Hey there, nudies! Apologies again for the delay! Been a real busy month for me, with some cataclysmic work-related stuff I just couldn't ignore. Thankfully, it seems to have mostly subsided by now and I finally have some breathing room again. It's honestly been pretty painful, both not being able to work on the game and knowing that I'm also the one holding things up. I promise, I ain't doing it intentionally! I love my cutie nudist like you wouldn't believe! Which is why it's a delight to finally be able to put together another progress report for you all, showcasing the world we're loving building for our cutie nudist~

Last update, we showcased the cool comic-style shader that art director Anne put together, giving shadows a really cool sketch effect. It took a surprising amount of finagling, but Invertex has implemented it in-game! Some stuff still needs to be adjusted, but it's looking great so far!

Though we quickly realized that Amber's beautiful body was actually outclassing her accessories! They also needed to get retextured to better match Amber's goodness! So Anne's working on that now, as well.

The bag hasn't actually been updated since the very beginning of the project, so it was definitely due for an upgrade.

A while back, we also posted some concept art of a cool-looking tree. We haven't quite finished that tree yet, but Bear's been hard at work on everything surrounding it! Check it out!

A nice lil' nature zone is currently underway! Complete with original props! Tents, RVs, a lake, campfires... even new foliage to match!

We really are making EVERYTHING from scratch! It takes a lot longer, but man, is it worth it~

These will also be replacing some existing trees you've seen before, like the ones in the cafe zone. Everything's getting a bit of a visual upgrade as we finalize the look and layout of these areas.

Speaking of! A couple posts ago, I showed an RPG Maker map we had made internally of Culo Culo Town to get a sense of scale and general idea of where everything was laid out. It looked like this at the time:

As we started building with this idea in mind, we realized it wouldn't quite work with the zone layouts we had in mind. Mostly the dividing railroad track and the roads you see in the middle were adding problems to our idea of how Culo Culo should be traversed. We wanted the surrounding nature to be more immediately accessible, and have a better divide between rural and urban. So... we changed the map again! 

If you look at the bottom of the map, that little green house is actually Amber's house! That means that Amber has her own little private path to the nature zone we showed before, which continues up into the mountains. She can also follow the road to walk into the city proper, or go the opposite way to find a more rural neighborhood out in the country! You have a few different paths to choose from, but whether you go to the city, the country, the beach or the mountains, you can go au natural~

I figure I might as well show this, too. This is something I quickly scribbled together during a meeting with the team. The colorful squares you see are zones we've already made. Six walkable zones in total, not including building interiors. The numbered circles are further planned zones - stuff like the uptown portion of the city, the coastline, the rural neighborhood. They're numbered in reference to their importance for the game - meaning that some zones are more of a priority to make than others. For instance, it's pretty crucial that we get the uptown portion of Culo Culo Town finished since it contains a lot of various shops and characters that are important to the game. Less important would be the farm land you see on no. 7, which, while would be nice to roam around nude in, isn't a HUGE priority and should only be worked on once other zones are finished and no other interiors or assets need to be created. Still, I'd say we're roughly halfway through creating zones for this game! Ideally, we can finish all of these, so you have plenty of unique locales to roam clothing-free around!

And speaking of clothing-free... We've also upgraded the Discord server! Due to popular demand, we've added a new channel for our comic, The Rock Cocks! If you weren't aware, it's a comic that I write alongside my wife Leslie about a punk band with an exhibitionist streak. With sexy shenanigans and an eclectic cast of roadies that includes not one but TWO nudists, the comic is absolutely up your alley if you're excited about MNL! Go check it out, and then go chat about it with other fans in our discord, if you're so inclined!

That's all for today, though! Thank you so much for your incredible patience and support. See you again soon!

Oh god

Okay, okay, I got a LOT to talk about, but let's get right into the actual progress first because we DO have some really cool shit to show. Then I wanna talk about the general state of everything and how that's been affecting us on the development side of things.

