Rem Diary 12/31/2025

Figure I might as well write a day or two earlier than I would have to round out an end of the year special. Gosh, fuck. It's always like this, how is it already a month since the last Rem Diary, man... fuck...

Anyways, let's get some business stuff out of the way first. We got a sale going on for all Remtairy titles until January 5th!

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Remtairy https://remtairy.itch.io/

Lovense is doing an end of the year sale!

https://www.lovense.com/a/KarrynsPrison

Next, let's briefly talk about AO's progress, or argh... lack of...

So I coded in enemy stuff so now they exist, and use their skills after the player ends their turn. Which they do through a button, wow! So now the battle structure actually exists, where the player selects skills to use, which each activate as the player use them, and when they hit the end turn button, the enemies' each use their skill. Which, is pre-determined at the start of the turn, and afterwards the player draws their skills and regain their AP and it goes on and on, etc.

All cool, that took around the first week-ish to finish. When it was time to start working on the trigger system I talked about in the last Rem Diary, I just, urgh, couldn't. Or technically, just didn't. I fell into a rut again, wondering what's the point of all this, what the point of making it an eroge when how I was currently designing the game meant it was just, urgh. It... it... it was the same thing as one of the main issue of old AO, an unresolved issue that I thought would be okay to leave unsolved as long as all the other issues with old AO were addressed. I guess deep down inside, it wasn't okay and needed to be addressed. But I couldn't so urgh, week two and week three just fucking disappeared. Of course week three is also holiday week so maybe if we are feeling generous and merry, I could get a pass for it but still.

Around week two was also when I found out about an eroge called Unholy Maiden was coming out on the 19th. Oh shit! It's the people behind Eclipse Works, one of the great OGs of indie eroges!!! And the game looked cool! It's like the first I would say, KP-like coming from the Japanese side that I've seen! So I just chilled while waiting for it to come out.

And then I played it on release. And my feelings towards new AO and its issue with the sexual part not being integrated enough got stronger after playing Unholy Maiden. What's the point. Sigh. So while feeling lost again, I spent the holiday week.

After Christmas, while thinking about what to do, what I should change for new AO. After all, I do think the skill system and enemy trigger stuff I thought up of are neat. Sigh, should I just do battle fuck again? It won't be like KP, as there won't be a Mental Phase or Desires, but should I just do battle fuck again??? Should I do female protagonist only instead of a party of three? While fighting with myself, I suddenly got a DM from a sex doll company, asking for collab.

After talking it out with Sachinama and the representative of the company, we decided to go for it. Of course, anything can still happen and nothing is set in stone, but if everything goes fine??? Then we might be seeing a 60+ cm silicone sex doll of Karryn in the second half of 2026 at the earliest and that's fucking insane.

Can you all believe this? Because I can't. Meltys Quest has a hentai anime. Karryn's Prison has sex toy integration through Lovense, and an anime figurine from MouseUnits. It's voice acted in Japanese and English by top tier voice actresses. And now, there is potentially a mini sex doll coming in the future!

And you know what, that wasn't even the only future KP related project that's been planned. There is in fact, something else we haven't announced that uses KP's IP that is already in production phase and scheduled for first half of 2026. There is also another potential collab for a project that's been in talks for a long time and may or may not happen. So that's potentially one to three different KP stuff coming in 2026.

I was thinking, it felt a bit unfair to our partners for having faith in us as they do their work to sell their stuff in 2026 when we are already finished with the game. I mean, it's not actually unfair, that's how the world works with IPs and how merch happens after something is finished. But it just felt a little, a little something to me. And since I was stuck hitting my head against the wall for AO, I thought.

Fuck it. We ball.

Let's make the 4th DLC for Karryn's Prison.

Keeping the IP alive with new stuff for our partners' stuff is not actually the first objective of restarting work on KP and making it a new DLC.

The first main objective (besides just to stop wasting so much god damn time not accomplishing enough, or at the least, personally feeling that way), is to test some stuff and ideas from AO with the new DLC.

Not everything of course can be tested. It's got to be within reason with the existing KP systems.

For now, there's two main things I want to try out the concept of. One, is skills with limited uses. Two, is skills that can be upgraded in weird ways.

There's also the roguelike component but uh, that's not exactly a new high idea or concept.

Ideally, I would also like to test out drawing skills, as in the same way a card is drawn from a deck in a card game. But I think it might be introducing too much unknown systems all at once in one system.

So what IS the DLC?

Well, I just grabbed the first thing that popped up in my head right away (actually that's a lie it's the second thing, but that's a secret shh.) which is a new side job, specifically playing as a Teacher in Level 2 Classroom.

The broad, broad strokes will be like this: The already established ingame classroom curriculums of Reform, Workshop and Anatomy will be reused. Each curriculum will have, I dunno a better term for now, a Curriculum Level. Like all side jobs, the Teacher Side Job will also have a Classroom Reputation but in my head, it currently has a very minor benefit of only decreasing the Level 2 Riot Chance+ effects from having a Classroom in the first place. Instead, the real benefits of the side job will be from the Curriculum Level of Reform, Workshop and Anatomy. But unlike Reputation, the Curriculum Level of each class type will decrease every day by 1, down to minimum of 1, unless Karryn taught that class type today.

So okay, how do you increase the Curriculum Level of each class? That's where the roguelike part comes in. When teaching a class, it will always start at teaching Level 1. Then when Karryn succeeds, the Curriculum Level goes to 2. Karryn can only teach up to the highest Curriculum Level of that class type reached. So if this is the first time Karryn is teaching the Reform curriculum, then after beating Level 1, it ends for today. But the next time she teaches Reform, she can teach until she beats Level 2, and so on.

And after beating a Level, I'm thinking there will be up to three things that Karryn can choose options for during the intermission, "Testing", between Levels: Materials, Carrot, and Stick

Materials and Stick are guaranteed while Carrot must be earned through beating the Bonus objective, more on that later. Materials gives a choice between adding a new Teacher skills (Lesson Plan and Proctor) for the current shift, or upgrading one of the Lesson Plan skills.

Stick are like a curse or debuff. Karryn has to choose between a choice that would make the current shift harder like making the Main Objective harder, or making the rest of her day harder like decreasing her Willpower Skills' effectiveness or causing a Level to riot unless she works in the Strip Club later today.

Carrot are like bonus or relics. Options that Karryn can pick to make the current shift easier.

But Rem! That's just a win more mechanic isn't it? You get to choose a Carrot after beating the bonus objective, which just makes it easier to meet both the next main objective and bonus objective!!

