Hi dragon fans! The last time I had the chance to talk was back in July - unknowingly mere days before the crackdown started. Between that, the art overhaul, and work progressing the story, I haven’t had the chance to respond to all your lovely (or kindly critical) comments - sorry! But I have a lungful of air now, so I’ll take the opportunity to get you up to speed.

Main Plotline

This has been our main priority, and Mattrex and I have been working together on it. Our branching narrative means that it’s more work than you’ll see in any given playthrough (and needs to accommodate all playthroughs), but that’s the chalice we’ve chosen to sup from. I’m going to talk about its scope, so skip this section if you want to avoid very minor spoilers about what to expect.

The end of Chapter Two has three sequential phases:

After discussing with the team, I have decided to break from tradition - we will release each phase as it is ready, rather than waiting to dump it all at once. Our changelogs will tell you exactly what is delivered and when. This will stop you from waiting, aid us in testing, and allow us to avoid most/all of the logic pitfalls that typify a major update.

This means that we will release the first phase in the next update! Woo! Depending on how the last steps go, our next update will arrive either at the end of this month or sometime in the next one. Wish us luck.

We’re not sitting on our laurels after the recent overhaul. Lubbio will continue drawing our new scenes and critical remasters, now with more focused support from me, and I am also getting some help from Sintax on bringing old pieces up to a final standard. Undoodle has been moved over from her work on Permission To Dock to make more splash art for us, and Amon Ra is back on creating new animated scenes.

Back in the innocent days before the entire adult game landscape was set on fire, I reached out to other creators about future collaborations. I am excited to say that this has borne fruit! Though I can’t say too much right now, we will be working with a very talented person on the creation of a small but perfectly-formed little game. It’s early days yet, but you can look forward to the announcement sometime in the next few weeks.

That’s it from me - I’m headed back to the story mines. Thank you all for your support during this very tricky time; I look forward to proving your faith justified.

Hi hi, dragon fans! It's been a while since my last State Of The Realm post - too long, in fact. I’ve been dwelling in a big bank of brain-fog since the start of the year, and trying to figure out exactly why that might be (overwork? seasonal depression? burnout? pituitary nonsense?). Turns out I have ADHD! And have had it forever, but nurturing Ravager as it grows has suddenly made it a problem.

The good news is that ADHD is typically very responsive to medication, which I am commencing imminently. I’m not saying that a taste of Malagar’s infernal crystal stash will transform me into a productivity wyrm overnight - but I’m not saying it won’t do that. Just in case, I’ve brought Midnight on board as a transitional project manager, and Nyah in a more persistent capacity as my glamorous assistant.

The merit of being a whole-team production is that progress still gets made, even when the executive layer is dysfunctioning. So there’s lots to look forward to for you all! Amon Ra has just completed an impressive roster of new animated scenes, DoItToJulia and her writing squad are busily fleshing out the game with oft-requested content, Sintax Error is providing our waifus with some facial beauty treatments, HereToHelp is continuing to prettify our UI and brief our artists, Irrelevant is working on some little treasures for Steam’s point shop, and Mattrex is continuing to chip away at the next main plotline development.

We’ll keep up our monthly updates, big or small, while I am getting myself back to full capacity. But hopefully we’ll see fewer of the ‘small’, and much more of the ‘big’. Thank you for your patience - I look forward to seeing it well rewarded. Time to sharpen those claws!

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.