First of all, huge props to Anne these last couple of weeks for being the MVP. You see that .gif above?! That's a mock-up Anne worked up themselves for a pause screen! We're still working on implementing it in-game, but the general idea remains the same - utilizing the cute fading bubble effects that we have across the game's UI, as well as having Amber's in-game model show up with a cute animation to reflect whatever she's wearing (or not wearing)! I fell in love with how this mock-up looked, but it's not just that either!

Eagle-eyed viewers will note that Amber looks just a little bit different in this .gif. Did she do something with her hair, maybe? It's not a new haircut or even a new shampoo; it's a new shader!

Here's how she looked before...

And here's Amber with Anne's new shader!

What a difference, right?! There's a new texture to her hair that makes it sleek and shiny, but what I really dig most is the shadows!

Check this timelapse of Anne actually drawing the shadows on Amber's model!

They maintain a screentone effect to keep that sketchy, cartoony look, but the effect also adds a sense of depth to Amber's model that wasn't quite there before! Despite looking more cartoony, Amber actually feels more fleshed out than ever!

And the shadow effect applies everywhere across Amber, as you can see here! Even in the smallest of crevices... Sorry, it's probably rude to wave a flashlight at that, isn't it? Ahh, Amber doesn't mind, though.

You can even see the thickness of the lines adjust based on how intense the shadow is on Amber. Even the light itself has a screentone effect! Was it important to show this effect directly on her bare butt? Of course it was! Anne did an INCREDIBLE job with this shader, and what better place to show it off than right on Amber's butt?!

Anne's still working on this shader, but it should be ready to implement in-game within the next couple days! Anne's really putting their screentone expertise to work not just in 2D, but in 3D! And we couldn't be happier! This game's just POPPING with style now!

But Anne's not the only one bustin' buns around here! Bear has also taken the things he's learned and has been going back to old areas to pretty them up even further! Last time, we saw that the cafe zone now has some beach to it. Well, it ain't just the cafe area now!

It's in front of Amber's home, too! Say hello to your new dreamy beach house!

Originally, this beach was literally nothing. There was nothing in front of this house, because the camera would remain locked and prevent you from crossing the street. But now, you can run right across it and head straight on over to the ocean! Can you swim? Ehh, we haven't figured that out yet. Maybe! But you can definitely strut your bare self across the sands and chat up some beach bums while they check out yours!

Amber's house has also gotten a slight face lift, now with a mailbox and some lovely framing to accentuate the attic space. While the attic won't be accessible immediately, it's something we'd like to keep in our back pocket for later to expand on the house. Looks quite nice though, right?

The neighboring houses have also been improved with new textures, mailboxes, new trees, planters... Bear's been taking direct inspiration from Megaman Legends, one of my all-time favorites. Amber probably won't be kicking Servbots any time soon, but Kattlelox Island wouldn't be the worst place to wander around with no clothes on. Obviously, very happy with how this is looking. AMAZING WORK, BEAR.

All right, that's progress. Now let me sit and talk with you about the general state of things right now, because nudies... it's been rough.

As you know, the majority of us on the dev team are American, and the landscape for adult content here in the states has gotten real bad, real fast. The plan for MNL's development and the reason I haven't been promoting it too much was because I had planned for us to finish up the demo, then put the game up on Steam in early access to gain more visibility on the project and help fund the rest of it. As of this month, that's no longer possible - Steam does not allow adult games to go up in early access.

Okay. That sucks, but that's fine. The other plan for MNL was that after the initial Steam launch, we would continue to support the game through additional content. I wanted to expand on Culo Culo Town and the stories of Amber and the townsfolk through free expansions and patches. But that's also just no longer possible, as Steam has cracked down on this as well.

These crackdowns are a result of payment processers getting more strict on adult content rather than Steam themselves laying down the hammer, something I'm unfortunately very familiar with over at adult comic site Slipshine.net. Be that as it may, though, a Steam launch isn't looking very likely. Not until the game is 100% complete with no additional content to be added. It's thrown a bit of a wrench into things, and forced me to sit and think about the game's direction. 