Well no, see, that's where the limited skill use comes into play. Maybe you don't want to waste skills trying to meet the bonus objective if it's going to cost too many skills? Who knows.

So speaking of objectives, meeting the Main Objective is how you can succeed in teaching the current Level. Main Objective start off with something like '3 students have C or higher.' And Stick can make this harder. Meanwhile, Bonus Objective could be something like '1 student has A' or 'No more than 2 students have D or lower.' and so on.

And with that, time to talk a little bit about the students during the side job. They will have a Grade and Attention stats. Karryn's skills may affect the target's Grade and/or Attention. And students will be doing their own thing that affects their own or others' Attention. Karryn's skills that affect Grade will depend on their Attention, so higher should be better for most cases.

Use Lesson Plan skills to keep their Attention high, then increase their Grade. Then once time is up, Karryn gets to use one Proctor skill before grading which will check if the objectives are met. If Karryn succeeded, pick to gain a new skill or upgrade a skill, pick a carrot (if bonus was met), pick a stick, and do it again until the max curriculum level is reached. Then repeat the next day for the same curriculum or maybe choose a different one! And that's the general loop. I'm thinking right now the actual max a curriculum's level can go up to is like up to 5 or 6 but we'll see once it's actually coded and being tested.

There's another main objective for the side job besides testing AO stuff out or having new content to keep the IP fresh. And that is the side job has to be different. I don't want a waitress-like or receptionist-like. So that's why I picked the Teacher. It seems most suitable for testing a roguelike environment.

There's also a worry though. You see, for AO I currently have it that each skill has seven different upgrade types, the seven sins. I haven't really decided how many different upgrades each skill can have. I'm thinking maybe four? Which sounds like a huge downgrade from the crazy seven AO currently is designed to have, but remember a typical Slay the Spire-like game only has one upgrade path and it's something simple like +3 damage or -1 mana or +1 weaken and stuff like that. And I'm probably not going to be allowing a skill to be double upgraded like I plan to with AO, simply because a run aka a shift isn't long enough for a skill being double upgraded to matter too much? And there isn't a lot of ways to replenish skill uses so I don't want to encourage the player to not use the skill they just upgraded in hopes of saving it until they can upgrade one more time for a better effect.

Another worry is, would it be too monotonous if unlike what I have planned for AO, you have full access to all your skills at all times instead of having limited random access? But at the same time, according to the themes of playing a Teacher whose skills are their Lesson Plan, it would be weird if they don't have access to their tools at all times also? But this might be a needless worry since after all, if it's monotonous then all of KP is monotonous in the same way since Karryn has access to all her skills at all times anyway.

So anyway, the current plan is to design the skills since that is the main component.

2025 was, to be fair, not a great personal year. I didn't feel like I did much except get addicted to using AI to make stuff to masturbate to, and also getting spooked and paralyzed by AI and what it can do. But after exploring it, getting addicted and using it all day, then stopping, then restarting but only using it moderately, cough, I can see the limitations that it has. So there's no reason related to AI doomerism that should stop me from making a simple side job DLC (cough, there's nothing simple about this planned side job, it's the most complex design wise compared to the others, why do I do this to myself, please send help SOS, cough).

But I don't want to let our partners down. There's a potential Karryn sex doll that you might be able to grab next year for $1000+ that you can dress up and stick thingies inside! And now there's a potential new KP DLC for a new side job! And most importantly, let down our fans and supporters. So here's to the end of 2025, and here's to 2026. Send us your strength!! And I'll see you all next year! Happy New Year everyone!!!

Rem Diary 12/1/2025

Oooooooh boy'o already a month since the last post. Again. Wait, put down those pitchforks and tasers!!!!! It just so happened that it's another month, I just happened to decide today would be a good day to make a new post, or otherwise it would take maybe another week or two before I felt like writing.

WAIT! PUT DOWN THOSE PITCHFORKS!

Lemme back up and explain. Unlike the previous Rem Diary and the happenings with the 'Old Amelya Opus' and its development, this time today's Rem Diary took so long because I was busy just enjoying coding and making progress. I even debated if I should restart the whole weekly Progress Report thing but then again, it felt a little too early when we're nowhere close to a working demo.

Let's do a quick review of the last four weeks.

Week 1: I already forgot.

Alright, you may each get one free stabbing, please form an orderly line and let's do this cleanly. No below the belt.

Really, I forgot. Probably just the usual planning and drafting ideas and stuff. Though I'm pretty sure Week 1 was mostly where I decided to change the programming environment from Notepad++, which I used throughout Meltys Quest and Karryn's Prison, to Visual Studio Code. I felt like doing a new game was as good a time as any to switch to a new environment. In fact, I kind of did try this switch during Old Amelya Opus' development, but I couldn't get comfortable with learning a new tool, plus all the other things going on with Old AO so I just fell back to Notepad++. But this time I really wanted to give it another try.

And now I'm just naturally more comfortable with VSCode after configuring it a bit to my liking! I still use Notepad++ on my side monitor, but now as an actual notepad when I want to jot down some thoughts, or use it as a way to hold references. I gotta say... the autocompletion and error checking stuff in VSCode are so good and I think it's doing wonders for my productivity. I still don't quite like how when I open a new tab in VSCode, it doesn't open the new tab all the way to the right like how it is in browsers and Notepad++, but instead it opens the new tab to the right of whatever tab you were viewing. If there are any VSCode-heads out there who know how to change this behavior, lemme know.

Anyway, so Week 2 was making a bunch of new code. I started off with defining how I want the data structure and formatting for Skills to work in the game. I have to be honest, initially I wanted to do it in a very, VERY stupid and silly way where I just hard-code the effects of every single skill straight into the code. I was like, eh, it'll work out somehow. Thankfully, I decided to give something else a try, which was to do it in such a way, and which is probably the normal way out there btw, where I define a system of effects that a Skill can have, and code those type of effects, and then have a data file where you can decide what effects a skill can have. Finally, read that data file for a certain skill, and look up its effects, and then look at the code of how that effect would work.

Basically, I only need to code in what a certain effect does once instead of each time for a skill that does it. The non-dumb way, probably. Man rediscovering fire and the wheel kind of thing.

Week 3 was........ where I hit sort of a snag. A wall as I explained it to Sachinama. I coded in the Skill system. Awesome. It was very fun. But next, I have to code in how the game engine, the RPGMaker MZ engine, would use those skills.

Argh. Aaaaarrgggghhh.

