I'm actually almost done

Hey everyone. Not too much progress in the last few months so did not make any updates, but slow progress is better than no progress. And over so many months, slow progress adds up.

I see The Good Son has been marked inactive over on F95Zone. That's fair - it has been rather inactive for about two years. I'm reminded of mountains, when I think about the glacial pace of this update (or maybe I'm reminded of glaciers...). Mountains look static from our perspective, but on a geological time frame they rise and fall like waves. You just need the right frame of reference.

I don't say this to make myself sound impressive and grand and big like a mountain. It's actually a funny insult to myself to say I move at the pace of solid, stationary rock.

Of course, I didn't always. Updates used to come every four months or so. What's going on?

The answer is simple - I have learned that one should finish writing erotica, and then start a family. My entire life, my days, my time to myself - it's all been totally flipped around with the entrance of my son into the world about eighteen months ago. The time to sit down for three hours or more and find useful pornographic videos and pictures and write scenes - it hardly exists, anymore. There have been full months, a full set of thirty days, where I couldn't even find a moment to open up Twine to put a letter, a single character of writing, into the game. It's that crazy.

I'm not trying to make excuses, just offering explanations. I assure you, I'm not 'laughing my way to the bank' and eating up subscriptions while twirling my moustache. I feel genuinely awful about the length of time the final update is taking. I have already recommended anyone who might feel the slightest bit of upset or impatience to end their subscriptions. The game will come out eventually and then, whether you've subscribed or not, you'll have it and you can finally see the conclusion and epilogue to Amy Finch (the default name for the Main Character), Susan, Todd, Nazarov, Olivia, Cade, Chad, Becky, Rachel, Carlos, Lexi, Heather... the list goes on. It's going to happen. I promise you it will.

It's just a matter of time.

But please do take note of the title of this long-overdue update. I'm actually almost done. Piece by piece, bit by bit, progress has been made. I just have one more Lexi wrap-up scene. A disloyal Susan scene. Half the climax (that's the big piece), and the epilogues (they'll be a bit shorter and sweeter than first anticipated, but you'll learn what happened to everyone based on your choices).

I can't give a deadline because I can't know when I'll have time to work on the game. If I could predictably put in 3 hours a week, maybe I'd be done in 8 weeks. But honestly, I don't know when that will happen. I do have the day off and free tomorrow, so I'm going to lock myself in my office and pump out scenes. Hopefully I get another day like that before too long.

Again, not a moustache twirling subscription-gobbling villain, just a very busy employee, husband, and father who does not have the same life he did when he started this game in 2020.

Whether you've ended your subscriptions or not, you're all awesome. You're going to get the final update. It'll be fun, and hot, and pretty loaded with content (I mean, 2 years worth of writing, even with very low productivity, is still something!). Until then, keep playing other awesome games in the genre. And one day I'll surprise you with the finished product.

It's Only a Matter of Time

Sorry for the quiet spring! Things are moving. I should talk about them.

The Good Son is shaping up. Dates are done. Heather content is complete (like, her story is fully done!). Olivia content is complete (all paths). Main plot stuff is moving. We are getting somewhere. I have a kind of final capstone scene for Susan on her naughty path that is great and uses a pretty famous scene as its source material... people will enjoy it, I'm sure.

It feels really liberating to wrap up plot lines. I started The Good Son at a certain point in time and years have passed since then. It's nice to say goodbye to the characters and the story and to move on. Not saying I'm burned out, just ready for the next adventure.

Which leads me to the big announcement. The next update, the long awaited update, will be v1.0 of The Good Son. The game will be COMPLETE. The plot will conclude. The epilogue will play out. It will be finished. You probably have the following reaction:

Wait is that going to make the update longer to finish? I mean, we're already at 18 months of no update. It's all taking a long time, and we're past any reasonable deadline, right? But don't worry, this isn't going to make things take even longer to finish. I've trimmed content where I needed to. Less final dates. The single path won't have any more content (so much work to make all those fake profiles). Lexi's wrap-up will be somewhat quick. The street whoring content has a succinct but really nice conclusion. Trimming at the sides means that I can actually conclude the game. I don't think I have it in me to make another update for The Good Son after this one, and I think no one on Earth has the patience to wait for another update to The Good Son after this one. The time has come for its final performance. The big showing.

Of course, there will still be bug fixes after the v1.0 release, but we're charging towards the conclusion of the game. And that's pretty awesome. It really gives me that boost of motivation to wrap up this crazy project of mine.

Speaking of this project being crazy, I want to get personal for a second, because it relates to what I said above...

...I started working on The Good Son during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was in my mid twenties with a lot of time on my hands and a lot of questions. I didn't really know who I was or what I wanted from life. I did know that I liked 'these weird games online,' and I worried about what that meant about my identity. Working on The Good Son helped be work through a lot of that (also, therapy helped a ton). I genuinely had to work through my gender and sexual identity and understand what my feelings, desires, and loads of self-judgment really meant. Where I landed is pretty boring. I'm a guy who has a lot of affinity and empathy for women and femininity. I'm straight romantically but flexible in my attraction, when the mood the strikes. And, weirdly enough, working on this weird smut game helped me sort all that out. I feel secure, content, and at peace with who I am. It's a great foundational feeling for living a happy life.

