I'm back and I have plenty of things to talk about

Hello everyone!

First of all, Happy New Year!

The Blue Axolotl Team is back from Japan! We needed a couple extra days to catch up with the jet lag (and personally, I haven't finished catching up :x) hence why I'm writing only now. As planned, we all particpated to Comiket 103. That was one hell of a ride. A physical one but a funny one. We bought lots of doujins (even if on my side almost 20 artists were already sold out when I arrived at their booth XD) and it gave us some fuel to supply our pervert engine :p

The whole trip was nice. Very physical but in terms of being free of mind, it was a bliss. Now we're all fired up and ready to work!

So... Where do I start? I'll start with The Hunter 2.

About The Hunter 2

As you all already know, The Hunter 2 is supposed to be on hold during the whole year. BUT, while I was away (and even a bit before), I've been reported a couple of bugs. So during this week, I'm planning on correcting those to have a cleaner version. When those bugs will be corrected, I'll reupload the whole game to avoid having to upload patches. Once this is done, unless something game breaking is reported, there should be no more work on TH2 for the rest of the year (I'll probably correct the bugs and if they're many, I'll upload a patch, but ideally that's shouldn't happen.)

I'm going to do something with the game that I DON'T usually do so be very careful about what I'm going to say. Starting February 1st, the game will be back to the $10 tier. If there's a necessity to upload a patch, it will be in a $5 tier post but the game itself will be back at a $10 tier. So if you're a $5 tier right now, be sure to download the game either now or when it'll be uploaded around the end of the week before we reach the end of the month.

Why am I doing this?

Lots of people use Fanbox or Subscribestar as shops. It's natural. Not everyone wants to actually help the funding of a game. But I've always said it was a bit unfair towards people funding the game that people spending $10 or even $5 every month get the same amount of content than someone coming at the end and paying $5 once. In the case of TH2 it's even worse. The game is far from being finished, sure. But we're talking about a game that, if you're playing for the first time, has between 7 and 10 hours worth of game. That is more than many full games sold on DLsite at full price. So if people want to use Fanbox or SubscribeStar as shop during 2024 to get TH2, they'll have to pay $10 instead of $5. I find that fair considering what they get in exchange.

Another thing about TH2...

I'm planning a post during this week that will serve two purposes: 1) Showing you some numbers and information about what has been done on TH2 during 2023 (so you can get a global idea of the progression) 2) Give you a pretty long form to fill so I can gather some feedback about TH2 because as you know, I almost got 0 feedbacks for the whole year so I find that v0.3 is a good milestone to ask you all kind of things about the game (and a bit about Blue Axolotl in general.)

And that should be all for The Hunter 2. Now let's move to the part everyone's waiting for:

I'm going to break up things in 3 parts for SoVR: I'm first going to go over the general content planned for the game, then I'll explain the consequences it'll have on the overall planning through the year and I'll finish with explanations about the goals I want to reach with that game. As you can expect, I won't dig too much in the details as I'm planning to go over many of those points more deeply in future posts.

About the content

I've already said it but I'll say it again here: Slice of Venture Remake is meant to be a short game. The original one already was (it was shorter than VP/SoV and VERY short compared to SoV2) so I don't plan on changing that. I have already laid out most of the core of the game, the only thing I have left to do is to ACTUALLY play the original game to make sure I don't forget some details that NEED to be kept in the remake for coherence purpose with SoVO and SoV2. But overall, I know exactly where I'm going. And that's why I need to explain a bit my thought process about the game and how it'll be built so you can understand the part about the planning.

