March 20th 2023: Progress Report and Announcement

Hello everyone, Rem here. It's with a bit of a heavy heart as I'm about to write today's post. So right away, I'm going to say what it is and then give a bit of an explanation behind my thought process.

I'm going to be taking a break from work for a month, and there will be no more weekly Progress Reports during the same time period.

So, basically, the gist and source of it is that the Gym DLC has become a bit of weight around my neck, a scarlet letter, an albatross. From the day we decided to delay releasing it until now, it's been a source of constant pressure and stress. I lose about six strands of hair every time I shower now, and who knows how many more elsewhere. The other day while I was cleaning my bed sheets, I used a lint roller to collect all the hair on my bed and there was easily more than thirty.

Hey, maybe that has nothing to do with anything and the Head & Shoulders shampoo that I've been using all my life is the cause. I did order a new shampoo, supposedly made with Japanese rice or something that's supposed to heal your scalp when you're losing hair. Maybe I'm just naturally balding too.

But, I wouldn't be surprised if the cause is partially stress, because it has been stressful. I actually have quite a lot of new ideas for the next game, and they're all different from each other and of course, different from Karryn's Prison. They have different gameplay, and different requirement for the type of game systems I would need to program. I don't even know yet if I have the technical prowess to do any of them because I would need to dedicate time to writing and testing code, maybe even on different game engines. But I haven't been able to do that, my hand just stops because there is the Gym DLC that has been put on hold, and it being put on hold has put pretty much everything else on hold.

Everything just circles back to the Gym DLC being on an indefinite holding state. As long as it is not released, I can't do anything else. But at the same time I can't put myself to releasing it.

So some people who don't follow me weekly will be very lost, so I'm going to retell what happened. Basically, we were originally set to release the Gym DLC, and then we opened a public beta test for it, was surprised by some of the bad feedback we received, and then decided to not release it so we can maybe see how we can 'fix' it.

But, since the day we made that decision, I have found zero satisfactory solutions on how to or what to 'fix'. Here arise the conflict and struggle. And the actual conflict is the different between what I want, and what a player might want. I think, this isn't specifically about Gym DLC itself per-say, but more to Karryn's Prison as a whole.

Sachinama and I both spent around the last four years of our lives, devoted to working on KP every day and night. I gleefully made a plan and design at the start, and while there was some bumps and twists and turns (*cough, at one point re-doing the Passives system and by extension, the Desire system) I remained honest and steadfast to the original design and vision I had and four years later, we successfully finished KP. But I personally didn't have some kind of strong sense of accomplishment, like something out of a TV drama where it's over and then there's a party and cake and banners and we celebrate a job well done. Frankly, I remember the next two week after releasing KP as a frenzy of bug fixing and such.

So KP was finished, but at the same time it didn't feel finish because I never stopped working after that. And in a different way that baffles me, some players also don't feel KP is finished for different reasons.

But I want to stress this disconnect, KP is finished, and has been finished. I personally didn't feel like I finished something because I kept doing bug fixes or adding small minor things or improvements. And then I would feel weird when I read someone go, 'Hey, where did all the updates go? Has Karryn's Prison been abandoned? Wow.'

And my eyes fall out of their socket whenever I read comments like that because 1. KP was content complete and finished when we released it and 2. We've been working the whole time making small improvements like fixing up some CGs, adding new variations to existing CGs, bug fixes, optimizations and so on.

KP will always be our baby, and my first baby. We poured everything into KP, and I used at the time, over a decade of eroge experience and all our other experience we had into making it.

I think,

I think... (there was about a period of ten minutes as I paused and thought about what to write next)

I think, losing the timing and not getting that hollywood style mission accomplished sense of completion after finishing KP was really bad. The original plan in my heart, was something like once KP is finished I'll fly over to Japan and I can pat Sachinama in the back and hug him and go out to celebrate over some good food. But that chance never came because of Covid, and also because right away work resumed non-stop with bug fixing and reading reviews and fixing the small issues from those reviews. In fact, I don't want to put all the blame on Covid but basically I haven't left my house since Covid became a thing. Part of it is of course I was focused on KP, and another part of it was I didn't want to put my family at risk by going outside.

Then I had my wrist injuries for a month, and there was the eye surgeries stuff we both did while working on the Gym DLC, and it was just this vague sense of existence that KP had become. Is it finished, is it not finished? Of course it was finished, we worked four years on it and poured everything we had during that time. But I felt like I had to keep going even though it was finished.

And here's the struggle with designing the Gym DLC. It's very easy to see what most players would want. I'll say it, it's something simple as Karryn working out and getting harassed, and maybe even some shower sex related to the prison shower dropped soap trope.

But for one, I don't like repeating same content and choices, and two, I enjoy making something new and different. Sachinama also feels similar in not retrending the same ground. This goes into the broader expectations of what people might have for KP's continued updates.