Is the game cancelled? Absolutely not. Is it delayed? No, it's just taking a while. But it's forced me to sit and really think about the trajectory of this game and how we're going to see it through to the end. Because no matter what, I want this game to come out. It's my dream game. Hell, it's a lot of people's dream game. I need to see this through, though I may have to taper my loftier expectations of what all I can do with this game.

Thankfully, MNL's content has always been planned to be more on the softcore side of things. While public sexy acts have always been planned, it's always been 100% consensual and doesn't contain more extreme, illegal acts. As long as nudity itself remains legal to be depicted (which, I'mma be real, who even knows what'll happen at this point), then I think MNL will be just fine as a game. I don't think we'll need to change anything at all, content-wise.

But we also can't plan on a Steam launch any time soon. Not until the game is done, and we're nowhere near that point. So for now, the focus is going to be here on Patreon and Subscribestar. We're still going to aim the get the demo out as soon as we can, but the biggest push will be towards helping our game continue development through these sites. I'm hoping that once we get this demo out, we can continue to regularly add new story content for people to play on a monthly/bi-monthly basis. We're also in the process of planning a new website to help strengthen our lovely community and provide easily accessible builds and game content, just in case we can't host them directly on these sites. Our moderator/resident skeleton Killerbro has been assisting with this, and we hope to have something to show on that end soon (though I'm the one holding that part up).

So, yeah. That's what's going on, and that's the plan going forward. It sucks that it has to be like this, but we're just going to keep trucking along. We love what we're making here and we want to see it through... but we're going to need all the help we can get. I'mma gonna start promoting the Patreon and Subscribestar more, and if you can help any way either financially or just sharing with fellow nudie enthusiasts, it would be much, much appreciated.

But that's all for now! Until then, I leave you with a sneak peek of some concept art we're working on for the next major area...

 Thank you all so, so much, and see you again soon!

Hey there, nudies! Thank you so much for your extreme patience. Happy to say that we made it to Portland with no issue at all! Everything's unpacked, we're all settled in, and we've been hard at work on some cute clothing-free games! Since you've been waiting so long, let's dive right in!

The 2700 mile roadtrip to Portland gave me a lot of time to think about MNL and what things could be tweaked. I actually thought up some great plot elements that are now so foundational, you'll wonder how there was ever a version of this game without them! But one major thing I can share now is Culo Culo itself, as you probably gleaned from that image up there. We're on the beach now!

See, the issue we were having is that MNL is a simple point and click adventure on a small budget. We can't have extremely elaborate environments, and most areas you walk around in contain JUST that immediate area. That theater in the background? It's just a prop. To walk to it, you have to go through a loading zone into the theater area. That basically means that there's whole swaths of space that we simply can't show in-game because there's nothing there and you're not meant to see. Case in point - the original version of the cafe zone.

In the original version of this area, you could only see on one side of the street. Everything beyond it was completely empty, and the camera would never pan around to show you that side. While it makes sense from a design perspective, it's also obviously a bit limiting in what we can do with exploration and camera control. But a new problem arose when we realized that it was becoming difficult to actually build new areas in this abstract sort of way. We just finished the beach shops area, which is supposed to connect from that road going south in the screenshot above this paragraph. But we then realized that the placement doesn't actually make any sense, and would be kind of disorienting once you play it. We'd need to rearrange the layout of the area to make it connect... at least, that's what we thought at first. But then we realized... What if we just brought the beach up a bit and move the shop to a different connecting spot?

Everything then just sort of fell into place from there. We had to significantly tweak the rough layout we had in mind for Culo Culo's town structure, but with the cafe zone on the beach, it gave us a visible foundation to work from. We're literally on the shore, the lowest point of Culo Culo's map. Meaning that everything from here is either adjacent to the cafe zone, or it's behind it. Just that simple tweak made it so much easier to start placing locations around Culo Culo. So much so that I had to make a new rough map of Culo Culo - this time in RPG Maker!

