It's Halloween, so that means you're either dressing up to go Trick-or-Treating, going to a party, handing out candy at your home, or just avoiding the whole mess altogether. Me? It'll be a combination of the last two. I have candy. If someone comes by, I'll throw it at them. Mostly, the night'll be spent doing a horror movie marathon of Halloween, Session 9, and maybe the latest version of Nosferatu.

Speaking of horror, we've got 0.12.0 started up and going. After the trek from campus, John and the girls might get a short reprieve, but you know we're not letting up on the pressure. And, yes, girl #4 is going to be fully revealed, but as you might expect, she's not going to be the cute and good-natured friend that either Kallie or Laura were when first introduced.

So, did you notice: Throughout most of the game so far, Kallie won't call John by his name if she doesn't have feelings for him. Sure, she'll mention him by name when talking to Laura. If you're doing a run where she has low to no interest in him, she'll mostly never call out to him by his name. And there are a few shots where her attention will be redirected elsewhere, depending on her feelings.

Also, did you notice anything about the new Nightmare theme? It's one of the other tracks reversed and slowed down to make it feel more unsettling.

Thanks for your patronage and interest.
-Kinderfeld

It's time to wrap up the build and get it into a playable state. The group's trek will have them visiting locations that prove important for the next few chapters. At this point, while the Burned Ones are still an annoyance and something to be avoided, it's clear that they're the bottom rung of the danger ecosystem, with the Witches moving into their place as a prominent hazard. Now imagine if there was something worse out there. 

Speaking of which, we've had a little fun indulging in some of the fans' jokes about romancing a Witch, including the latest exclusive wallpapers, but let me be clear: That's not happening. That's not to say there's not some nightmare fuel to be mined from that idea. But Girl #4 is coming soon, and I'm sure there'll be some OPINIONS about her (much like people were split on Hana and Selene before). 

The Interim Domain 0.99.0 - 
We have a playable build in a beta state right now. The audio's been coded, including a few new music tracks for a big event at the end. Right now, we're doing a rewrite and reshoot sweep, with the intent of cleaning up the script and fixing some lingering animation issues. Trying to line up the loops of multiple characters onscreen at the same time has proven to be a challenge. And let me say that I hate water animations. LOATHE them. 

Another fun thing that's before us is the fact that the new content is going to take some time to do the appropriate script clean up. 140k + words is a lot to go through, line by line. Still, we have a few tasks left before we can pack up and get the final bundle ready for release. 

Thanks for your interest and patronage,
-Kinderfeld

That scratching on the glass (at the end of 0.10.0) get under the skin of anyone else? 

All right, we are on the move again. 0.11.0 is in development, and we're looking at a long, hard road ahead of us, both thematically and workload-wise. As we look over the plot map, this one feels like it's got a lot packed into it. It does. While we won't directly tackle the conflict between John and Laura, it will be there in the background. And for those not aware, the end of 0.10.0 had a variety of ways it could've been resolved, depending on if you were sleeping with Laura, Kallie, both, or neither of them (though "neither" really is the boring version).

At this point in the game, there's an interesting level of pressure being applied, not only to the player but to the characters. You can see the impacts as everyone wears down. Of course, they all react in different ways, some lashing out, others struggling with depression. There are entire scenes where Kallie doesn't speak at all. And, of course, those moments where John's vision can't exactly be relied on.

Also, some users on the Discord have taken it upon themselves to theorize that a Witch is a future love interest, which has generated some interesting responses. I know we spent an entire game trying to save very broken people, but this one may be too far gone, guys. 

Thanks for your interest and patronage,
-Kinderfeld

And here we go. The new release is ready and loaded and should be in your digital hands over the span of the following week. There's some serious stress packed in here and a bit of violence. There's also a discussion at the end, which has multiple outcomes based on what you've been doing up to this point, relationship-wise. Also, the fate of one of your relationships hinges on this moment. 

And just as a heads up for the weekend of 20th/21st: I'm going to be out of town meeting up for lunch with a long-time/long-distance friend, so hopefully the automated releases of the Tier 1/Public don't have any problems. It's a 2-hour drive one-way, bit since they're coming in from Oklahoma, I think I can manage. If something goes awry, I'll fix it when I get in later that night. 

Here's the release schedule for 0.10.0 (all scheduled for 11:59 am EDT release):

Tier 3 - September 16, 2025
Tier 2 - September 18, 2025
Tier 1 - September 20, 2025
Public -  September 21, 2025

Thanks for your interest and support,
-Kinderfeld

Let's interrupt the beginning of (American) football season to give you all an update on this month's release. With the NFL kicking in, don't bother contacting me on Sundays (kidding, mostly). Also, fuck AJ Brown for catching one reception and screwing my fantasy team even before the weekend actually started. 

At this point, players should expect future episodes to be packed with drama. Having established the main cast and their relationships with each other, we can focus more on their trek out of the city. Don't be surprised to find trouble around just about every corner from now on. 

With this update, we've added a voice channel and moved all the sexy moans to that channel, meaning that the voice volume option now actually has an effect. So, if you like the sound effects but not the moans, you can have your cake and eat it, too. 

The Interim Domain 0.99.0 update:
So, we can claim to have wrapped up what the film industry refers to as "principal photography," meaning that all the content's been written and shot. What does that mean now? Right now, we're working through the new ending for clean up (fixing animations, re-shooting stuff that doesn't look right or needs an extra render or two). Then another pass to make sure to clean up the story and do rewrites. This is the point in time where we may add a few minor scenes to fill in any holes or give extra time to a character who is sorely underused. Then, we'll make sure the audio is coded in and get all the bits for the main story to unlock added in and tested. Plus, we have a few "extra" scenes we might get to slide in, time permitting. Right now, the new ending is clocking in at about 14k lines, just shy of the 17k that you got in the main story (minus the side stories), so we think it'll be worth the wait.

Thanks for your interest and patronage,
-Kinderfeld

Here we are, and the group is on the road again, which doesn't lend itself to a lot of introspective moments, but it's necessary to move the story along. That means a lot of reacting to the world that they find as they try to cross campus and continue to the hospital. So, teaser screenshots for this month will probably give away some stuff, but hopefully nothing too spoiler-ish.

I once watched a documentary on the making of the movie Die Hard that proved to be an interesting insight into content creation. While the production crew and scriptwriters had an idea of what they wanted to do (it was loosely based on a book), they were still writing the script as they were shooting. This process included figuring out how to end the movie and re-writes based on budget limitations. Also, they had to re-shoot one scene because the ambulance that was later in the movie was nowhere to be found before.

What does this mean for TOXICity? We have an overarching plot line and we know where it ends, and we have several tent-pole scenes we want in the story, but there's definitely an element of Die Hard to this, where we're filling in holes as we reach that specific part of the build. A lot of the conversations are shaped by where the characters are at, emotionally, and what developments preceded that window into the story. This means that further along, you get some real character-driven moments where earlier developments shape their responses in a hopefully believable way.

Thanks for your interest and patronage,
-Kinderfeld