A new year dawns! The team has scraped the ice off of our smut-engines, and we’re right back into full production once again. This year is going to be the toughest one for us, creatively and financially, as we bring Ravager towards its glorious conclusion and lay the groundwork for what comes after. But we do like a challenge.

Our lead writer Mattrex and I will be focusing on the ‘main plotline’. First we’ll finish up Chapter Two: an expanded kobold hatchery, herald interactions, the war council, reconquest mechanics, updated horde visits, the final court event, and another snuggly sleeptime. I’ll aim to have some progress on this track in each monthly update, big or small, until it is done. Then we’re going to begin work on our final segment, Act V Chapter Three.

Meanwhile, the rest of our writing team under DoItToJulia will be fleshing out our content with new waifu content. I think it’s important to build ‘wide’ as well as ‘tall’, and Julia’s team will be providing a satisfying girthiness to our work. You can look forward to more crossovers, more personal flavour, and more exotic things to do with your waifus.

HereToHelp, who just finished the rebuild of our graphics system, is continuing his quest to make Ravager available to as many people as possible. The first version of this will be a ‘streamer mode’, which makes Ravager compatible with the onerous demands of different platforms. The second version of this will be Ravager: Moon-Friendly Edition, which will be of interest to players in more censorious localities. That effort goes hand in hand with our localisation team under Soulphase, who will be pushing hard to improve our support for other languages.

Our art team will be busy making illustrations for all our new content, as well as giving our more dated assets a good scrub. Ravager has been in production for five years, and our artists have developed their prowess and style over that span - so let’s make sure that this is reflected in the final cut.

Undoodle, who illustrated our beautiful splash art, has joined us as a visual lead for our next project, codenamed P2D. She’s been doing a lot of pre-production work, which I’ll be able to share with you soon. If you love Ravager, but crave a more unified art style, you’ll be very pleased with our approach for P2D. A full announcement will go up after our next update.

And of course there are the countless heroes who make this all possible: codesetters, playtesters, voice talent, sound engineers, translators, and many more. They’re all gonna keep the engines turning as we race towards our destination.

It has been observed that I’m a little dry with communication, and that’s something I want to fix (for people who like getting lots of updates). So I’m now active on X and Bluesky, and I will aim to use them to share a little tidbit of what we’re working on each week. So follow me if you like the sound of that.

And for everyone else: I wish you a glorious Year Of The Snake! Shé nián kuàilè!

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Greetings from the smut-forge! It’s looking fairly good over here – all the fires have been put out, and our kobolds are (very) hard at work. I’m not going to linger overlong on the calamitous month of May, besides to tell you that all of our problems have now been sorted and that I’m still very grateful for all the support that you’ve shown us.

We were able to get a reasonably chonky build out last month, which I am proud of, but it has also impressed upon me the need to focus. You might be experiencing a bit of ‘update fatigue’ while waiting for Chapter Two, which I think is reasonable. For that reason, I have decided that our next update will be Chapter Two. We will halt our monthly update cycle to free up all of our resources, and fully commit them to the task at hand.

And gosh, what a task! A novella’s worth of court events, new interactions and scenes and costumes for our harem, and new developments amidst the various powers that brought you to the throne. And new offspring! Our lead writer Mattrex has been drafting this monster of an update since last year, and Irrelevant Art has been spending that time getting all our art assets ready. The principal bottleneck has been my own availability, which will now be laser-focused upon getting everything finaled and tested and ready for your enjoyment.

That means this is likely the last you’ll hear from me for a little while. I’ll return, triumphant, when we’re ready to finally turn that page. Until then, I hope you enjoy exploring what we’ve already created – there’ll be a lot more of it, soon.

I’m back! It’s been a difficult couple of months for me; Corona-chan hit me particularly hard this time around. Fortunately, we have an excellent team, and they have kept everything in motion in my absence (and while I’ve been catching back up) - something I am extremely grateful for.

Now that things are back to normal, let’s have a look at what’s coming up. The first piece of news is that we have our soundtrack coming out this month! This has been requested for ages and I’m very glad to finally get it sorted. You’ll finally be able to chill out to Marina Montague’s beautiful voice, or bop to Exo Spectra’s insane beats. We have a launch party planned for the 28th April on our Discord server, if you’d like to come along and listen to them jam together live for the first time.

You might have noticed that our lead writer Mattrex has been very quiet this year. That’s because he’s been working on Act V Chapter Two, which is now starting to be fed into the vast editing/coding/playtesting machine. It’s already an easy hundred thousand words long, and will get bigger still before we’re done. Despite my virological woes, I still very much want to get Chapter Two out this summer, and I will be prioritising that work going forward.

Which is not to say you won’t have anything to enjoy in the months between! Our lead editor DoItToJulia and her team are busy filling out the remaining pieces of Act V Chapter One - Balthorne, Eburon, Mother, and Zizeryx. Our scene artist Lubbio is remastering his oldest work, to bring it up to his impeccable modern standard. Our sound squad under HereToHelp is working on a fresh mountain of voice acting. And Exo Spectra is working on even more new music!