As I mentioned in the last Rem Diary, one of the great difficulty of Old AO was that I would have to learn and understand the card combat plugin in order to then modify it to my needs. And it just felt so stupid and I didn't want to do it. This time, the task was to understand RPGMaker MZ's base combat system and how its sequence of events in battle happen. To understand and learn it, master it, just so to then rip it all apart and replace it with my own.

Aarrrrrgghhh. My head was buried in arms on my desk. The day by day progress in Week 3 was slow. Some days, none at all.

Week 4. Last week. Then bit by bit, I finally understood how it worked more or less. There are still some parts I don't understand yet, specifically any graphical stuff like controlling the damage number sprite pop up and stuff like that. BUT. I figured out the sequences of actions that happen between the player selecting an action, aka Attack, Skill or Item in base Rpgmaker MZ, and then that action activating. I successfully saw how it all worked.

And then I ripped that shit apart.

In Rpgmaker MZ's base system, when it is 'the player's turn', you select an action for each of your character. Then after you select once for everyone, all the actions including the enemies' all fire at once, in a random order that is modified by agility.

I don't need that crap. What I wanted is for when it is the player's turn, to select a skill, then that skill and only that skill fires. And then it's back to the player's control again until they hit something representing End Turn.

I got that part done now. In addition, of course, it's using the Skill system that I made earlier last month, so the effects of a Skill is defined by my custom data structure which is many times more flexible and complex compared to the base RPGMaker's. The skill system in KP was actually quite a bit more complex than the base RPGMaker's too, but KP had depended on Yanfly's plugins to do that, and even so I had to do quite a number of modification on the Yanfly plugins. This time because I don't have the clutch of relying on other people's plugins, there also won't be a mountain of unknown and unneeded code running around in the background doing god knows what unnecessary shit. And I get to do whatever I want.

So anyway, that was last month. And right now, the next task I am planning to do is to code in Enemies. What an Enemy is. How their data structure is and works.

I got the player side down for the player side of a battle turn. Now I have to do the enemy side. What I want is not how RPGMaker MZ does it, which picks what an enemy does randomly with a few optional conditionals at the moment it is their turn to do an action. I want it to be similar to Slay the Spire-like games where an Enemy decides their skill at the start of the turn, and executes those skills after the player turn is finished.

But I want to do beyond a simple mindless StS copy. Although just doing that by itself would be a task in itself.

There is a certain system that I really enjoyed. Hardcore board gamers may know about Kingdom Death Monster, the grand daddy that spawned a ton of inspiration, or Primal the Awakening. Both of them have this enemy action system which I guess can be described as sort of deterministic. You the player know what the enemy will do. And certain actions would trigger something when done, and its effect could be positive or negative. Let's say you aim for the legs. If you could take out their legs, it disables their ability to do a jumping attack for example. But if you fail to take out their legs, you trigger their melee counterattack where they shove you against the wall and beat your ass down.

It's a system that would be too messy to implement in a real time action game, though probably there's a smaller version of it in Monster Hunter games, and maybe in high end raids in like WoW or FF14 probably. But I feel like it would work fine in turn based games where you have the time to pore over the information and digest it to plan out your attack.

This trigger system would be reserved mostly for the boss fights at the end of the run. In KD:M it is all just boss battles and you're expected to fight the same bosses multiple times, even dozens and dozens of times in the same playthrough for certain ones. And one of the ways they have to make each battle slightly different is that there are variations of the battle where for example, the boss might not have a certain attack which is an important piece of one of their combos. I'm going to have that too where a boss might not have all their possible triggers in every fight. Oh, in the last fight the boss has a trigger where if you do a fire type skill, it takes extra damage for the rest of the turn? Uh oh, this time it doesn't have that trigger so it might be harder for you this time. And so on, as a simple example.

Primal has their boss have a sort of phases kind of thing. This isn't unique to Primal at all, after all it was the original meme of JRPGs where the last boss ends up having a second form, and then that got iterated on to some final bosses not only having a second form but a THIRD form. And then some JRPGs went full stupid and had every single boss have a second form and so on. In Primal, when a boss enters a new form, they get new passives and triggers and stuff like that. Which of course, is also similar to even the first JRPG with second form bosses where they get better stats and stronger attacks in their second form and so on. The difference is that those differences are all spelt out in Primal. I plan to do a similar thing where certain triggers are 'locked' and gets unlocked when the boss reaches a certain phase. Or maybe a trigger can even get locked instead. Like the earlier example of a fire skill making the boss vulnerable. That trigger could get locked when the boss reaches the second phase for example.

The whole point is this highly customizable system for me to create boss encounters. So there are two main huge tasks ahead of me next.

The first task is to code a data structure to hold all the information that defines an enemy, such as their stats, possible skills they could use, and any triggers they might have and when they get locked/unlocked.

The second task is to implement all that into the game. The enemy selects the skills they plan to use. Then the player selects and uses their skills. Based on the skill they use and its effects, it may trigger a reaction from one of the enemy's triggers. Once the player turn ends, the enemy uses the skills they planned earlier, which may have been changed from one of their triggers.

And all this is still within the scope of battle. Upgrading skills, the stuff outside of battles, stuff outsides of a run, all those are still yet to be done.

Just these two tasks could take me weeks or the rest of the month. Hopefully, it doesn't take the rest of the month because I don't want to take too long and have Sachinama with nothing to do for New AO while I'm coding in the skeleton of the game. Anyway though, that's it for today's Rem Diary!!! Assuming this might potentially be the last Rem Diary of the month and therefore the year, I just wanna say thank you all for following us, maybe even supporting us. And we wish you a Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!!!!

Rem Diary 11/2/2025

Hello everyone. Oof. It’s been over a month since the last Rem Diary and welp, things have happened.

Let’s just dive right into it. Basically, AO had been under tremendous troubled development, as shown by the extremely long periods between the Rem Diaries. Around 3-ish weeks ago, I made the decision to cancel AO and reset it to zero.

There were many reasons why it was so hard to work on. I don’t even want to list them or order them by first, second, third, etc because there were many issues together that cascaded and made it impossible to work on.

Issue One: The sexual aspect of the game was tacked on, and was unsatisfactory. While I didn’t want to make a sequel to KP, it was just too different in that the erotic element of the game was not integrated into the gameplay part from the start.

Issue Two: The NTR aspect made it hard to build a gameplay system around it. In a game with NTR, the NTR should be important. Trying to mesh and warp things to get some sort of gameplay to the NTR element was rough.

