Good morning everyone!

I am currently in the process of setting up the Steam store page for Broken Sky, which is super exciting! But, one thing I will have to get around to eventually is setting regional pricing and I have absolutely no idea what those prices need to be for most places.

What I would like to do is ask all of you that follow my game and live outside of the US to provide an estimate of what you think an indie game like this should cost in your currency. For reference, I am planning on setting the price somewhere between 10-15 USD for early access in the US (this is after the combat system release). 

If you could leave a comment on this post with your region and what a fair price for this type of game in your country is, I would very much appreciate it!

Goooood evening all my sexy degenerates, furries, cucks, doms, subs and generally horny people!

This update is much much later than normal because I didn't know exactly what we were going to be getting into in the coming weeks but I now have a pretty good idea of where we'll be! 

Before I get into that, I have a surprise announcement! Since we got the last update out earlier than normal and I was gone for 3 weeks right after, I set Ari to working on a special project! We will officially have everyone's favorite pink feline, Lilly, in full Live2D rigging for the next update! This includes all of her outfits, expressions and her nude versions. We've put just as much detail into her, if not even more, than what we put into the Wistala sprite! With that being finished, we will be putting a pin in all Live2D for the foreseeable future after the issues that I ran into trying to find a new artist to do it.

So for the next update, we will have the Live2D Lilly sprite, 3 new scenes and some extra flavor text to fill out portions of the world. I'm not exactly sure when this update will be out as we're still working on the last touches for Lilly before we get to the scenes but I expect it to be around April 4th (the normal release day) but we could be a few days after that.

This is the final update before we release the first iteration of the combat system. The combat system release will come with a new completed story mission for whichever faction you chose, combat animations (hopefully. These may just be placeholders for now, it depends on factors outside of my control but I'll update everyone again as the time gets closer.), and unique dialogue depending on what characters you choose to be a part of your party. 

The combat system will be releasing as a "beta" but I intend it to be fully functional. I'm only calling it a beta because I'm sure there will be some bugs that we hadn't discovered in testing so I'm hoping you all can point out anything you find! There will be a lot of variations on combat animations and the associated lewd events so I expect some of those will be placeholder art as well but we will get all that polished out as quickly as possible.

Now, I'd like to address some concerns. (I'm not sure how much they're public concerns vs my own inner demons). The pace of new content for some time now has been very very slow and  I keep promising it'll get better once we get core systems down. Well, those systems are almost here (mainly the combat system). So for full transparency I'm including an expected update timeline below here. and what our pacing should be at each stage of the timeline so everyone knows exactly what to expect!

Update V0.6.1 (Upcoming update).

Update V0.7.1. Combat update

Update V0.7.? filled in Combat update

Initial Steam release: 1-2 weeks after the filled in combat update. This will see the game release on Steam in early access. I'll make a separate announcement when the store page goes up on Steam and the game can be wishlisted because I don't know exactly when that will be!

Short observation period to assess the reception on Steam. If the reception is standard or below the game will continue forward with the current plans (6+ new scenes per update, one update every 2 months, only one combat system that persists throughout the game and so on) until story completion. However, if the game is extremely successful, I'd like to divert the funds that come in and hire several new people (See successful reception below)

(Standard or below Steam reception) Update V0.8.1 standard update moving forward. I don't know the release date of this or exactly how much content it will have but moving past the combat system finish there will be a minimum of 6 new scenes with every update, hopefully more. The exception to this is updates that have a new story mission as they'll have new enemies, boss game overs and so on instead.

(Highly successful Steam reception.) I have heard that games often experience significant growth when going live on Steam, on the off chance that this happens I would like to divert most of those funds back into the game. I want to hire several new people (a background artist, a sound designer, put Ari working on the game full-time instead of by commission and the same with the person who will be making the combat sprites and animations) and move the game towards a broader vision with a real team instead of me as sole developer. I would like to see a game where I have more options for fun things and interesting game mechanics that may change level by level (Look to something like split fiction to see what I mean but still 2D. We will at no point move to 3D development for those concerned. A simple example may be coding in a level that plays more like a 2D bullet hell for a single mission.) This is obviously waaaay more than I can do as a single person and while my ambition is large, I'm not delusional. To make something like this happen would require a full dedicated team (or be stuck in development for the next 70 years.) Now, this is little more than a pipedream at the moment but I want to assure everyone that if we did go this route, there would continue to be updates at the same pace as the standard Steam reception from Ari and I while the rest of the team works on getting the changes ready in the background. Again, all of this is EXTREMELY unlikely but it would be very cool.

