August 9th 2021: Progress Report and Announcement

The first announcement is that the Karryn's Prison Alpha Build v.9 release will be split into v9A and v9B, and we are planning to release v9A before the 20th of August!

v9A will feature the new system that we've worked on last month, art improvement and new cock variations, game performance improvements, as well as various tweaks and fixes here and there!

What v9A will NOT feature, is the strip club. The original plan was to release v9 after the strip club is finished, so why say that v9 won't be released in August and then split up the releases into v9A and v9B?

Because of two major factors:

1 - Splitting v9 into two releases does not affect how long it takes for the Strip Club to be implemented and finished. And waiting for the Strip Club would mean potentially waiting until October for v9 even though there are plenty of supporters who are still currently playing v8 and would benefit from playing around with the new system and game performance improvements that have been already coded, and the new art variations for the current sex scenes.

2 - Sachinama is going to take some time off to have a vacation around the end of this month. Which of course I support!!! Sachinama hasn't had a real time off since forever, and before summer is over I too would like Sachinama to get a chance to enjoy some time off with his family instead of sitting at home in front of a computer all day.

So with that all said, v9A is planned to be released in about ten-ish days or so. And then while Sachinama gets some well deserved time off to be with his family, I will be listening to feedback on v9A and fixing any bugs or issues that most likely will come up because there is new code for every new CG file and despite my best efforts, no doubt among the hundreds of CGs there will be one or two typos.

To everyone who are waiting for the Strip Club and don't want to play a new version until the Strip Club is released - that is no problem at all! Just wait for the v9B release. Like I said earlier, even if we do split v9 into v9A and v9B, it would still take the same amount of time for the Strip Club to be completed.

And now, for the second announcement! There will be some changes for SubscribeStar and Ci-en.

First of all, in addition to writing on SubStar, I will be helping post contents for Ci-en too now (with Sachinama fixing it up to be actual Japanese). Second, all Progress Reports from now until Karryn's Prison is completed and released on Steam and Dlsite, will be free and accessible for everyone to view and read. Third, Sachinama will be posting game artwork on Ci-en that will be viewable for free.

The reason for all these changes is that well, Karryn's Prison has been in development for three years, and we might finally be entering our final year of development. The price of the release is set for $30. And so to help out our fans and supporters who really want and need to save up money to buy KP when it's out but also want to stay in touch with the progress of the game, the remainder of the Progress Reports until release will be free and accessible to everyone!

I don't want anyone to feel any sort of pressure to subscribe to us if they're struggling with money. The plan for the v9 and v10 releases will remain the same. When v9A and v9B is ready, they will first be available to $10 and $20 tier subscribers, and then to $5 tier subscribers a week later. And when v10 is finished, it will only be available to $10 and $20 tier subscribers. But again, this is only for those with the spare money who really want to support us during the development. It's perfectly fine to save up money for the full release on Steam and DLsite.

Now for the Progress Report!

Actually, since about two weeks ago, I have been thinking a lot about the voice system, how to do it, how to implement it and such. And finally last week, I've done some of the preliminary coding to test if what I want was possible, and then I discussed with Sachinama about what we want in terms of the voice content. And we are agreement that we hope to get Karryn's battle dialogue fully voiced for the full release!

However, what this does mean is that there is a substantial chance that Karryn's Prison will not be finished by the end of 2021. In terms of time needed, not only do the voices needed to be voiced (which won't be done by us of course), the voice files will then need to be edited by us to work into the game. And just at glance, we are looking at around over two thousand voice files needed. And then let's say we were somehow able to edit 100 voice files a day, that would still take over 20 days alone to edit everything.

So yeah, the raw math is not on our side currently in terms of actualizing a 2021 release. So this is just an advanced heads up for anyone who are really looking forward to the full release by the end of the year. As always, I want to only release something when it is good and ready. But do look forward to it, because Karryn will be voiced in Japanese by the talented 本多未季 (Miki Honda)!

Finally, let me bring the topic back to Ci-en at the end here.

Ci-en for those who don't know, especially those who can't read Japanese, is pretty much a Japanese version of Patreon/SubscribeStar that is run by DLsite, a large marketplace of Japanese indie eroges. So since Ci-en has been created as a service, the success of a game by a maker with Ci-en is correlated with their Ci-en success. And currently, well, to put it simply, Sachinama's Ci-en isn't doing very well for a long time and it has been affecting Sachinama's mental health. He's worrying that because the Ci-en isn't doing well, it would affect the sales of Karryn's Prison on DLsite and it is often making him seriously worry.

And need I not hint to you all that a happy Sachinama is a Happy Life for not only me but for everyone who wants Karryn's Prison to be the best it can be. And by a successful Ci-en, I am not talking about subscription numbers, but something a lot more simple: Followers and Likes. Yeah, for anyone who has watched any Youtube video in the past several years will be tired about this cliche. But, if you want to support the development of Karryn's Prison in any way that you can, I want to ask you to do the following simple things:

1 - Follow Sachinama's Ci-en which is here: https://ci-en.dlsite.com/creator/2068 You can follow by clicking on this button here:

If you don't have a DLsite account when you click that, DLsite will ask for you to login or create a new one. The simplest way to create a DLsite account is to login with your Google or Facebook or Twitter or whatever account.

First click on this orange button to register a new account.

Then click on one of these buttons below to create a DLsite account by using Google or Twitter or whatever.

After you login through Google or whereever, the next account creation steps will ask you for your nickname and age and stuff like, I recommend copy and pasting the text on the screen to Google Translate so you know what each box is for!

In the future once you've successfully created an account, you can log back into DLsite/Ci-en by clicking on the same website that you used to create the account.

2 - Leave a Like for whenever Sachinama posts something on Ci-en, which is usually almost always the same day as the weekly Monday Progress Report posts here on SubscribeStar. You can stay on top of when Sachinama posts something by following us on Twitter/Discord and by following Sachinama's Ci-en. You can leave a Like at the bottom of each Ci-en post by pressing this orange button.

So the point of these Likes is to put Sachinama's Ci-en posts into the most liked posts in the past 24 hours ranking. The bar into the top 6 posts in the 24 hour ranking is usually around 500+ likes or so in 24 hours and as you can see in the above screenshot, Sachinama's post from last week only has about 300 or so... Being in the top 6 of the ranking greatly raises awareness and brings eyeballs to Sachinama's Ci-en, which in turn brings eyeballs to Karryn's Prison.

And again, these actions do not cost any money or require anything other than a little bit of your time. And so, I want to let you know a little something. As I said in the earlier announcement about Ci-en in this post, I will be contributing to Ci-en content and Sachinama will be posting up artwork for free. This includes hints to new content and artwork that I will not be revealing here on SubscribeStar because I don't want to accidentally spoil the readers here. But, certain readers, including most readers in Japan, DO want to be spoil and to see the very latest and newest artwork all time, so this is my solution to them. Now even if you can not read Japanese without using Google Translate or DeepL, I hope I can provide a value and reason for you all to check out Sachinama's Ci-en without feeling like it's a chore to just leave us a Like.

So with all that said, thank you everyone for your continued support, and look forward to more content to come this month! See you all, and remember to stay safe and stay cool!