Issue Three: The card battle part of it was unnecessarily complicated. I tried to accommodate Sachinama’s original version of outfits broken into many different parts by trying to make it have an gameplay effect, as well as the original version of some sort of gathering/crafting by trying to add it via a complicated Atelier game series style recipes and a different card battle type, which all made it into something that was both difficult to design and to play from my point of view.

Issue Four: Outfit broken into many different pieces and then combined and mixed with parts from other outfits did not look good. It looked weird in practice when each outfit is very different. The coding to deal with the many potential edge cases of the layering of the CG of each outfit mixed with each outfit would’ve been exponential, with the work increasing non-linearly for each outfit.

Issue Five: The story wasn’t good, and this was my fault with meddling with it. I just don’t have the talent to be a story writer.

So after three months, I made the call to end it. Basically for the OG fans of ours, this became a Pina 2.0. The short version of Pina for those who don’t know, was that it was the project that I worked with Sachinama a year after Meltys Quest. It was originally supposed to be a RPGMaker MV remake of the Akemi RPG that Sachinama made years before Meltys Quest. Then it became its own game with a change in protagonist from Akemi to Pina. Then I added my own gameplay and character ideas. Then new characters got drawn. And around two~three months later, with a heavy heart I told Sachinama that I see no potential and future with the project, and right after that I proposed my idea of Karryn’s Prison and the rest is history.

Well. Basically I saw similar issues with what I dub “Old AO” for now. Then I proposed “New AO” that reset everything back to zero and go from there. I still want a roguelike battler, but I had different ideas on how to build it this time. Instead of how in ‘Old AO’ only the main character takes part in the battles, in ‘New AO’ there will be a party of up to three members consisting of the MC and up to 2 more members.

Another aspect for wanting to reset development to zero was that ‘Old AO’ was originally built on the idea of ARPG when Sachinama worked on it alone, and there were a lot of lingering code, plugins, and RPGMaker events and variables from that time period that I had no idea what they did. The card battle plugin that I brought was also very barebones for what I had wanted, and I would’ve needed to basically gut most of the code and add a lot of my own. So if that was the case, instead of dealing with spaghetti code made by other people, I would rather just make my own spaghetti code. At least I know what it would do.

And since I wasn’t married to the concept of it HAVING to be physically ingame cards. There were aspects of how a deck of cards worked that I liked, but it really didn’t have to actually be cards. So in ‘New AO’, it won’t be cards but just skills like you would have in KP and other RPGs.

Except… you don’t have access to all your skills every turn. Instead, you draw from your skills every turn as if you would draw cards from a deck. But unlike cards and card decks, I’m making two big differences. One: Each skill has limited Uses in a run. Two: It’s not a deck of cards with a draw pile and discard pile, the skills drawn each turn is from the whole skill list each time, so you can get a situation where you have access to a certain skill five turns in a row, or don’t have access to a certain skill five turns in a row.

There’s some cool changes in how to process and think when playing with this concept that’s very different from Slay the Spire-like battlers that I’m very excited to explore that I will talk more about later on.

Another change from ‘Old AO’ is something that I first experienced in Uma Musume and Ashes Echoes, which I’ve been told is also present in older games such as Monster Rancher, Powerful Pro Baseball, and Idolmaster. Basically, there is this raising roguelike mode where you build a character up. And then at the end, that character’s record is saved, and you can use it in other game modes.

My idea was that unlike Uma Musume, you would raise the party up in a roguelike Slay the Spire style mode, battling enemies, getting new cards, upgrading cards, etc. Then that record is saved at the end of what I would just call ‘Preparation’ mode. With data from Preparation mode, you can use it in ‘Story’ or ‘Hunt’ modes. Story mode advances the story, unlocking new levels. Hunt mode gives you resources and equipment. Basically the loop is to go into Preparation to build a team. Use that team to Hunt for resources to strengthen your runs. And when you think you’re ready, do the Story battle. If you win, it’s time to go into Preparation in the new harder levels to build a better team and so on.

Then a few days after proposing this idea and brainstorming aspects of it, I checked some gaming news and discovered a shock. In the next few days, a gacha game called Stella Sora would come out with a similar roguelike system to Uma Musume where you go to a Hades-like mode to save a record and use that record in other game modes. And then in another few days, ANOTHER gacha game with a similar roguelike system would come out called Chaos Zero Nightmare, and this time it was, I couldn’t fucking believe it, using a Slay the Spire-like system.

Holy moly. The game I was imagining didn’t exist, and then I heard about it for the first time right after I independently came up with a similar idea. There were two sides to finding out about this news. First was disappointment that someone else beat me to the punch to what I thought was a really neat idea. Second was anticipation on how it would look like in practice. Thankfully, it was coming out in a week, I didn’t have to bite my nails for months on end anxiously waiting to see how someone else would do it. If it was super good, I was more than willing to give up on the idea.

Finally the day came, and I played Chaos Zero Nightmare. It was pretty neat, all things told. They did some things I didn’t even come up with, and I’m not talking about the Darkest Dungeon or Romancing Saga inspired aspects. So then the time of anguish came back heavily again.

At the time, I even proposed to Sachinama that I want to give up on ‘New AO’, and Sachinama suggested that I try searching for a different angle, in a different genre or game type. So I brainstormed. For years now, when I talked about it every now and then, there were two genres that I would talk about for the next game after KP. One was Grand Strategy, the other was Chikan/Train Molester. Grand Strategy is out of the question for me right now. ‘Old AO’ was a mess of too high ambitions of trying to create an ‘epic game’, I wanted to go back to earth with a simpler game, so I brainstormed about a roguelike molester game. When I discussed it with Sachinama about it, he hit me with a warning and a dose of reality. I looked it up and sure enough, the Molester 300% game series was removed from Steam. And even just yesterday while writing this up, there was breaking news that another train molester game has been removed from Steam. In today’s climate, it’s just too risky a venture.

So I abandoned the roguelike molester game I was thinking about. It is what it is. While I’m not driven by the desire to make a game for money, after all if I was, I would bite my lips until all the blood is drained out of my body and make KP 2. But making a game with little to no chance of even being sold on Steam would affect both of our families and livelihoods which would be irresponsible.

Back to ‘New AO’ then, initially a bit bitterly and begrudgingly to be honest. But Sachinama offered some concessions to help me truly reset to zero from ‘Old AO’, such as not having NTR in the game because he believes having NTR makes a mess of both the gameplay and story.

As for the aspect of Chaos Zero Nightmare having already done what I was trying to do, in CZN, when you use the saved records of the team from Slay the Spire-like roguelike mode for the other game modes, you just use them for battles with no more progression. In my original idea before I even heard of CZN, I envisioned using the saved record in the other modes, Hunt and Story which in my case, are on a shorter mini roguelike mode with fewer chances to upgrade your build.

