We will be formally announcing all the new stuff throughout the year, so stay tuned for that.

A Mini Development Update for 0.7.4

Just so I don't have to make a separate post for that, here's the plan for 0.7.4. The Beta with lots of fixes for the dollhouse event is coming early next week. Most people on our team were on a short vacation around New Year's Eve, so we don't have any new content ready to go.

The Early Access version is a different story. It's about two weeks away, and it will include both the remaster of Lyriel's dishwashing activity with all the related lewd bits, and a whole new semi-secret animation for that event.

Then it's off to 0.7.5! The main story is almost certainly getting an event or two, we'll finish Naomi's current story arc, and then we'll see what else we can do.

Thank you for your continued support, folks! We'll do our best to push AHITR to new heights, and I hope you'll come along for the ride.

See you soon!