Third artist, one-year anniversary, and goals

New artist

I mentioned briefly in the past that I would need another artist for the sex scenes since the closer we move toward the endings and the more the action should start ramping up. The second artist that I’ve found is great, but since there’s a rather obvious discrepancy between his art and the art of my main artist, I use him mostly for extra/semi-sexual CGs for now. And so that’s why I decided to commission a third artist. I won’t make a poll for this one since I think his art matches really well with my main artist.

The image linked above is a promotional art that I wanted to use for the welcome email for new Patrons (though I’m not quite sure that I can use NSFW content in the welcome email). This scene is fictional, showing my three main girls from the two games. Aya on the left, Laura in the middle, and Beth (from The Edge Of), on the right. I also thought that, even if I don’t use it for the welcome email, it was still a good idea to have that kind of art made for the first year anniversary of the page.

There won’t be any scene drawn by this artist in this month’s update, but there will be one scene next month.

One year anniversary

Yesterday marked one year since I first started this Patreon page. I certainly didn’t see myself here one year ago. I feel extremely fortunate to have so much support—enough so that I can still keep doing what I love without stressing over a budget. So I want to thank every single one of you from the bottom of my heart. I’ll keep working hard until one day I can truly deliver the best possible experience that I can create.

Though, the fact that it’s been one year since I started also means that it’s been one year since I have taken any kind of a break. I’m certainly proud of it. I really thought that I would hit a wall at some point or that there would be unforeseen circumstances that would force me to miss one release, but fortunately—I can only call it luck really—it hasn’t happened yet. Still, as frustrating as it is for me, I’m considering taking a break for the month of March. But if I do take a break, don’t worry, I’ll be pausing the billing for that month as well. I call it a break, but it’s not really like it’s going to change anything. I’m still going to write every single day, as always. The only real reason why I might take a break is that the longer I work on a story, the more the lines get blurry for me. I fear that writing nonstop without taking a step back might affect my writing. In fact, I’m pretty sure it already does. So I need time to re-read what I wrote and make sure the quality is to my liking. Also, another fear that is always in the back of my mind is that the releases might catch up with the overall story. I always need a gap of at least 60k+ words between the overall story and the monthly release because I need time and material to give work to my artists, and it’s just a lot less stressful for me if I know I have a backup plan.

I’m still not sure if I’m going to take a break. The bigger my budget becomes, the more artists that I need to manage, the more supporters I don’t want to disappoint, the more I become kind of overwhelmed. So I guess I should, even if I don’t really want to. I’m also thinking taking breaks more often (every 6 or 8 months) wouldn’t be a bad idea. I want to be the most productive that I can be, but I don’t want it to be by sacrificing the overall quality of the project.

In any case, I’ll be making a post at a later date if I do decide to take a break.

Goals

I just implemented some goals for the page. I had asked a few weeks back if people had ideas for goals, but there weren’t a great variety of ideas. There was unanimous support for moaning sounds though. So I decided on four goals and organized them in terms of priority. I might change/rework them depending on your feedback though. I didn’t want to put anything too hard to reach for now, so there’s nothing too wild. So let’s see if we can reach those goals, and if we do, we can think of something maybe more interesting after that.

Also, I saw some people give me suggestions for things that can be added without a particular budget (like a feature to replay the sex scenes in the game). For any suggestion that you think can up the quality of the game and that can be rather easily implemented, you can always write the suggestion on the discord server, or just send me a private message. I’m really open to those kinds of suggestions, even more so if it’s something that can upgrade the quality of the game.

Here are more details on the goals:

Moaning sounds

This one was by far the most suggested, which is why I want it to be the easiest one to reach. If we reach that goal, I’ll commission voice actresses for Aya and Laura to make all kinds of sexual sounds (kissing, moaning, sucking, licking, etc.). Those sounds will be devoid of any word since I think generic words would detract from the action at hand. Also, I’ll try to find someone that can do better sex noises (poundings and the like), which hopefully will make the scenes hotter.

Full time

While I’m already giving my best, it’s still not to a point where I can call it a job. I’m in a position where I can devote a lot of time to my projects, but it’s not permanent. If I can’t make it a full-time job in the next six months, I’ll probably have to work on the side to make ends meet. Fortunately, it’s becoming more and more realistic for me to see game development as my primary source of income. If we reach that goal, nothing much will change, but I’ll be able to guarantee releases of at least 20k words, and I’ll probably be able to be even more productive than I already am.

Two extra CGs per release

By achieving this goal, I’ll be able to guarantee at least 2 extra CGs per release for scenes that wouldn’t normally have any special illustration. The budget will still mostly go into sex scenes, but I think it can make the game feel much more alive if certain scenes that would be regarded as ‘simple’ are fully illustrated.

More frames/movements for the ‘animations’

Right now, most of my sex scenes have a two-frame animation. It doesn’t look too bad when complemented with camera movement and a bit of screen shaking, but having more body ‘movement’ (breasts moving, etc.) in the scene would certainly be a welcomed addition and might add a bit of smoothness to the animations.

Again, those goals might change, but for now, that’s pretty much the gist of it.