Playing CZN solidified that my idea could work because otherwise you’re just using the same saved record over and over again with no difference. Yeah the enemy is different but it doesn’t change how you pilot the deck. My original vision was based on the feeling of reaching the top of the mountain at the end of the run in games like Slay the Spire and that you really only get to experience piloting your completed deck in one or two more fights before you start over again. If you can save that deck, and then use it again in challenge modes with maybe a little bit more chances to improve the deck, how cool would that concept be? If you’re familiar with Slay the Spire, my pitch was imagine after playing the first three Acts in a run, you save that record, and then you can load that record to play a fourth, shorter and harder Act. And if you want, you can load it again for another try at the fourth Act.

‘But Rem? Wouldn’t it get stagnant? Let’s use KP as an example since everyone is infinitely more familiar with it. It would be like loading into a Strength build Karryn and playing Level 5 again and again. It’s just really the same thing over and over again isn't it?’

Yes you’re right, and you’re also a bit wrong. After all, a lot of RPGs like the Diablo-likes have a post game where you’re just piloting the same endgame build over and over again too.

To deal with potential stagnancy, I came up with something. After all, StS-like games are fun to reach that top of a completed build because the journey is fun and you don’t get to play around with the completed build for too long. Therefore, the saved records of the Preparation runs have limited uses before they are deleted. Currently, I’m thinking each record will be deleted after one successful Story run, or after going on two Hunts.

How records are saved was a decision I was able to make thanks to experiencing both Stella Sora and CZN. Initially before even discovering either game, I was thinking that each member in the party should be recorded individually. So you can technically mix and mesh different versions of characters from different runs into the same party in Hunt or Story, which gives you a completely different experience. In Stella Sora, they save the record of the whole party at the end of the run, and you load the exact same party again for other modes. After playing both, I was glad to see the differences between individual vs party records. It could get stagnant if you just use the exact same party so I’m going to go for individual records.

There was also something else I was thankful to CZN for, besides proving the idea of using StS to create a build and then use that build again is a cool one. In ‘Old AO’, I talked about how I designed each card to have three different upgraded versions, unlike most StS-like games where there is only one upgraded version. This was inspired by Across the Obelisk, where each card also had three different upgraded versions, but their upgrades were relatively simple. My idea in ‘Old AO’ was that each version is more different compared to upgrades found in StS-likes and Across the Obelisk, but it was an unproven idea. In CZN, each card can have FIVE different upgraded versions, and these versions can be vastly different. And I thought that was super neat, and now that I have personally experienced it in a game, I can say that it works in practice and not just in theory.

So I’m fucking doubling down on it for ‘New AO’!!!! Each card can be upgraded into 7, SEVEN, 七, different hecking versions. Not only that, I’m taking it one step further. Some of the cards that can be upgraded, can also upgrade AGAIN into one of the other six versions!!! If my math isn’t wrong, that means when double upgraded, a card can have 28 different combinations.

Slay the Spire was balanced to the milligram. The developers used tens of thousands of data just in beta to balance the cards. Then there’s games like Monster Train where balance is punted through a window. I enjoyed the Monster Trains of StS more personally.

So to the heck with balance. Just have fun. When you see the chance to take a ridiculous build defining card upgrade, take it, run with it, and enjoy it. That’s how I want ‘New AO’ to operate.

Next, I want to talk about the difference in outfit and their pieces compared to ‘Old AO’. In ‘New AO’, there are Neutral skills and Class skills. Party members other than the MC have a set class. These classes have two Starter skills, two Advanced skills, and one Ultimate skill. As the skills are called, each party member starts with their two Starter skills at the start of the run. If they are a Unique character, they also start with their Signature skill that can’t be obtained anywhere else. If they are a randomly generated generic, then they start with a neutral skill based on their randomly generated trait.

For our main character, she doesn’t have a defined class. Instead, it is based on her outfit, which is separated into four pieces: Main, Headwear, Bra, and Panties. The Main and Headwear are a set and each will give access to cards from that class, which likewise consists of two Starter, two Advanced, and one Ultimate. The Main part of the outfit is what decides the two Starters skills she starts with. Meanwhile, the Headwear part gives a class related buff. The bra and panties simply each decide a neutral card that the MC starts with. So a total of two starter skills from the Main outfit, and two neutral skills from her undergarments. What this system also means is that the MC can MULTI CLASS, YAY! Depending on your needs, you might want to stick with one class for a run because their skills have good synergy with the party, or you might multi-class for a chance for a synergy with skills from the two different classes.

Neutral skills can not be upgraded, but they can come pre-upgraded when obtained.

Starter, Advanced and Signature skills can be upgraded twice. Ultimate skills can only be upgraded once but an upgraded Ultimate alone can be build defining, that’s how strong they are.

Thematically, the seven different upgrades are based on the seven sins: Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, Sloth. This both provides a consistent theme for designing the upgraded versions and a way to discuss the game by saying Oh, I have an Inferno - Pride this run and it was so much more useful than the Inferno - Envy from my last run. Or, Wow, the Field of Life - Greed basically made me invincible. And it also allows someone to go, Yo, Class A with Wrath upgrades and Class B with Pride upgrades is fucked, it destroys everything. Nah friend, you gotta try Class A with Envy and Class B with Sloth. And so on.

The sexual aspect is simple. At rest points during a run, the MC can entertain certain requests from party members to restore their morale or replenish their skill uses and what not. There is a KP-like Passives system where the MC gains Passives after a certain amount of sexual experience in a category. However, there are fewer Passives compared to KP, and Passives in ‘New AO’ function similar to a roguelite system of metaprogression which buffs the MC. So you’re always progressing even if you fail the run.

Oh, and right, there won’t be NTR, the MC doesn’t start the game in a relationship. Though the party members do have like a relationship or Bond level which when increased, also provides bonus so both the MC’s Passives and party member bond level act as a form of metaprogression. And bond level increases from the MC fulfilling those requests at rest points, or from just being in the party for a run. It does mean that you can be such a god gamer that you can beat the whole game without the MC getting much passives but that was the case in KP too for pure runs.

This has been a super long post but forgive me, alright? It’s been over a month and I’m excited about ‘New AO’. I’m sure I’m missing something else, but I want to wrap things up fulfilling my earlier promise to talk about the differences to a standard StS card battler. Namely, the fact that each card or ‘skill’ has limited uses in a run, and that you draw from the whole deck or ‘skill list’ every single turn.

