Hey, folks! First off, sorry this is a day late. I was on a roll rendering yesterday, and just didn't want to break my stride. So, figured I'd kick it to today. Then I had to go have my taxes done, and blah, blah, blah.. Hope you're all doing well this week!

I'm still hard at work on the Chapter 1 remake, and progress remains steady. Some of these scenes are taking a little longer to render than normal, which is a bit annoying. But, no major problems so far. For the most part, I leave those renders to run while I'm sleeping or at my day job, so it doesn't result in a bottleneck. It can be a little annoying when I realize something didn't render right, and I need to go back and redo it on the fly, though.

I'm still working towards having the Chapter 1 remake done by the end of this month, and hoping I don't slip into April. If I do, it should only be by a week or so. Either way, I'll have a new build ready by month's end for the Close Friend/$15 tier.

But, I'm not leaving everyone else out! I recently unlocked the Chapter 11 teaser for $5 supporters, and I'll be doing the same for $2 supporters on Friday, the 28th. It'll be made available to the public on Monday, the 31st. So, everyone will have a little something to enjoy. The release schedule will look like this, for the foreseeable future.

Hopefully that's not too confusing. I promise, it'll all make sense eventually.

I'm going to get back to rendering! Got a long few days ahead of me, but I've got the eye of the tiger and the thrill of the fight. As always, take care of yourselves and thank you for your support!

Hey, hey folks! Hope you're all doing well this week!

I had some maybe-tornadoes in my neck of the woods a few days ago, but I don't think anything touched down. Got some nasty wind and storms, which kept causing power surges. Not fun! But, thanks to a lot of chiding from some of you when I last complained about losing power (and half-completed work), I finally purchased one of those neat uninterruptible power supply units, and was able to work unmolested. Eat it, Mother Nature!

Work on Chapter 1's remake continues unabated, and I'm still optimistic about having it done before month's end. Feeling the crunch though! I'll work right up to the buzzer, as per usual. Up top you'll see two small variations on the initial Nicki hangout scene - one where she gets unexpectedly cozy with our hard-luck hero, and another where she's a bit more standoffish.

(God, I really do love those checkered stockings on her. "Excellent choice, Neon." "Gee, thanks, other Neon.")

Also! In January I released a teaser for Chapter 11, showing how our scrappy protagonist gets out of the jam he found himself in at the end of Chapter 10. This month, I'll be making that available for the Friend from Work and Acquaintance tiers to play before I make people redo their saves for the new Chapter 1. So, come what may, everyone will have some new content to play.

As a small bonus, I've attached some Brittani pics I made, which were originally going to be part of a Wanton Weekends set for the past weekend. But as I was working, I couldn't shake this feeling like: "This is really some low effort work." So I scrapped the idea - I'd always rather put out nothing than put out junk. But don't worry, I'll get something else up for this weekend.

After sitting with these images for a while, I did started thinking about the scene in the game where we look at Britt's off-brand Instagram and see photos from her vacation to Europe with Isabella and her wicked step-dude. Got me thinking there might be a fun text story there. I'll kick that around and come back to it.

Also of note, I got a weird influx of supporters in the past week across a few of my platforms. Not sure why, but I suspect a pirate site put up the Blue Valentine short and led people here? If so, welcome! There are webcam scenes in the main game too, so check those out and have a blast. And yes, I know I could look at the analytics and see where traffic is coming from, but in my experience, looking up my work online and reading not-so-good-natured critiques from the anonymous commentariat is a good way to make me mope around my house for a week. Gift horses, mouths, etc.

Alright, I'll leave you with that for today! But as always, take care of yourselves, and thank you for your support!

Hey, hey folks! Hope you're all having a great week! I spent most of today feeling a little off, only to realize -- daylight savings time struck again, and I lost an hour of sleep. Womp, womp.

On the progress front, rendering work for Chapter 1’s remake is ongoing. Not much to report yet, but I’m still working on getting a new teaser/demo build together. I’d hoped to have it done yesterday, but I think I'll need a few more days. Sorry about that! For the Close Friends, I promise it’s coming, and I really appreciate your patience. The good news? It'll have a bit more content than I originally planned, so hopefully the wait will be worth it.

Working on the spicy scenes with this version of Nicki (and MC!) has been a lot of fun. One thing that never sat quite right with me in the original Chapter 1 was how Nicki and MC/Guy only got together after he got in better shape and moved into a nice condo. That was mostly a result of me keeping things concise back then. But now? I don’t have those same constraints. I can be a little more indulgent and let different branches of the story play out naturally.

So, in this new version, they can potentially hook up in Guy’s twin bed -- while he’s still rocking that spare tire around his waist. For those who enjoy the true love/romance path, I think it makes things a little sweeter and more sincere, seeing Nicki accept our hero exactly as he is.

That said I do have one concern: This version of Nicki is just cute as a button. If I got a lot of hate mail before for ‘ruining’ her with tattoos and a new haircut, I might be in for the pitchfork-and-torches treatment this time. :'D Perils of being a smut peddler, I suppose.

That’s it from me today! Take care of yourselves, and as always, thank you for your support!

Hey, friends! Hope you're all doing well this week!