In a business sense.......... I'm sure the right decision that 9 out 10 people would take in our position, would be exactly what most people want. That is, simply more KP content that is the same but with a different skin. More side jobs, more sex, more costumes, just give 'em a different look and put some spit shine on it.

But I'm personally someone that only enjoys trying something creatively new and different. Making Meltys Quest 2 after Meltys Quest would've been the safe and secure option. However, making KP was thrilling and exciting. We were able to work day and night for four years because we were creating something new and fun.

The Gym DLC was us attempting to add something new, a different spin to KP. It's different from the existing side jobs and content. It wasn't meant to be the same content but in the gym instead. But when we received feedback that amounts to, '...That's it? Where's xyz' It was hurtful and showed the broader disconnect that I've been talking about between how some people see KP (unfinished, abandoned).

So I want to take a month off. Like actual time off. Not the vague breaks that I've been talking about where I'm kinda of taking a break from work but not really because I'm still actually working a bit behind the scenes here and there and thinking about KP.

What I want is a bit of time to collect myself a bit. I want to rest but I've never really rested because there was always more work to do. There's going to different school of thoughts in reaction to my decision. One I'm not going to entertain is the visceral reaction. We'll probably going to be receiving more death threats in the next coming few weeks. Not sure when and why, probably there's some echo chamber in the corner of the vast internet somewhere where people build themselves up to the point where it's socially acceptable to send other people death threats for perceived slights. This is the unfortunate side of effect of having thousands and thousands of people follow you, the more people there are, the higher chance of attracting unwanted attention and types.

More importantly, there will be a logical school of thought to my decision, and it's the one that Sachinama subscribes to, which is Rem, if it's stressing you out this much, let's just release the Gym DLC as is without changing anything. Sachinama's opinion is the one the holds the most weight in the world for me. First of all, Sachinama is the only one besides me that really knows how much work we've put into the Gym DLC, and frankly, I've always thought that it was more than enough.

But like I've been talking about today, this goes beyond more than just the Gym DLC itself. Which is why I want to take some time off to collect myself a bit. Karryn's Prison is my baby, and maybe I'm just scared of letting go. I've pretty much never left my house during and after KP's development except to go to the doctors or physical therapy. Essentially, I live in NYC all my life, paying NYC rent prices and NYC taxes, but I might as well have been living in the middle of nowhere with no amenities except access to Amazon deliveries, and it would've been the same.

So I want to try something different, which is basically to go outside to look at the flowers and smell the bees, or so the saying goes, I think. Coincidentally, today marks the first day of spring. And a different coincident, an indie eroge I was looking forward to coming out last week got delayed for a month, and it's the type of eroge that is the same type as one of my new game ideas. And something that's not a coincident, is that last Tuesday I went to the eye doctor as part of my scheduled check up post-surgery, and it was discovered that my eyes were extremely dry.

Like my eye tear film? Tear ducts? Or something like that I forgot, was about 1/4 of the average size. Basically, I was spending too much time in front of the computer (of course, since I'm in front of one from the moment I wake until I sleep). So after discussing some solutions, I agree to have something called 'collagen punctual plugs' inserted into my eyes temporary for a month. And a month later, I'll go back, get re-examined and see how the situation is, and if everything is alright, insert a more permanent and expensive silicone implant into my eye. Basically, what they are supposed to do if my understanding is correct, is keep my eyes my lubricated or something. The alternatives were really: 1. less time in front of the computer, not really a permanent solution here since it's my job and also source of entertainment or 2. depend on eyedrops for the rest of my life, which I feel would be really unpleasant.

So yeah, that also happened last week.

What do I hope to accomplish by taking a month off for myself?

I don't know, I haven't done something like this before so I don't know what I would discover. Maybe nothing. Maybe during the period, a lightbulb in my head would turn on and suddenly I would have this great idea for something I can do to modify the Gym DLC to my liking. Honestly, I think the possibility of that is near zero since what, it's been a few months and there's still nothing I really want to change.

What I'm kinda hopeful for, is that by taking time off and away, I'll be able to have a firmer conviction of, yeah, KP is done and I'm happy with it, as I rightfully should be after everything I've put into it.

Anyway, that's the story of my decision that I agonized over. Thank you for reading this far. As for the actual Progress Report, the Stray Pubes DLC came out last week, and alongside fixing the bugs that popped up, I also added a new feature to the Stray Pubes DLC during the weekend. There's a new option now to separately change Karryn's pubic hair color. The default setting is that it's the same color as her hair, but if you want to, you can now color her pubes a different color from her hair within the options of purple, black or blond.

I don't ask for everyone to accept my decision, but I hope through today's writing, most would understand a bit of my viewpoint and where I'm coming from.