In a card game, and in StS-like games, when you draw your hand for the turn, you have certain information. The cards you just drew, assuming you only have one copy of them, at the earliest you can expect to see it again is in two turns or whenever your deck runs out of cards and you re-shuffle your discards into the deck. Likewise, the cards that you didn’t draw yet, you can expect to draw them in the remaining next two turns. So you can make some set up and plans in your head. You won’t see these cards again for a while. The next turn you have some expectations of what you might get next. There is randomness to the whole system, but it’s not true randomness, it’s a randomness that you can predict.

However, the culture of all StS-likes is to thin your deck as much as possible. All for the sake of consistency, the enemy of randomness. Because randomness is bad, so you want to control it as much as possible. The end result though? Your completed build is almost always auto-piloted. Sure, some hard bosses might have you playing your hand a little bit differently than intended, but for the most part, you don’t even need to look at what the enemy is doing and just play your hand like a robot. In StS-likes, except for certain unique mechanics, I really no longer care what the enemy does with a completed build, because what I play with a hand is basically pre-decided.

So how would true randomness work? In terms of cards, you can imagine it as shuffling all your discards into your deck every single turn and drawing from the whole deck again. Just true randomness by itself like that would suck just imagining it. You have a build naturally, with combos and synergies. When you lose from failing to draw that key card over and over again, you just feel frustration because you lost to randomness out of your control.

So why do it here for ‘New AO’? Are you crazy Rem?

Yes. But before I answer that, let’s talk first about the second aspect. Which is that each skill has limited uses.

In StS-likes, when you have two cards in your hand, one which does 4 damage and one which does 7 damage. Assuming all other factors being equal, such as both costing the same, the enemy doesn’t have a buff that allows them to avoid the next hit or something, and nothing special would happen if you do too much damage. Then you would always 100% play the card that does 7 damage. It’s just an obvious no brainer. And then when you get a chance to thin your deck, you’ll want to get rid of the card that only does 4 damage.

But what if you are limited? You can only play that card that does 7 damage 3 more times before it disappears, and that useless card that only does 4 damage? You can play it 8 more times. Hmmmm. Hmm. The choice is not as clear cut is it now?

Oh shoot! I also forgot something critical about the ‘New AO’ skills system. In card games, you play a card and it goes into discard or into the void or into your butt hole (also known colloquially as the void) or whatever. But these are not cards, but skills, and unless it has a keyword saying it can’t, you can use the same skill multiple times in a turn. And also there is no mana or mana cost. In StS-likes, cards can cost 1 mana, or 2 mana, or even 3 or 0. Here, there are Action Points or AP, and most skills cost one action point, or none at all. In StS-likes, high cost cards are balanced in that they are way better than 1 cost cards at the expense of you not being able to otherwise use the extra cost on something else for utility.

But here, powerful skills still cost the same 1 AP as weaker skills. The balancing factor is then that they have way less Uses before you can’t use them anymore.

These four factors: True random draw, limited uses, can use the same skill multiple times, they cost the same. All combine into something quite different in my opinion.

First of all, the design space is very different from StS. I can design the skills to all be useful. It might not be what you need RIGHT NOW, but they have their purpose or edge cases. Even still, some skills will inevitably be more useful than others, since I’m not even trying to aim for perfect balance and as an extreme example, inherently, an upgraded ultimate skill is more useful than an unupgraded starter skill.

But, we have to also discuss the purposes for the skills. They can broadly be separated into two categories I think. 1. Bossing purposes 2. Mobbing purposes, or dealing with the chaff. You want to save your stronger skills with low use limits for the boss fights and harder enemies, and use your weaker skills to deal with numerous pawns designed to cause attrition on the way to the boss.

So this creates an obvious objective in your mind. ‘Save the good stuff for hard fights!’ Simple right? So when you draw your overpowered skill against some grunts, obviously someone hits your hand with a ruler and go ‘Bad Rem! No touchy!’ right?

Welllll, let’s talk about true randomness again. You know you might not get that key skill when you need it, right? What if you use that key skill right now against these weaklings, and end the fight with just the use of one skill. Even if you draw the weaker cards, you might need to use them four times, and you only get 3 AP each turn. You might not even draw them twice for an unknown number of turns.

‘So true random is shit, go to hell Rem and eat shit.’

Wait, put down that fork and spoon!! True random with your whole skill list is a crapshoot, yeah, no argument there. But each skill has limited Uses, remember? And what that means naturally is that when a skill has no more Uses, you can not draw it anymore! So you have an option now. Here is a skill that could be useful in certain situations, but isn’t super useful for you right now. But there are other better skills you will need. So what if you just use it this turn? The sooner you use it up, the smaller your skill list will become, creating consistency.

The objective is no longer a simple, obvious ‘Save the good stuff for hard fights!’ Each turn, each battle, you have to pick based on what you are given. Do you cull the weaker skills here, and thin your skill list at the risk of not having its utilization for later fights in the run? Do you use the stronger skill here even if it’s overkill but it will save you a lot of resources? In fact, using up a strong skill will still thin the list and help consistency in the end.

There is also something else to my system. When you upgrade a card, you fully replenish all its usage. That amazing strong card you’ve been saving the whole run? You just got the opportunity to upgrade it, replenishing all its usage! You struggled for nothing, haw-haw! …Is what the devil in your head says. In hindsight, you could’ve used it more, and saved your other skills that are now depleted in the process of saving your stronger skill. But that’s the monster of hindsight, because if you don’t get a chance to upgrade the stronger skill and you HAD used it up earlier, you would come into the final fight without it at all. So that’s another factor into the fun, fun decision making when choosing which skill to use. I COULD use this strong skill to quickly finish this fight, and maybe I could get a chance later to upgrade it so I can get it back……

What isn’t this just randomness piled on top of randomness? What skills you draw you random, and then what skill you can upgrade is also random. ARGH! I give up! You can’t plan for this without going into the future!!! Hehe, yeah, it is a bit random, but there is still an expression of player skill and knowledge in how to build a strategy based on what choices you are given and expected upcoming fights, and how to pilot your build.

My prediction is that the overwhelming strategy under such a system is that once a player has an idea of how much skill uses they need to conserve for a given run, is to immediately use the first two or even the first battle to stall the battle as long as possible to cull the starter skills they don’t need by using them. After all, if an upgraded version comes along, it gets fully replenished. I think if there’s a major flaw, it’s the fact that a skill gets fully replenished once upgraded currently, so I will be watching out for that during playtesting and alpha test. My gut feeling is that it is too much but until the game is coded I won’t be able to see for sure.