I continue toiling away on the Chapter 1 remake/revamp/redo/reboot/retread.. Whatever you might call it! I'm planning to get another playtest build out this weekend (likely on Sunday) for the Close Friend tier, to add more content, and address some bugs, typos, and a few other things.

Responses to the new Chapter 1 teaser have been positive, which is awesome. I was really nervous I was going to go to all this effort, and people would react with a resounding, "Mehhhh.." But, so far the folks who have played it have said it's a big improvement on the original. Worth noting is that the current teaser build ends a bit before the ero content, so.. I could still fumble the ball on that end.

(But, I won't!)

Despite the praise, one playtester did point out that they felt the progression between two scenes was a little too abrupt, with others backing them up. So, today I wrote and rendered a little interstitial scene, to bridge that gap. It follows our hero as he goes through the process of gathering support to help him manage his new life -- including the help of a familiar lawyer! People seem to really like this character, based on her brief appearances in Chapter 10, and in the released teaser for Chapter 11. To be honest, I think her resemblance to Crimson Viper is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, there. But, I'll take it!

Besides adding that scene to the teaser build, I also did some general pick-up images that I needed. Nothing too crazy, mostly just little things to make the visual storytelling flow better.

Also, over the weekend I put out a What If? image set, featuring an alternate universe where Gabby, and not Ashe, encountered our hero in Chapter 2's bar scene. It's pretty spicy, and available to all membership tiers.

Finally, I'm sorry to get this up a little late! Life got in the way, today. But, I hope you all have a great week! Take care of yourselves, and as always thank you for your support!

Hey, folks! Hope you're all doing well, today! Sorry to be getting this up later than usual. I sat down on my couch a few hours ago, and totally zonked out. Just woke up a bit ago. :'D

Work's still rolling right along, and over the next few days I'll be plugging images into my script, so I can complete a new teaser/demo build. There's not a ton to talk about on this end at the moment. I'm still just focused on rendering the existing script that I have.

One thing of minor interest that I did this week, was redo the above, "WE GOT SCAMMED!" image. Last week I posted a version that I'd previously made (in part) with AI, and people rightly called me out for half-assing it. So, I re-did it with Daz and the liquify tools in Procreate, and I think it came out much better.

I do find myself struggling a bit with one thing in this chapter -- the fact that it basically occurs across three time periods, in a single chapter. We open with our hero as a younger man, getting sucked into a crypto scam. We transition into our present, where we find him working at the store alongside Nicki. Then, as part of this present we have flashbacks to the recent past, where we see how Guy and Nicki's relationship was originally formed.

The first two time periods aren't really problematic, as we clearly transition from one to the other. On the other hand, the more recent flashbacks really only use costume/hair changes to denote that they're not taking place in the present. So, I'm trying to figure out if I should do something to make it more obvious that these are our heroes memories, and not his present. I tried adding a letterbox frame around the images, applying a grainy filter, etc. but I haven't found anything I'm quite happy with yet. It may also be a total non-issue, and I'm just thinking about it too much.

But, if there's a visual novel/game that's done something to clearly denote images taking place in a flashback, which you think were well done.. Drop a comment and let me know! I'm woefully behind the times right now, so some other developer may have already figured this out for me.

Until next time, take care of yourselves -- and thank you for your support!

Hey, hey folks! Hope you're all doing well this week!

Just to let you know where things stand, I'm currently around 320 renders for the Chapter 1 remake, and things are still moving right along. At present I'm mostly working on stuff set inside the convenience store, with Nicki, Guy/MC, and Brent. While this scene largely mirrors the original version of Chapter 1, I also added a little something to it, so it doesn't just feel like a tired retread. I really don't want this whole exercise to feel like a shot-for-shot remake with slightly nicer renders, so I'm trying to add a few twist and turns that weren't there originally. Hopefully, that'll make it feel fresh and exciting for you longtime supporters.

To that end, you can see a new scene depicted in the images attached to this post, featuring the man who convinced our hero to sink his life savings into cryptocurrency -- Kobalt! Every cryptobro cliche rolled into one, this guy is a natural chameleon who adopts whichever persona best serves his interests. So, we get to see two very different versions of this dude inside a very small window of time -- and they both suck! But, I'm super happy I got to make my very own clickbait thumbnail, just for this little sequence. :'D

Moving along, over the weekend I posted an all-new mini-sode, free to everyone. Most folks seemed to really dig it, which is always very gratifying. Starring Spicy Sapphire, this little game puts the player in the role of an anonymous viewer of her stream, with the ability to influence the narrative to a small degree. I'll make sure this little mini-sode (along with the one starring Alex) are inserted into the actual game, with the next release.

On the subject of mini-sodes: Up until now, every mini-sode I've done has been a little bonus release for a holiday (April Fool's for Brent, Halloween for Alex, and now Valentine's Day for Sapphire), but I don't plan for this to be the case forever. Once I've finished the Chapter 1 remake, and Chapter 11 is in the can, I'm planning to put out some mini-sodes that'll be tier-locked for patrons, before being made available to the public, just like normal releases. 

Finally, on the advice of a supporter, I've been experimenting with AI audio to over-dub my voice on some of the Daz tutorials I did. I need to play with the editing a bit, but I'm hoping this will mean I can give you folks even more content here.

I'll leave you with that, today! As always, take care of yourselves and thank you for your support!