This isn't complete yet (and obviously won't be the final map for a number of reasons), but this one change connected so many dots for us and helped us make a better Culo Culo that we all really gelled with and understood immediately.

Amber's home street is also on the beach now!

I've had to go back and rewrite some lines to accommodate the beach's proximity, but now... well, no wonder Amber liked to take off her clothes around here! Who wouldn't be constantly skinny dipping when your house is right on the beach?!

Speaking of which, let's look closer at the beach itself! It's still a big work in progress, but we're really happy how it's coming along. Did you notice that the original header image was a .gif?! Invertex programmed a simple tide system so that the water's always splashing on the shore. Check it out!

Wow! Those waves sure are wiggling! You WERE looking at the waves, right? Wait, you weren't looking at THOSE, were you...? Hmm... Well, that's okay, too.

We still have to pretty it up and throw on some shaders to really make this water shine. But damn... Culo Culo's looking pretty idyllic now. A nice beachtown perfect to ditch your swimsuit in...

I mentioned having to do some rewrites to incorporate Culo Culo's beachiness, but that's not all I was doing. Thank you all so much for your feedback on the intro! I'm pleased with the positivity around it, but I took some of the criticisms to heart and aimed to adjust some lines to better hone in on the themes and Amber's internal conflict. I won't show every change here just now, but I'm happier with these adjustments and think they suit the story much better. Thank you again!

All right, that's all we've got for today! We're aiming to be back on regular progress reports again now! The team's back together and fired up, especially with how good these new changes came out! Hope to see you again next week!

Oh, uh... one more thing...

Stay tuned for an INCREDIBLE new piece of art from Anne! Until next time, nudies!

Hey there nudies! I want to apologize for being so late on this... If you'll remember my last progress report, I made a brief mention of trying to sell my house. Well, I'm happy to share that this house is SOLD. And these last three weeks have been scrambling trying to get everything in order - everything packed, all the paperwork done, new apartment acquired, moving trip planned, and all the last minute repairs and whatever else necessary to complete the house closing. It has been an EXHAUSTING month, and it's hopefully going to get even crazier soon because within the next week, we'll be on the road and moving to Portland on a 5-day roadtrip! So updates may still be sporadic for a bit as I move out and get settled back in... so with that, I wanted to give you guys a bit of a meatier progress report.

Well, here it is. Attached to this post is the full 8 minute opening cutscene of MNL!

Unfortunately, Subscribestar doesn't let me upload big videos directly for playback here, so I had to upload it as an attachment. Please download and check out the opening in its entirety, if you so wish! I will also upload a slightly shorter version on our Discord if you want to see it there as well!

This 8 minute long video contains everything all the way up until you gain control of Amber. I wanted to give you all a taste of the game - the driving motivation, Amber's characterization, the overall tone and style of the game... even just the stuff like how the text wiggles and the game sounds. Anne's art and Vanware's music is on full display here, much like Amber herself! I'm really happy with how this came out, and eager to see your feedback!

You may notice that the shots of Culo Culo near the end are fairly empty. That will be changed in the full release. In fact, that's the immediate thing we've been working on these last three weeks. We're trying to populate the area full of NPCs, but unfortunately, rigging has proven to be an issue. Invertex has had to work his butt off trying to figure out a universal animation configuration so that all NPCs can share from a pool of pre-set animations, rather than each one being uniquely animated. I've mentioned it before, but these last few weeks have mostly been trying to figure this out. It's been a hair-pulling experience that's produced a lot of truly monstrous looking creatures that I won't dare show you here. But eventually, Invertex figured it out!

Despite the size difference, these two characters are sharing animations pretty easily! Invertex even worked up some extra little bits on this business woman, like boob and hair bounce. With this figured out, we should be able to plop some NPCs down and get this area finished up! Though again, things are going to be delayed a bit until I get settled down in our new city.