(Edit: My gut feeling is usually correct so I’m going to be operating for now on upgrades not replenishing skill uses. Or maybe it only gets fully replenished on easy mode. Balance the game around replenishing only available via fulfilling sexual requests at resting points, and then allow easy mode to also replenish on upgrade. Yup, let’s go with that.)

Speaking of which, since ‘New AO’ is newly reset, there’s no code. Well, I can re-use the code I made in ‘Old AO’ for the settings menu but that is about it otherwise. However, unlike in ‘Old AO’ where the code needed was a headache to wrap my mind around, and likewise where the card design was out of control. In ‘New AO’ however it’s both technically simpler to get started on code and to design skills. I already fully designed the skills for two of the MC’s classes, with a third in work, and three classes for the party members with a fourth in work. However, I don’t think I will finish the MC’s third and the party’s fourth class right away. With just the two MC classes and three party classes, it’s more than enough for an actual game.

So in order to have personal playtesting up as soon as possible, I’m going right away into designing the combat system. It’s not a card battle system, but it will still require first changing how skills work inside the code compared to the default RPGMaker system. Having battles working at a basic level is the first step, then it would be to implement the upgrade system. There’s a lot of work, but I’m really excited for it!

Rem Diary 9/15/2025

Oh boy, it's been a month since the last Rem Diary.

Tl;dr: Not as much progress as would be ideal since I ended up taking a break that lasted for two weeks.

So I'm just going to go in chronological order of the events to retell for the past month.

So. Literally the day right after the last Rem Diary. I got hard stuck in continuing on designing the cards for the rest of the Act 1 and Act 2 outfits. And I quickly identified and realized that my vision of what a 'Resource Encounter' is (as opposed to a 'Combat Encounter', which is a battle type that most people are familiar with since they are very similar to Slay the Spire style battles against enemies), was basically not fun or interesting. It's not interesting for a player to play, and not interesting design-wise to design around. So I decided to scrap the work then and there and redo it.

I had to identify what a Combat Encounter was, and what a Resource Encounter was. I had to decide what the differences between those two were, and as well as what makes each of them a fun puzzle to go through. Because at the end of the day, like 80% of the playtime for the game is going to realistically be in either playing out a Combat Encounter or a Resource Encounter, so they better be interesting to go through again and again and again.

Actually I lied a bit, within the first two-ish weeks of the last month, I actually redid the Resource Encounter design TWICE, but for the sake of the Rem Diary and making it not too confusing to understand, I'm just going to talk about the end result.

So first, Combat Encounters. This is your typical Slay the Spire style battle. There are one or more enemies. You draw cards, you play your cards to attack or defend. Then the enemies attack or defend and you repeat until one of you goes down.

My original vision for Combat Encounters is a bit more complicated than the one I decided to scrap last month. I wanted to throw in a twist for an idea I had that Amelya is more of a pacifist type character. So the enemies would have a Health bar and Stamina bar. And you can win by getting either their Health or Stamina bar low enough. But if you deplete the enemy's health bar fully, you won't get the full rewards.

In the last month when I started to really drill and hammer down what Combat Encounters and Resource Encounters needed to be, I decided to remove the part where knocking out the enemy is the 'bad' result. There were two reasons for it. One was that it's just funnier as a player to do your silly combos and stuff and just blow someone up for big damage without worrying about hitting too hard. Two was that I had already planned something similar for Resource Encounters.

My original vision for Resource Encounters is still similar to the current vision in their key points. In my original version, a Resource is something like let's just say for now, like a Plant or Ore Node. It would have three bars, Health, Toughness and something called Quantity (I don't really like the name but don't have a better idea for it right now). My original vision was very "simple" in that each bar had like a 'Sweet Spot' that you want to land under when doing damage to each bar. Depleting Health fully would obviously destroy the resource so you get zero reward for it. But otherwise, each sweet spot that you are in at the end of the battle, the reward for the encounter would increase.

I didn't like it during the second rework last month, so like the Combat Encounter, I changed it. Now there is only a Health and Quantity bar. The Health bar will have kinda like zones in them. Let's say for a particular encounter, from 0% to 25% HP, the zone is +1. From 25% to 50%, the zone is +3. From 50% to 75%, the zone is +2. And finally from 75% to 100%, the zone is +1.

Kinda like this:

+1 +1 +1 +3 +3 +3 +2 +2 +2 +1 +1 +1

The zone is that "Quality" of the result.

And then for Quantity bar, right now I'm thinking something like let's say you increase the Quantity by 50, then it becomes +1. If you can increase it by another 200 let's say, then it becomes +2. That's the "Quantity" of the result.

And at the end of the Resource Encounter, the Quality times the Quantity is the value of the loot. So let's say the health of the resource is at 66% so the Quality is '2'. And I raised the Quantity by 58 so the Quantity is '1'. 2 x 1 = 2, and 2 is the final calculation for the game to look at the loot table and see what you get.

Yeah I have no idea how to represent any of this stuff in terms of UI right now but this is the idea of Resource Encounters that I'm working with right now. The crux of it really is to get Quantity up to +1, because otherwise you won't get any reward at all, and try to get or maintain a high Quality value while spending as few turns as possible. Why? Because if you remember last month's Rem Diary, Amelya gets Corruption as Encounters drag on.

So far, this is only one part of the design for Resource Encounters. Unlike Combat Encounters, 'the enemy' or really, 'the target' do not actively attack the player. It's just a piece of rock, bro. But. They still mostly do stuff on their turns. And they are mainly detrimental stuff such as causing the player to mill or 'Discard' their cards from the top of deck, thus pushing for re-shuffle faster and causing Corruption. In fact, like over half of time, the targets in Resource Encounters are trying to mill your deck. The rest of time they are buffing themselves, or debuffing Amelya or themselves, or even self harming themselves!

Part of the process of the redesign last month was that I decided to also come up with the concept for some of the Resource Encounters. It took me until then to realize that I couldn't properly design cards for Resource Encounters when I haven't even decided what they would do. It was like designing a tool for a problem that I didn't even know. So I came up with some neat ideas under this new design, and it's now like a road map of what cards the player will need to deal with them.

Lastly, there are two more things to differentiate a Combat Encounter and Resource Encounter. Some buffs/debuffs/keywords are more common in one type, and rarer in the other type. And then there is the fact that there will not be any cards for Resource Encounters that increases Amelya's defensiveness. After all, it's just piece of rock, sis. Why would someone need to waste energy trying to defend against a piece of rock.

