Alexis was the winner of our latest special "fan request" render set for 2024! The results of that poll have been added to the original post: A Shot in the Dark: Special Render Character Poll
Now we want to hear your suggestions for what that render will be. Let us know your suggestions for themes, costumes, or cosplay characters you'd like to see for
Same as last dev log, we've been plugging along on both the Murder Mystery Game and Chapter 5 content. And once again, our progress percentages are still rough estimates, since it's hard to say exactly how much work is left, especially in regards to the MMG. But it's all coming together even better than we expected, thanks to the hard work of m. (GUI) and CosmicMirage (coding)! Here are so...
2024-07-20 16:57:54 +0000 UTC View Post
A lot of work has been happening on Chapter 5 since the last dev log, but unfortunately a lot of it is not really well-captured by the progress percentages. Whereas we have "regular" development cycles basically down to a science now, we are doing many "new" things this update and that has made it hard to estimate how long things will take and what exactly is left to be done.
The novelty of working on something new and a little unpredictable has been really refres...
2024-06-28 21:37:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Mai was the winner of our latest special "fan request" render set for 2024! The results of that poll have been added to the original post: A Shot in the Dark: Special Render Character Poll
Now we want to hear your suggestions for what that render will be. Let us know your suggestions for themes, costumes, or cosplay characters you'd like to see for ...
2024-06-25 16:44:32 +0000 UTC View Post
Since our last dev log we've been making progress on both the Murder Mystery Game and the regular Chapter 5 content. We sat down and did the more extensive planning of the lewd scenes that we need in order to start on animations. Lewd scenes for both Ashley and Sara have been fully written and are now waiting on renders/animations. The current word count is around ~19K.
Implementation of the ...
2024-06-07 23:44:50 +0000 UTC View Post
Sophie was the winner of our latest special "fan request" render set for 2024! The results of that poll have been added to the original post: A Shot in the Dark: Special Render Character Poll
Now we want to hear your suggestions for what that render will be. Let us know your suggestions for themes, costumes, or cosplay characters you'd like to see for
We don't currently have enough news about Prince of Suburbia to dedicate a whole dev log to it, but we are still working on finding a new artist and animator for the Pregnancy DLC! We are currently auditioning an artist we really like with a few animators to see how they work together. As soon as we have something we feel comfortable sharing with fans, we'll make a separate dev log about it! 2024-05-17 23:16:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Chapter 4 has now officially been released on all platforms, including Steam and Itch! The official release went smoothly and we are now working on getting Chapter 4 translated on Crowdin so that we can finally release some translated builds of the game!
If you are interested in helping improve translations for any of the following languages, check out our 2024-05-03 22:24:23 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode, we both share our answers to some questions about what we predict for the future of adult gaming, both for the industry and for ourselves personally.
Questions like: Will adult games ever become mainstream? What is the "next frontier" in adult games? What other types of adult games are we most interested in developing next?
What else do you want to know about us, our games, the development process, or the industry overall? Ask us anything!
...
2024-05-01 22:32:31 +0000 UTC View Post
It's been a hot minute since we talked about our future plans for Prince of Suburbia with all of you, hasn't it? We appreciate your patience in waiting to hear about what's next.
Let's start off with the unfortunate news first. For those that don't already know, we parted ways with auxiliaryout (the most recent artist and animator for Prince of Suburbia) a few months after the release of V1.0 ...
2024-04-26 00:55:21 +0000 UTC View Post
We're excited to announce that the Chapter 4 update of A Shot in the Dark is now officially available on all platforms!
Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/1853830/A_Shot_in_the_Dark/
Itch https://vimstudios.itch....
2024-04-24 16:34:22 +0000 UTC View Post
Elly was the winner of our latest special "fan request" render set for 2024! The results of that poll have been added to the original post: A Shot in the Dark: Special Render Character Poll
Now we want to hear your suggestions for what that render will be. Let us know your suggestions for themes, costumes, or cosplay characters you'd like to see for
In this episode, we asked others from the adult game industry how they got started! We hear from voice actress HaruLuna and fellow AVN developers DiPeppo (Cyberheart) and Doc62 (City Park Play Date) and respond to their answers.
What else do you want us t...
2024-04-17 23:03:48 +0000 UTC View Post
So far it's been another successful early release for A Shot in the Dark! We've loved hearing the feedback about your favorite scenes and theories about where the story is going. A lot of time and effort went into making this update and we are always excited to see that pay off!
We are especially grateful to
2024-04-11 10:06:40 +0000 UTC
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Early / BETA Release of Chapter 4 of A Shot in the Dark will start on Wednesday, March 27 for our supporters on Patreon and SubscribeStar:
Wed, Mar 27 - $40+ Patrons & Subscribers
Fri, Mar 29 - $20 Patrons & Subscribers
Sun, Mar 31 - $10 Patrons & Subscribers
Wed, Apr 3 2024-03-25 20:58:58 +0000 UTC View Post
There's not much to say this week except that we've been working hard to put the finishing touches on the Chapter 4 update! We will be getting builds to our testers today and letting them test over the weekend and early into next week.