That's all for today, though! Again, thank you so much for being so patient and understanding with these long delays. I hope to get back to my normal schedule as soon as I have my computer set back up in a fresh new apartment! Check out our Discord if you haven't already, and see you again soon!

Hey there, nudies! I am so, SO sorry for the extended delay. I didn't mean to take so long getting to you all, I promise. Just an extremely busy few weeks, and not just for me. Invertex actually suffered a power outage that damaged his computer and knocked him out of commission for a bit. Everything's been repaired and replaced now, but it was pretty worrying for a bit! As for me, I've been dealing with trying to sell this house I'm in, talking with banks, and preparing a big personal announcement that should be ready in the next couple weeks. It's been hectic as all heck. But now that things have settled down a bit, let's get right back into it!

We're prepping everything to get this opening area done, and that includes prettying things up a bit! One thing we decided to test was the image you see up at the top - shading! We weren't quite happy with Amber's self-shading giving her a kinda weird look, so we dialed that back a bit. A nice benefit to this as that shadows can now be casted on top of Amber, which looks really nice... though the downside is that she can't cast shadows herself. Just a weird compromise we have to make. I promise she's not a vampire! We did give her some little feet shadows so at least there's some marking that she's on the ground. It'll just have to do!

This opening area is going to have a couple of NPCs, as you saw with Freddy in a previous update. But we needed to streamline our rigging process for animations. It would take too long to hand-rig every single NPC, so Invertex whipped up a new program that generates rigs for the models with only minimal adjusting. It's not an automatic process and requires some tweaking, but it removes a LOT of the tedium for setting up animation controls. And with the same base rig being used across all our different characters, they should be able to share animations! The above GIF was a test to see how well this would work. It ain't perfect, but with just a small amount of tweaking, it can be!

But that's not all, either! Don't go turning your head and coughing just yet, because we've got a brand new character to debut! This one is actually an original design from our 3D modeler, Bear Festival! We gave him carte blanche to create a character, and... ta-da!

Presenting the town's healthcare practitioner! This doctor runs a clinic in downtown Culo Culo. She's a bit intimidating, or at the very least tries to be... but sadly, she's kind of a big dork. Bear put a lot of love into this one, and fought tooth and nail to keep her boobs as big as they ended up being. We still haven't quite decided on a name yet, but there's lots of potential for a big-boobed goth chuuni doctor!

The big push for this month is getting all of our NPCs and final props into this cafe zone, then attaching dialogue and cutscenes to our interactables to finally get this section done! Then we need to do it for the very brief section outside Amber's house, the lengthier, much less clothed scene inside her house, and then the demo is DONE! Full speed ahead! Let's go!

We'll also have another prequel comic page for you guys tomorrow! It came out VERY cute, and it's the start of a great new scene you're definitely not gonna want to miss! Here's just a one-panel preview of our nudie cutie waking up from a very relaxing nap...

That's all for today, though! Again, sorry for taking so long on this! And see you tomorrow with a new page!

Hey there, nudies! Short progress report today, still just trucking along. We got a fun little quality of life element going, which is... keyboard controls! Originally, we only had mouse controls implemented, but now you can directly control Amber's nudie cutie self with the WASD or arrow keys! We're aiming to keep the control scheme very simple for this game, so the entire thing can be playable with just a keyboard, just a mouse, or both! It's all doable with just one hand, so let that other hand enjoy its newfound freedom however you see fit!

Speaking of which, we're hard at work on the prequel comic for this month! We're a bit behind schedule on it, and currently it looks like this.

Which, you know, still looks fantastic, but expect to see a slightly more detailed version soon!

With my uh, scheduling adjustment I mentioned a few updates ago, I've been able to put in some MNL time just about every day of the week since! I'm cranking it harder than ever on this writing, and we're making good time! I don't want to jinx it, but we may actually be able to lock down a release window soon if we keep this up... Mostly me. Everybody else has been doing fantastic, I'm the one who's gotta keep this up. AND I WILL.

But that's all for today! Thank you all so much for the support, and see you next week with another report!