The original Slice of Venture featured "modes" (Hardcore, Hardcore + and Hardcore X (FF8 reference that wasn't subtle at all x)). This is something that was nicely welcomed back in the days. But on a personal level, as the creator, I was never satisfied by it. It was great for smut purpose (people could play the game at the level they wanted to play), but I heavily disliked the fact that I had to precise "If you're playing on + or X mode, then the story isn't canon". From here on, I had two choices for this remake: Either use the same formula again or find a way that could fix the "canon" problem while keeping the choice of content. And I found a solution I deem satisfying. The game will have two sides that you'll play one after another. The first side you'll play will be the main story. The canon one. It'll follow more or less the same path than the original game (with adjustments, of course) and will have H content that will fit the progression of the girls between SoVO and SoV2. This way, everyone will play the same story and any new player won't be lost when playing SoV2 after this remake.

THEN, will come the "post-game" content. A bit like with MMORPGs, this is where the real fun begins. After the end of the game, you'll be prompted that you can keep playing, but everything coming next will be non-canon. If you do so, something will happen scenario-wise, and you'll be able to keep on playing the game. And that's WHEN the fun begins. Since I don't have to try to stick to canon stuff like I had to in the original game and since EVERYTHING will be non canon, I can do WHATEVER I want. I want a Kuro x Reiko scene? I can have one! (In the original game I had to resort to fucking hypnosis to get that kind of content. And considering how hypnosis is flooding hentai content nowadays you can already be sure there won't be a single hypnosis scene in this remake :x) I can do whatever I want with my characters without any bounds.

So I have already planned most of that part of the game. It won't just be "new H content". There will be a scenario linked to it, with side quests etc... I'll detail that much later when I'll start working on it but as you can guess, with that way of building the game, this is the part I'll spend the most time in the development. Which is a perfect link for the second part.

About the planning

Now that you know how the game is meant to be built, I need to explain the planning. Even if I'm a bit torn over it because I really need to start working on the game (as in "Inside RPG Maker") to plan the time I'll need to create it, I've tried to plan the schedule accordingly. If things go the way I want, I'll take longer than usual to release the very first version of SoVR (more than the regular 2 months I did with TH2) because I'd like the very first version to contain the whole first part of the game (so all the canon content from the intro in the Minazuki's house to the end of the original game.) So basically, I'd take longer, but you'd have the whole main game done in one go. And if it's possible, I'd like to achieve this in 3 months. So I'd plan a release around the end of April.

I kinda feel like it's possible to achieve but there's also the possibility I'm completely delusional ^^' Thing is, there are some gameplay elements that are meant to only appear starting the post-game content, so it's stuff I don't have to worry about for the main story. I think it should be pretty straightforward. Even if I have a certain amount of things to adjust, there's less content to adjust between SoV and SoVR than there was between SoVO and VP. For example, in SoVO I had to redo everything from scratch. Here, I can reuse the same maps for the Kurita's farm, the scenario will be more or less the same so I should be quicker in patching everything up into a game.

After this release, I'll go back to more regular releases (I have no idea how many, though.) To add end-game content bit by bit. The ultimate goal is the end of 2024. I'll do everything I can so that the game is completed by then (or before.) You have to understand one thing about this whole planning though: because of how the game will be built, don't expect uber nasty things during the main story. Since I have to stick to the progression of characters between SoVO and SoV2, things will remain vanilla (well, my kind of vanilla, of course x). But fear not, I've already planned stuff for the post game content and I can already say you guys aren't ready. After all it's one of my goals...

About my goals

SoVR is several things to me. First of all, it's something I've been wanting to do for a VERY long time. And the goal isn't to swipe out the original game from the surface of the planet. They'll coexist. But yeah, with PeakJump being the main artist of the SoV games, SoV HAD to have a version done by him.

