December 20th 2021: Final Progress Report of 2021

Hello everyone, tired and sleepy Rem here with this week's Progress Report!

I think this one will be final Progress Report of the year. It's not going to be a long report because basically I've just been spending last week getting ready for release, and then it's been nonstop work since Karryn's Prison has been released on Steam and DLsite. My days has been either: 1. Reading comments and reviews 2. Fixing and patching bugs and issues 3. Doing the housework that I've been neglecting over the years while working on Karryn's Prison.

So yeah, in between nonstop working and not getting enough sleep, I'm super tired right now, but it's a tiredness from feeling alive sooo, it's all good? Probably?

But thank you all, really! Whether you've been supporting us forever, or recently, or just now found out about us! We appreciate it and we hope that we managed to meet your expectations for Karryn's Prison!

As mentioned before here and elsewhere, outside of fixing bugs and issues, me and Sachinama are going to take a break to rest and spend time with our families until after New Years, and then we'll discuss our future plans and options together. Regardless of whatever we plan to do, we're still going to be converting the remainder of the text in the game to the new text system so that we can start working with translators to begin the long process of localizing the game to other languages.

And as thanks to everyone who follow and read our posts on SubscribeStar, I'll let you in on a lil secret! Well, it's not a real secret to anyone who has been following us for years back in our Patreon days and stuff.

First, the most common complaint? is probably something along the lines of, 'REEEEM!!! What the F***?! Why didn't you implement xyz or abc side job, HUH? Did you get BORED of working on Karryn's Prison, oink?!' or 'I'm disappointed, there was basically no Level 4 Edicts or side jobs, and no new content since v9 (ignoring the design/code/testing required for story, bosses, endings, challenge runs, etcetc and also all the voicework)'

Don't get wrong, this isn't me complaining about complaints. The root of most of these types of comments is that people really want more and more Karryn's Prison content. After all, no one is sitting around typing about their perception of the lack of content for a game they don't care about and don't play.

So the secret, and I only say secret because at this point the majority of our supporters and fans probably didn't follow us back in the early days of Patreon, is that it was planned from the very start to only be 4 side job/activities (Yes, the glory hole counts), and Level 5 was always going to be a boss only battle, and Level 4 would not have any new Edicts.

The core reasoning behind this, is that it would absolutely overwhelm the player with additional options and things to do day-by-day, playthrough-by-playthrough. When the game is designed in mind with multiple playthroughs, you have taper it off at some point instead of just increasing the options indefinitely. This is why Level 1 specifically has two side jobs, but Level 2 and 3 only introduces 1 new one.

However if and I say if because Sachinama and I still need to have this discussion after New Years, if new side jobs do get added, it would most likely be in the post-game so as to not break the delicate balance going on currently during a normal playthrough.

And here's a secret that will be new to literally everybody except Sachinama, although there has always been only 4 side job designed and planned for the game, 2 in Level 1, 1 in Level 2, and final 1 in Level 3, the original plan was to have the Office be the Level 2's side job. This is why by the way, the Office is one of the few maps that Karryn can access while the level is subjugated. This is one of the only two alterations from the original design that I laid out and planned since day 1 of the project. (By the way, I have absolutely zero intentions of adding in a Office side job at this point, it didn't make it into the game because ultimately I believe it doesn't fit well with the theme and design of the game.)

Now the second alteration from the original design that didn't make it into the finished game, is my original vision of how the Bad Ends would work. My original vision was that Bad Ends could essentially also be a sex battle similar to the Defeat Battles. Karryn games over from having zero order, and depending on her Corruption, will receive a Bad End that is also a battle if her corruption is high enough. But as Karryn's Prison started actually being coded and built, it became clear that an average playthrough was going to have a much higher playtime then I anticipated in my head. Plus the original reasoning for Bad Ends also being a battle, would be to push Karryn further down the path of corruption by having her face one more sex battle that could potentially add even more Passives to her, making the next playthrough even more challenging.

But doing something like that is obviously no longer necessary since Karryn gets more than enough sluttiness from a failed playthrough, to the point of most people just resetting her levels in New Game Plus. And then there's also the second point of having exclusive battles and CGs hidden away in a 'bad end'. If this were to be implemented, what essentially would happen is that instead of there being this hot extra scene at the end of a failed playthrough to sum up Karryn's failed attempt, it would become a chore for most players that want to see the bad ending battles. What would happen is people would play perfectly all playthrough, and once they reached an arbitrary number of Corruption, just sleep for a week or something to let Order fall to zero so they can see this one scene, and then the game autosaves at the end, and the player will have to do that all over again if they want to see it again. And considering the average playtime of a playthrough, yeeeeah. I identified pretty quickly that it would become a bad game design so I canned the idea midway through development.

So there you have it everyone, those are the only two things that didn't make it to the game from the original game design that I laid out. Considering that Karryn's Prison began as a game right after I decided to cancel a game that was in development because of feature creeping, I'm very happy to see that all the careful planning worked out and for the better.

With that all said (and my wrist pain are starting to flare up again from the typing), I hope everyone has a happy holiday and new years!!! I hope you've enjoyed, are enjoying, will enjoy, and also spread the joy of Karryn's Prison! This is the final post of 2021 on SubscribeStar! I hope everyone stay warm, stay safe, and stay great fans!! See you all in 2022!!