Within the next few days, we'll also post our BETA/Early Release schedule for Patreon and SubscribeStar. Steam and Itch release date is TBD, but will likely be mid to late April. We can't wait for you to play it!
2024-03-22 15:36:49 +0000 UTC
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Sara was the winner of our latest special "fan request" render set for 2024! The results of that poll have been added to the original post: A Shot in the Dark: Special Render Character Poll
Now we want to hear your suggestions for what that render will be. Let us know your suggestions for themes, costumes, or cosplay characters you'd like to see for Sara<...
2024-03-11 18:04:19 +0000 UTC View Post
All writing and renders for Chapter 4 are now complete! As we've mentioned in previous dev logs, we won't know the actual dialogue word count until we prep the chapter for translation, but our estimate is around 55K words. The final render count is 2,240.
Our original plan had been to work on translated/localized builds during the Chapter 4 update cycle and then to update the GUI with the Chapter 5 cycle. However, the GUI update was com...
2024-02-24 17:23:20 +0000 UTC View Post
This episode is all about business! We answer the question: "How do you market your games in order to make a living from them?"
We've learned a lot about the monetization aspect of this industry after over two years of successfully making adult game development our full-time job. From all the things to think about before even making a game, to what works and what doesn't work when it comes to actually selling your game, this episode covers all aspects of marketing and monet...
2024-02-23 04:47:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Last year we commissioned artwork for Steam community items (badges, etc) for Prince of Suburbia only to learn that Steam does not approve community items for Free-to-Play games without in-game purchases!
Since we already had them already made and ready to go, we figured we would release them to fans on a...
2024-02-14 19:40:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Natalie was the winner of our second special "fan request" render set for 2024! The results of that poll have been added to the original post: A Shot in the Dark: Special Render Character Poll
Now we want to hear your suggestions for what that render will be. Let us know your suggestions for themes, costumes, or cosplay characters you'd like to see for Na...
2024-02-12 16:31:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Things are moving pretty quickly with the Chapter 4 update now that we have a second set of hands helping with the coding! We have plowed through about half of the scenes that had been waiting for a while to be coded, and we are also mostly done with tweaking and testing the new GUI.
Josselyn is working on the very last scene of renders and only a handful of renders are left to make for the update, so we should have a final render count soon. She has al...
2024-02-11 17:37:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Ashley was the winner of our first special "fan request" render for 2024! The results of that poll have been added to the original post: A Shot in the Dark: Special Render Character Poll
Now we want to hear your suggestions for what that render will be. This year we will continue to take suggestions for sex acts, positions, fetishes, etc. like we have in the past...
2024-01-17 16:08:18 +0000 UTC View Post
We hope everyone had a happy and healthy holiday season! We took some days off to celebrate Christmas with friends and family, and have returned refreshed and ready to work.
If you haven't already, be sure to check out our annual year in review post: ViM Studios: 2023 Year in Review! That post also talks about our goals and priorities for 2024, most of which have to do with developing
We are ending 2023 with a bang, surpassing a staggering 1 MILLION DOWNLOADS on Itch and Steam combined between our two games! We couldn't be more excited to ring in the New Year by celebrating with all of the players and fans who helped us reach this incredible milestone.
We'd like to extend a special, heartfelt thank you to everyone who reached out with positive comments and words of encouragement this year. Whether it be in game reviews, on...
2023-12-31 18:23:36 +0000 UTC View Post
In this episode we talk about the process of using Daz 3D Studio to make renders and animations for our adult visual novel, A Shot in the Dark. We talk about our hardware, the workflow from beginning to end, and discuss many of the lessons learned after over 2 years now using Daz. We also compare Daz with what we know about alternative programs such as Blender and Unreal, and clear up some of the misconceptions we often hear from players.
During the episode you...
2023-12-21 18:22:36 +0000 UTC View Post
We are excited to announce that A Shot in the Dark - Chapter 3 and the Walkthrough & Guide DLC are now available for purchase on Steam!
A Shot in the Dark - Chapter 3 will be releasing on Steam on December 14! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1853830/A_Shot_in_the_Dark/
The USD base price of the game will be $9.99 and the Walkthrough + Guide DLC will be $3.99. (Regional pricing will...
2023-12-08 15:48:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Be sure to check out the holiday renders for $3+ Patrons and Subscribers released earlier today if you haven't already! Fans voted on Alexis, Ashley, and Natalie to be featured in this year's holiday renders. Monica came in a close fourth place, so we did a bonus render for her as well!
Since the the last dev log, Jos...
2023-12-02 03:42:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Note to our supporters: We will be taking the rest of the week off for American Thanksgiving, so no dev log this Friday but we'll be back with updates next week!
It's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)!
To celebrate, we are answering all of your questions about writing: What tools do we use? What's our process, from planning the story to writing the dialogue? How do we keep track of all the branching choices? What makes writing so hard? We also discuss other...
2023-11-22 16:39:47 +0000 UTC View Post