As I mentioned above, the sexual content is one of my goals. What I mean by that is that back when I made VP, I was told more regularly than I expected by players that they found out they had fetishes they ignored and discovered thanks to the game. Now we're 10 years later and the hentai industry has exploded with shitton of content everywhere. BUT, despite that, I still have trouble finding creators doing what I do (it's a euphemism, I've played more than 50 H games in 2023 and barely none made me think "Ah! this is exactly what I'm looking for in a game". Only Vitamin Quest 2 did, but that's a given since the first game was the one that made me feel like working on VP in the first place ^^'). So one of my goals is to introduce new fetishes I've grown to enjoy through the years in SoVR and (hopefully) create the same sensation in some players that will grow to enjoy them while they didn't think they would. I'd rather be honest, we're talking about very extreme and nasty stuff here. So it's bound to rebute more people than attract them (there will be a fetish selector, don't worry), but still, I keep that hope up :p

Another one of my goal with that game is to see how I'm able to handle short games again. I've only worked on long-ass projects ever since I finished SoV (SoVO isn't that long but overall it was long to do). TH, TH2, SoV2... Only Naomi's Past was kinda "short" but the necessity of learning a new soft from scratch kinda balanced out the development time gain. Here, it's an engine I know perfectly, with a programmer who knows everything about it so whatever needs to be done there can be done quickly. It's only a matter of how fast I can be at writing dialogues and implementing gameplay elements. I'd love to see it working out because I wouldn't mind making smaller quick games in the future depending on how SoVR is received. But for that, I'd need the necessary funds and that brings me to the next goal.

It's not necessarily very glorious but money is of course one of my goals. Right now, on Fanbox, the monthly amount I earn has almost been divded by 2 between August 2022 and now (195k yen to 104k yens). Considering how low the yen is, you can see it becoming a problem for me (the only thing keeping me afloat is SubscribeStar where people are thankfully much more steady). I knew it would happen in 2023 because more people are interested in my 2D content than my 3D content. And it wasn't that much of a problem. Outside Nito for the pixel stuff (and trust me, I spent A LOT of money in pixel stuff throughout 2023, even in stuff you haven't seen yet because I took some advance for the future content), I don't need to pay Peak, a colorist and a background designer for TH2. Now, we've started working on SoVR around August/September so it's been 4 months that I'm back to paying stuff. I also need to pay stuff for Blue Axolotl Edition (spoiler: the sales after 2 years have NOT covered the investment I put in it yet) so yeah, an increase of patrons to cover the future expenses is desperately needed.

And that brings me to the last goal: exposure. This is probably my ultimate goal with SoVR. I'm not looking for westerner's exposure. I've had tons of occasions to do so, the majority of people in the west know that I exist. But NOT Japan. I REALLY want to use SoVR as an interesting proposition for the Japanese audience and try to attract them. When I see the insane score done by games on DLsite that I played and seeing how average they are, I just CAN'T believe my games are too bad to attract them. They just have one major flaw: they're not translated. So here's the deal. I've already mentioned it a couple of posts ago and once again I heavily apologize for the time it'll take but after I've finished SoVR, I'll take a certain amount of time doing NOTHING else than working towards a proper English/Japanese release of SoVR on DLsite (and Gumroad) and do whatever I can to gain exposure from it. It's like a last chance. SoV3 will never happen (at least as a game), so I never had a real chance to do that (Slice of School is in Japanese but the complete lack of definite end doesn't make it fit for that purpose.) I will prepare an uncensored patch for all the people buying the game on DLsite as an incentive as well. And if things work (understand that if I manage to finally sell a lot on DLsite), I won't have any problem spending a bit more time on SoVR to create some extra content as DLC. So yeah, once again I apologize (because it means that time will NOT be spent on working on a game), but I'll regret it all my life if I don't plan at least ONE game properly for the Japanese market.

And that's all for now! You know me, I love writing so in those situations, I can easily write a lot. Sorry for those of you allergic to reading too long walls of text ^^'

I'll try to provide regular updates about SoVR so that the time doesn't seem too long between now and the first release, but yeah, I ask you to be a bit patient. I'm sure you'll enjoy what I've planned for the game :p

Even if I'm planning a TH2 post this week, I will also make a first post about SoVR to show you that we've been working on it for a moment. It'll surely be focused around Yuki and her look (I'll make posts about most of the cast to explain you what we kept/changed and the reasons behind it).

I hope you're as eager as I am to see how far can SoVR go in the course of a single year. I'll see you VERY soon for the next posts.

See ya o/