So it's 2025 then

I thought about making this post tomorrow instead as the fool would very much be me, an April's fool if you will, but I think the tendency for these to end up as being overly self flagellating is not exactly healthy and so going forward I am going to try to avoid that so much.

I am very sorry about this being only the second post of 2025 not being until the End of March. That's obviously really bad.

On a scale of 1 to 10 where my eyes needing many hospital visits being a 9, the two incidents that hit me at the start of this year combined were barely a 3. On top of everything though from the last few years, some of which I've talked about, a lot that I haven't... well that was it apparently.

I just shut down, crashed out even, did result in some full on hyper fixation on the much more positive thing I have to talk about, but I also got into this vicious mental loop where I didn't want to do anything until the update was done but as my ability to do the update was proving resistant to that happening, I ended up doing nothing. Very dumb I know.

Once again, sorry, it's really not good enough and I have to do, and be better. 

Now the reason why this is the second post and not the first of 2025 is yesterday I posted a new game for everyone on the first notification tier and above. Following is the text of that post so if you're not on those tiers you get all the important context minus some preamble that I've already covered.

To give a quick explanation before moving onto what this is, I am working on the outstanding No Haven update, but it became clear today that it wasn't going to be done by the end of tomorrow. The idea of not putting anything on here by the end of March was frankly terrifying after so long already this year, and seeing as this was in a lot more complete state, I decided to put this out now rather than doing a text post without being able to provide anything solid to back that up. This was really not what I wanted to do given the patrons that have waited so long for their owed content, and sorting that out is absolutely my main focus. I hope they will be understanding why I felt this needed to be done so at least something is out, and I can start providing progress updates, posting art, etc, like I should have been all this time.

So what is this? It's a numbers go up roguelike numbers go up cardgame! Not the most original concept in the world I know. I wanted to see if I could do one in Twine though in an attempt to improve my skills, and this was the result.

All of the art used is from commissions for my games so there's not a single placeholder in there, and yes it is in the same setting as the other two. This really makes me happy as it's not ideal at all how much art I don't own is in the other games so it's great to have an entire game where every single piece is accounted for.

The background is an entirely new bonus commission from the always wonderful Valery Sazonov. That will be posted on here after the other commissions which have been finished in the last couple of months that I've been holding onto as the update wasn't done. As a preview of the next update for No Haven the work on this game's art also makes up a substantial part of the patch notes as I've also used them for new art there too to replace placeholders, and also for some entirely new starting options.

There are some commissions I've not used though are those featuring patron's characters. Didn't want to step on any toes by using those for a new different game without discussion first, but if a patron would like their art to be a unique character card in the game then I'm entirely down for doing that.

I really hope you enjoy the game, and if you don't then I hope you'll appreciate that this was an exercise to improve my skills as for so long now I've just been trying to get RAGS code to fit into Twine without being able to do anything truly new. This thing actually has some switch statements in there. Yes, really. Wonders of wonders, etc. I'm hoping I'll be able to use what I've learned here to make No Haven better.

There are 38 one star cards, 29 two star cards, and 12 three star cards. There's also currently a total of 24 upgrades to find over the course of the 12 streets that make up the game. So there's already quite a bit of content already. Been working on and off on this since September in my down time as a way to chill out since I wondered if this was something I could do now.

Those of you with long memories may remember me talking about a secret project years ago. Well, that was also a card game. I love card games, played a bunch of them since my first encounter with Magic the Gathering, and I've always wanted to make one myself. Just didn't have the know-how then to do it, and I couldn't work out how to do a UI for it that was adapatable to changed enough. After a bunch of trying including trying to learn Unity I basically I came up with something purely using art, but that would need to then be edited each time if I wanted to change text or numbers which clearly would prove to be a constant timekilling issue, and so the very lengthy design document I came up with has gone unlooked ever since.

So I'm definitely happy that this new concept inspired by the Keeper of the Aurora temporary minigame from the now defunct gacha game Alchemy Stars entirely works in Twine, UI, being able to easily make changes to cards, and everything. No, I had no idea Alchemy Stars was going to entirely shut down just two months later when I started, all I thought was it'd be neat to have my own version of the card game they did that they'd have playable for just a few weeks before taking it away again. and wanted to see if I could do it now in Twine.

The game is completable, and my best score so far is 4,968 though I'm very sure that you can beat that.

Known Issues

• This game was mainly made on my laptop (quite a bit of it in bed) as a way of getting away from my main pc. The UI does work on a big screen and it will scale, but you may find it looks nicer by reducing the height of the browser window.

• There's a weird issue with some of the cards that move spots where sometimes there will cause a big version of the art to be show behind the rest of the UI. This will go away if you start the night's work, and it's rare enough for it to happen that I haven't pinned it down yet.

• It's not lewd enough. There's some lewd in here with some of the card text, the nightly descriptions of the effects of the upgrades, but I don't think there's anywhere near enough currently. Do have some ideas for that, speaking of...

Future Plans 

I do have something in my mind for how this could be improved, but I would like to emphasise firstly that this really is meant to be a side project mainly aimed at developing my own skills in my downtime while also working on something creative that's not stressing me at out as much. No Haven will absolutely remain my main focus. It's the game all of you are here following me for, and I absolutely understand and respect that.

• Difficulty modes. Currently I'd say it's reasonably tricky to beat all twelve streets without running out of Patience though you can retry a failed street as often as you'd like. I'm just one guy, one who has the best knowledge already of what works, and so I'd like to see what other people think so I can work out what needs to be adjusted on the base difficulty, and then can be adjusted for an Easy and Hard mode. I'd be amused if people want to guess which card got hit the hardest with the nerfbat in testing.

• More cards, more upgrades, more lewd text including unit barks, and bad end game overs, or possible good ends depending on your point of view. My current thinking is that more you get through the game the more elaborate the game over text will tthen be to reflect you having earned more that can then get spent on being used to re-invest back into your future 'career'.

• Reusing content from No Haven like having an unlockable Beastiary based on the cards encountered, and using the name generator so the none Unique cards can have names generated for the description text.

• The basic gameplay loop I think works as is. It risks getting samey after awhile though. Currently I find the best way of playing is to do a street or two before coming back to a run. So I have an idea to occasionally break that up so rather than recruiting occasionaly you'll be given the opportunity to spend a new resource for benefits to keep things interesting.

• I'm considering doing a TF edition which will involve having the options of customizing a Dom, Sub, or Switch character.

As a thanks for sticking with me, really incredibly seriously appreciate that, I'm releasing this to everyone on the First Notification tier and above. Please let me know what you think, and bear with me as I work on digging myself out of the hole that I've made for myself.

So yeah a new game. Had some lovely feedback that people have been enjoying it, some things that are in need of polish, and my personal high score has already been crushed. Got some ideas from that on things I need to make clear like how the changing portrait does not represent 'you' the player, but the next member of the gang who will coming to collect the expected gold, and also the thinking behind how increasing Patience works.

This week I'll be posting some commissions that have been finished. Then I'll be doing a combined commission poll to make up for the ones that I missed. Will be a nice opportunity I think to get some pieces with 3+ characters as I haven't been able to do that in a good long while. 

After that, there will be fortnightlies again, there will be streams again, and most importantly there will be that outstanding No Haven update.

Said this at the end of the post of Streets of No Shame, but seriously it's so appreciated you're still here to read this, and I need to do better be worth your time and attention.

Thanks for reading and I'll be back tomorrow with some lovely art.