So thank you, all those who support the game. With your help we’ve been able to build a little studio that’s able to leap forward in many directions at once, even when I’m out of the picture. And that’s humbling, in a really nice way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82R2DnYJDtQ

Midwinter is always the most cursed period of development - a constant onslaught of plagues, family commitments, and other terrible woes. This year, we’ve been able to keep the smut-engines running (at a slightly slower pace) throughout. Now the ice is thawing, spring is around the corner, and we’re revving up for the most pivotal year in our journey.

First amongst our priorities is Chapter Two of Act V, which I know everyone is excited about, and which will release in June. This means a fresh roster of court events, which our lead writer Mattrex has been working on for the last few months. It also means we need to add the last interactions for Chapter One, and start populating new content for all your lovely waifus - a large team effort, expertly enabled by our lead editor DoItToJulia.

Once we have that foundation laid we will continue to populate it with more content, in much the same way we did (and are doing) with Chapter One. Our sound team under HereToHelp have stepped up their production considerably, and you can look forward to a lot more voice acting, sound effects, and new music in the months to come.

But Chapter Two is not the end of our main plotline! We will be gathering together all of our narrative threads, and allowing you to find the ending that best fits your dragon (and his harem), in Chapter Three. That’s all planned out, and ready to commence development as soon as we have Chapter Two in hand. It’s going to be a very busy year.

Before I get back to work, I ought to mention that it’s Ravager’s birthday next month - the anniversary of my very first (and very humble) build. If you would like to celebrate, come join us over on our Discord server on 23rd March. There will be appearances from our voice talent, AMAs with the crew, party games, and all sorts of frivolity. All are welcome, and I hope to see you there.

Last month we were dropped by the only remaining payment processor for Itch, meaning that we could no longer make (or benefit from) sales there. This was a pretty awful turn of events, but not disastrous - the whole team pulled together to offer lots of new benefits in the Great Subscription Drive, and a whole lot of you added or boosted your contributions. This has been a huge reassurance in a time of financial terror, and I would like to thank you all very sincerely for your kindness. Thank you.

If you haven’t had the chance yet, the Great Subscription Drive continues through to Sunday 17th December, so it’s not too late to get yourself a custom welcome note from Nyono.

In development news, we continue to power onward: our lead editor DoItToJulia is masterminding the completion of the last elements of Chapter One (including Balthorne, Eburon, Mother and Zizeryx), while our lead writer Mattrex is leading the charge into Chapter Two. We plan to release Chapter Two in the first half of 2024, as soon as it is ready. This is an adventurous timeline to pursue - there’s an awful lot to write and draw - but we have our foundations in place, and we are very serious about finishing what we have started.

Monthly updates will continue in the interim, as always. Our next one will arrive in the first weekend of 2024, after a brief shutdown across the festival period. These might be a little more media-focused for a while, as our writers’ attention is focused on preparations for Chapter Two, but our artists and voice talent will continue at full tilt throughout.

Looking further out towards the horizon, we have also commenced very early pre-production for our next game, codenamed P2D. Our occasional splash artist Undoodle, who made the beautiful CGs for our set-pieces, is joining us as a full visual lead for it. We will be working on it at a gentle-but-steady pace, with the intent to have a demo available for you shortly after Ravager’s main plotline is completed. You can look forward to a proper announcement about P2D in the near future.

In the interim, I hope you all have a very cosy winter period (or a very breezy summer, if you’re in the other hemisphere). I look forward to kicking off the new year with more high-grade draconic content for everyone. Cheers!

State Of The Realm: October

I am back! After a month spent catching up on sleep (and very occasionally other things), I am settled at my desk and burning through all the delicious content that was crafted whilst I was away. It is going slightly slower than I would like, thanks to my first personal introduction to COVID, but you can still look forward to a slightly-delayed release this coming weekend.

Getting to the end of Act V Chapter One’s main plotline was a major undertaking, but it’s not the end of our work on the Chapter. We can’t call the 5.1 branch done until all of our cast have new content in it! Enid, Eburon, Zizeryx, Balthorne, Mother, and Breaker are all jockeying for extra content – and they’ll all get it in the upcoming months. And at the same time, we’re preparing to make our jump into Chapter Two.

That sounds like a lot of work, and it is. Fortunately, our lead editor DoItToJulia has had success with her writer recruitment drive, and our new crop of talent will yield its first fruit in the coming release. With your ongoing support, we’re able to bring more and more resources onto the project. So thank you, all, for that.

In other news, we have continued our experiments with Live2D: Amon Ra has crafted a beautiful animated scene with it, which you’ll all see soon, and we are commencing very early pre-production work on what will happen after Ravager reaches its conclusion. More on that in our next State Of The Realm post!