State of the Game - November 2019

Hey everyone!

First things first, I want to say thank you to all of you who support me. All my Patrons, followers, those of you who contribute your ideas, leave feedback and write reviews on f95, upvote and comment on Reddit. Hell, all you who just play the game and don’t even like it that much, you folks make it all worth it. Sappy story time, just a few days ago I was half-asleep and waiting for the animation to finish rendering, came across a thread asking for game recommendations on Reddit, mindlessly commented with a cheeky self-plug, and then woke up to see multiple comments praising the game, and this is on a random rec thread. It’s a small thing, but it totally made my day if not the whole week. 

I think I already talked about this before, but I was in mobile game development before quitting to pursue this whole porn game making thing. There was always this disconnect, the games we were making were supposed to make money, everything else was a secondary concern. And now I’m making something that I want to, and people actually like that, and want to support it even if they don’t need to. This is a huge privilege, and I’m enormously grateful for this opportunity. Again, thank you!

Big picture and goals

Speaking about support, we’ve passed the continued part-time goal. And this means that I’m going to continue working full time at least for a while longer! Confusing, yes, but long story short, with all my game-related expenses and my rent taken care of, my savings will go quite a bit further. And if we manage to reach the full-time goal throughout the winter, well, it’s going to be super awesome.

Being an eternal optimist, I think we can do it, and I’m starting to think about the next goal. I could put in something like “private yacht and coke” there, but I believe that there are a few pretty expensive things the game could do with. My absolute dream would be to add voiceovers and SFX for all animations. I’d also love to have enough spare cash to pay someone to help me with writing, I believe that just adding more small talk and more alternative dialogue lines will elevate the experience.

But I’d like to hear your thoughts on that, so I’ll just put in the generic “big improvement” goal for now, and once we clear the next goal, we’ll have a big poll on what we want to add to the game. But this is a topic for later discussion.

Current state of development

I wasn’t happy with my performance before, I am unhappy with it still. There is so much to do. Earlier scenes are in desperate need of rewrite and rerender, this is what new players see, and compared to newer scenes the old ones are, frankly, quite shit. Still haven’t got around to trying to fix missing triggers once and for all. Need to redo “route end” screens. Need to add map navigation. Need to update the walkthrough (oh crap I forgot all about it). And need to keep adding new content.

Yet, the move to bi-weekly updates helped somewhat. With shorter times between releases I’m way less likely to go totally overboard with events.Right now a mid-size event without animations takes me about a day and a half, and animations add another day on top of that. So in normal circumstances I should be able to make 4-5 new events for each release and get some sleep! 

But there’s always something. Last week I finished making a decently-sized event with animations and then realized that there was a huge issue with almost all the renders that I just didn’t notice somehow. That’s the main reason the v0.3.6 got delayed. And then on wednesday I found out that ice cream cup texture got overwritten, and I couldn’t restore it from an early backup because that backup somehow became corrupted. Thanks, Acronis! So ice cream usage is missing from v0.3.6 again. But enough with whining and excuses, let’s move on to something more optimistic.

Poll results

Camera mini-poll

Boy, this was quite a humbling experience. I always assumed that everyone loved the jumping camera, and, well, the results speak for themselves. I’m going to tone down the movement in POV scenes a tiny bit, and greatly reduce it for 3rd person scene. I will also start gradually adding POV/3rd person switches (and new loops) to scenes soon-ish.

Dreamscapes poll

Space-Rae won, gonna be in the game in v0.3.7. Quite a few people want to see Cait captured and ravaged by a viking brute. Who is also MC. You know. Dream stuff.

Second Big Fetish Poll

This one is much more conclusive than the previous fetish poll. Obviously FFM group sex is in the lead, followed by public sex (you cheeky pervs) and vidya cosplay. Honorable mentions go to ahegao, sleep sex, virginity (will be optional, I think), and training. Those themes will be explored further in the upcoming updates, and I will do a bit more specific kink poll on what exact scenarios and pairings you guys find the most exciting.

Micro-Lewds Poll

Pretty clear results, you want to see girls doing slightly pervy things on their own volition. I have a number of ideas for this, will start adding those ASAP. But if you have something you’d like to suggest, feel free, but remember, this is for super short, 3-4 render scenes!

Alternative clothing choices for Rae's repeatables

Everyone wants to see Rae with her small breasts out, so I’m going to add this option for attic repeatable scenes. Finally going to expand at least one of those scenes in v0.3.7, too.

0.4 Girls/Fetish Poll

And a big one. Elven slut is the winner. She’s coming to the house in v0.4. Need to finish quite a lot of things before everything’s ready for her arrival. Mainly, it’s new associated environments and story hooks so she won’t feel totally out of place. I want to get her in the game with at least about 4 events in her story. And that brings us to the next section.

V0.4

December. Most likely the latter half. v0.4.0 will have the aforementioned elf girl, new locations, and I’ll do my best to remake the intro scene. I’d like to include some cool things in the intro, too, but more on that in later dev updates and polls.

v0.4.x cycle will have some story progression besides adding the new girl. There will be some forays into MC’s world and probably some etherwalks to other realms, too. Every realm needs ton of environment work, though, so we’ll see how it goes.

Cait’s gonna get her kink story line in this cycle. And it fits in nicely with the big fetish poll results, so, cool. Of course, there are going to be more general in-house activites and minor scenes, too. That’s about all I’m comfortable with disclosing for now. But there will be more details in the upcoming dev posts.

Patreon page and tier updates

I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m probably going to move and rename early access tiers a bit. There are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, having this big of a gap between alpha and beta access just feels weird, and Friend level is a bit useless in its current state. And recent change in the way Patreon displays creators’ pages to non-patrons is an absolute mess. Those of you who already pledge don’t see it, but if you’d like to, switch to incognito mode and go to my page. You’ll see this new design. Potential patrons have to scroll down to see the about section, and you can only see three tiers without clicking on “show more levels”.

And this is a problem, because absolute majority won’t even notice that there are other tiers. And when you have “beta access” in one tier and nothing in others it’s pretty easy to conclude that there’s nothing else here. So, Neighbours’ “Beta access” will be renamed to “Early access”, but it will remain essentially the same, one week before the public release. “Beta access” will be added to Friend level and will be two weeks early, and Alpha access will be upgraded to three weeks before the public release. Please note that I will only do that switch when I’m able to release two versions back to back, preferably, in one week, so you won’t have to wait three+ weeks for the next version if you’re pledging at Neighbour level or waiting for the public release. I understand that this change might upset some of you, and I apologize for that, but I believe that this is necessary for this whole thing to become truly sustainable.

I am also looking into creating a one-time “special offer” bonus thing. More specifically, an lore/art book. I don’t have much more to share at the moment, but I’m in talks with artists, and I think this could be a cool little thing.

Update v0.3.7

I’m going to try and do this one in one week, although I probably won’t be able to. It’s going to include two dream scenes (with animations and stuff), expand a repeatable or two, and maybe add another minor scene with one of the girls.

And this is all I have for you today. Thank you for reading all this. And for playing. And super extra special thanks to those of you who support me and allow me to continue doing this  curious little thing.

💖