But it's sorted, now. And I'm thirty and have a family, so The Good Son has served it's purpose and I'm finishing it on the highest of notes. Great content, hot scenes, a satisfying ending (with many variations based on choices).

And now you're thinking:

Whatever, that's nice and all for you, but when is the update coming out? I'm not sure. I think before the 2 year anniversary (September 2024), but deadlines and me are like oil and water. I'm working on it.

Edit: I said 'September 2025' above in the original post - I of course meant September 2024! We're talking months, not years!!! LOL. (then the clever guy in the back shouts that it's already been years and we all laugh...)

Thanks, everyone! You're all awesome!!!

Cleaning the Cobwebs

It's good to be back. So, how have things been going?

Returning to the code of The Good Son after so many months was, honestly, pretty bewildering. I mean, I learned how to use Twine, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (a little bit) all at once, on this very game... and it shows. Just passages and links everywhere. All kind of variables tracking random but important details, choices, conditions, and so on. So February was about getting my bearings, and then getting into content.

I'm happy that I've been able to plug in about two hours or so into development most days (like today!) in the late evening / night. I've made some decisions around the content of the next update that will keep the content required under control. Dates post-surgery will be kept to a minimum. This is necessary, since there are so many options. Think about it, you have nine potential lovers, and most of those can have sex scenes pre- and post- bottom surgery! That's a lot of scenes. So I needed to keep the options under control, so I could keep the scenes under control, so I could keep the workload under control. You get it.

Scenes are coming along well. The return to the Cauldron / main story content is moving along, too. Cauldron scenes post-bottom surgery are next. Honestly, as long as I keep things reasonable, this won't be such a massive lift to get done.

And it feels good to be back.

In the background, I've also been sketching out the next big plot point for Girl Spy. Basically what happens in Paris, the next city (Amsterdam) and then from there arriving in Rome. It'll be sweet. More details later.

Thanks to those still subscribed during my self-imposed exile. To the rest of you, I'm of course keeping posts like these public so you can know how things are going. Love you all, looking forward to talking about more specifics soon.

A Wild Lobster Appears

Hey everyone - guess who isn't dead!

The last six months have been absolutely wild for me, truly life changing. Some of you probably were able to read through the lines and figured this out already, but I'll spell it out for everyone else - this past summer, I had a kid. I'm a dad now. Woah!

Having a baby has been incredible, but holy shit being a father + working a full time job takes a lot out of you. That explains the awful, dreadful radio silence. It doesn't excuse it, of course, but that's the explanation.

The good news is, things are really starting to settle into a routine, at home. I'm returning to developing The Good Son and after it, Girl Spy. I can't believe it's been more than a year since I last published any content (that's Girl Spy in January 2023. I know The Good Son has been languishing for even longer.)

Does that mean people should resubscribe now?

No. Definitely not. Not until I have content to deliver to you. For those of you who have been supporting me in my hibernation, you're awesome, and it's a huge help just in terms of supporting my family each month - but you guys went above and beyond. Your patience and faith is wonderful and frankly, I don't deserve it.

Let me repeat - don't resubscribe until I release the next update of The Good Son

When is that update coming?

Not for a while. I made some good progress on it before my life got turned upside down, but there's still more than 50% of the work to do.

I just wanted to let everyone know I'm very much alive, I spend my days working and changing diapers, and I seem to have a few hours in the evenings to put towards development once more. Thankfully, my wife supports this gig of mine - she's ambivalent about the content (harharhar) but appreciates the side hustle.

Lightning Strikes

Hi everyone! I remember making a joke early in the summer that if the next update wasn't out by September, it would be because I was struck by lightning. Well, it's September, the update isn't out, so... where's the lightning?

There's been no grand tragedy, no car accident, no computer getting fried. Nothing like that. Definitely no lightning strike.

The truth is, I'm in a slightly different place in life than I was in 2020 when I started tinkering with Twine and eventually pulled together this fun little feminization game. You know how it is - my real job got bigger, better, and demanded a lot more time of me. I no longer live alone. I have dependants in my life. These things eat into development time.

I seriously underestimated how much life can get in the way of a hobby like this, especially when I only work on this hobby when I'm alone in the house.

I poked at the update over the past month, but not materially. An hour here or there does not an update make. Adding the sex swap was, in hindsight, not a good call. I mean it's awesome and it's working well. But it requires a ton of work when I really should just be wrapping up the plot, the relationships, and the game. That's what people want. Hindsight 20/20.

Is the game abandoned? absolutely not! I still want to finish it. And Girl Spy, too! That game's awesome.

Will I be pumping out updates on at all a regular schedule for the foreseeable future? Obviously not, I'd be delusional to think otherwise.

I think it would be perfectly acceptable to cancel your subscription at this point. I'm not in the business of milking away my subscribers. You can always sub back on when the update comes out.

A part of me wishes I still lived alone and could no-life develop this game (and play a lot more other erotic games) but I'm older and wiser (maybe), and life is big and wild and fun and busy, and that's great too.

You're all incredible people. It's always been so much fun talking about this game with all of you. See you on Discord. Happy to talk more there!