With all of that in mind, I'll be posting the link to the steam store page as soon as it is up. I hope everyone can wishlist the game on Steam and spread the word even if you don't buy it.

That's everything I can talk about in detail for now and we still have several months to go before we get back to bigger content updates but I truly believe it will be worth the wait!

Thank you all for your support since this project started!

Goooood evening everyone. I'm back with another update about what's going on behind the scenes in game development world.

So first things first, I will be out of town from the end of January until part way through February so you're all getting a new subscriber only version before I leave! I'm planning on having it out around January 24th or 25th. Unfortunately, that means I won't be around to release any patches for bugs so I'll do my best to make sure that there is nothing game breaking in the update.

Now, onto what is getting worked on.

On Ari's side, I have her working on 3 new scenes for this update and the art for the skill tree menu!
Ari is working on a new scene featuring Julina, a scene featuring Floyd and his slave and a scene with solo Lilly!
For the skill tree menu she's starting by making icon borders for the skills (an unlocked and a locked state) making the art for the Touch of Lust skill which is currently the only one in the game, the background for the passives tree and the background for the skill unlock and more information screen.

This update was also supposed to include two new characters made into Live2D but one of the people I contacted turned out to be a scammer and the other was a combination of too difficult to work with and did not produce the quality I was looking for, so, unfortunately, we will be getting no new Live2D sprites and I may have to put it on hold until I can find a reliable artist for the task. If anyone has suggestions on an artist for Live2D, please reach out to me! Side note: I am planning on putting Ari back on making Lilly's sprite into Live2D with the same level of detail as she did Wistala's. I will have her work on this during one of the times I am working on a big main story content update that is less art and more text!

So, speaking of main story content, after this update there will only be 3 more scenes before Act 1 Chapter 1 is finished. Act 1 Chapter 2 will start with a mission similar to the mission in the mountains to fight the wolves but will feature a whole host of new additions. The mission will vary slightly depending on what faction you are working for, you will have the opportunity to build your team (you, Oliver, and Lilly are required on each mission but you will be able to take up to 2 other characters with you in your party), the combat system will be implemented and a tutorial created, and there will be custom interactions between you and your party depending on who you have taken with you. There should be more skills added at this point as well. For the time being, don't set your expectations too high for the art on the combat system. The very first iteration is likely to be a lot of placeholders but so long as it functions we will continue to improve it. The goal is to have animated pixel sprites for the combat f a slightly higher quality than what you'd see in an rpgm game.
But Wistala, I hear you say, I don't want combat in my story based VN! Well, you're in luck because I will be adding an auto-win button so if you're just here for the story you can have it! But combat will have some spicy benefits! During combat, combatants can be downed and then captured for a spicy twist (You can capture enemies and enemies can capture you or your teammates.) I will also be adding in an option to disable having enemies do spicy time with your teammates if that's not your thing since it goes along with that NTR theme depending on who gets captured.
But WISTALAAAA, I hear you saying again, isn't all of that an insane amount of work? Yes, unfortunately it is. I will be hiring someone to do the programming on the inventory system and the combat system so my amateur ass will only have to fill in the details once the base of it is made. I will also be hiring a new artist for the pixel sprites! As for the story part of the missions, the different variants based on faction and party composition make the amount of text required for the mission daunting to say the least. The plan for this will likely be that each main story update will take 2-3 months and will only contain one or two new CG's from Ari so I can focus on the story itself and making and balancing combat encounters.
The actual details for how combat will play out will be explained later. I have most of it prepared but I don't want to promise something here that winds up getting cut so I'll lay most of it out closer to it's release.

Phew, I think that's about it for now. The last several updates have been slow and kind of small and I apologize for that. I also realize it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in my ability to manage all of the things I just talked about but I am very close to being done with the remodel that has consumed my life over the last months. I am much healthier than I have been in a long time, both physically and mentally and I can't wait to return my entire attention back to this project!

Here's to a wonderfully degenerate 2025!