And there is also a unique keyword for Resource Cards called 'First', 'Second' and 'Third'. This was actually the main focus of the first rework last month. I still want the player to draw 5 in Combat Encounters and draw 3 in Resource Encounters. And taking advantage of the fact that there will be 3 cards in hand during a Resource Encounter, I decided on the idea of a card keyword that does an effect when the card is played as the first card, as the second card, or as the third card of the turn. Thus, First, Second, and Third.

'But Rem,' you ask, 'From the sounds of things, won't Resource Encounters get monotonous? So basically, they passively mill your deck. Meanwhile, you draw 3 cards and obviously you would play the card that has a First effect, and then a card with a Second effect, and hopefully the last card will have a Third effect.'

Maybeeeee? But my gut feeling is that if anything, Combat Encounters would be more monotonous just because you can get that type of Slay the Spire type combat in well, any of the Slay the Spire type games out there, but you can't get what I'm planning for Resource Encounters anywhere else. Of course, just because something is unique doesn't make it interesting or fun. But in terms of the design space, it's already much, much better than my original vision and I have hope for it.

And if it ends up sucking, then I would just redo it again.😭

After the second redesign, I decided to change focus and work on the technical stuff for a bit. With the newly designed Resource Encounter and my ideas for it, there was a big worry. And that was that Resource Cards will have so much text and so many keywords in them that it will not fit in the tiny space for text in a card. I needed to code kind of like a detailed view thing where you press a button or right click on the card and it will expand to the screen to explain to you what it does lmao.

Long story short because it's just technical stuff, I managed to implement a very rough version of it. I still haven't coded in the keyword explanation stuff yet, but I don't think that part will be very hard compared to the stuff I coded.

And now here's where the timeline of the last month gets... less productive... Was the first two weeks last month, or really, even the weeks before then, too productive? Maybe I got a little burned out, I dunno. But two weeks ago, I decided on a whim to check the Lord of the Mysteries novel. And then I didn't stop reading until I finished it like 11 days later. It was so freaking long... but at the same time also too short near the end.

Anyway, can't cry about spilled milk. But while reading it, I was very impressed with the power system. It's very similar to wuxia/cultivation systems, which for those who don't know, my very basic newbie explanation and understanding of it is that it usually involves absorbing souls or pills and stuff, and after you've done enough, you meditate in order to 'breakthrough' to the next level. I'm still pretty foreign to the cultivation genre, my exposure basically being limited to: 'Soul Land 1' the Chinese anime, 'A Mage's Cultivation' a western harem-lit book by Bruce Sentar, and 'Wandering Sword' (a game I played on stream last year), 'Tale of Immortal', and 'Yi Xian', Chinese video games that have cultivation.

And my impressions until Lord of the Mysteries was that I didn't really 'get' the appeal of cultivation. Of course, it's a very different type of progression system, and that in itself makes it a bit novel to me. But I didn't see the draw in it other than that it is different.

But then Lord of the Mysteries came and I was hooked with its progression system. It's basically based on the cultivation system but improved? Iterated on? I'm not going to go into details of the differences because it doesn't matter here. But it got me thinking.

Basically imagine games like Fire Emblem or Ogre Battle. Remember in those games, you have a progression system with level ups where you get stats (randomly but for the sake of this discussion, the random rng part is unimportant). And then there is also the class advancement or class change. And whenever you get a new class, that character gets a MASSIVE power up, whether that is just the amount of stats gained or new skills and stuff. That's basically cultivation. That huge spike in power. It felt good, didn't it, to get a huge boost in power in those games?

However, in Wandering Sword and Tale of Immortal, the two single player cultivation RPGs that I played, I didn't really like the cultivation system. (For the sake of simplicity I'm going to use non-cultivation terms both for the audience here and also I don't remember the terms so please don't kill me in my sleep) In those games, let's say you advance from Tier 5 Class to Tier 4 Class. You'll get a huge power up. Now as a Tier 4, you can bitch slap a whole school of Tier 5 scrubs into submission with your eyes closed. However, the reality was that the opponents that you will start facing in order to continue powering up are also all Tier 4s. So even though you got what is supposed to be a big power up, it feels like nothing because all your new targets also have that same big power up. This is the inherent flaw of a system like this when there is only one character, compared to like Fire Emblem with multiple characters.

But we're not here today to talk about how to make a good cultivation game because that's outside my wheelhouse.

So why mention it, other than because I spent two weeks devouring a novel instead of working on Amelya Opus? Because I gotta forcefully make those two weeks mean something, duh!!!! Get with the program!!!

Anyway, it did get me thinking about how progression will work with Amelya Opus. So my idea had been that for each outfit, which will have around 5 to 7 pieces each, the player will craft each piece of an outfit separately.

But there's a worry with that. And the worry is that one or two pieces of an outfit, might not actually make your character stronger. You spent your time gathering the resources to make those two pieces, yet when you make them, you can't find a use for them so you end up not using them. Will you feel upset? Frustrated? Call this a shit game and stop playing?

From the whole cultivation stuff, there's a new idea that I could work. That is, instead of crafting each piece individually, you craft the whole outfit in one go. Now you instantly have a complete outfit that you can either choose to wear all the pieces of and it would just work, or you can select the pieces you think will help your build and wear just those pieces.

That sounds good, but there's a new, different flaw with this approach. With the first idea, you can start crafting pieces of an outfit as you get the resource needed. With the second idea, you need to wait until you have all the required resources gathered before you can make the outfit. What this means in gameplay terms, is that when you play Amelya Opus, and more importantly, replay Amelya Opus, you would be stuck playing with the default Healer outfit for who knows how many ingame days. Every single playthrough will start out exactly the same with no deviation other than the RNG of what gets dropped. Maybe if the RNG is bad enough, you could be stuck wearing the default outfit, playing the default cards, for days and days ingame, which equals to about dozens of battles.

'But Rem,' you comment, 'Can't you for example like make the resource requirement for the starter outfits to be really low?'

And to that, I answer with the infamous Japanese phrase:

"..." "..." "..."

...I guess that's like the third idea. But I actually hate it and would rather not do that. I think right now, my heart is still on the first idea, which is to have the player craft the outfit piece by piece.

That said, there is also ANOTHER worry with the first idea. Just in Act 1 and Act 2 alone, there are a dozen outfits planned. Once you have several outfits crafted, what are the odds that a single piece of a new outfit does something that helps you? You spent your time gathering the resources to make those a piece in Act 2, yet when you make it, you can't find a use for it so you end up not using it. Will you feel upset? Frustrated? Call this a shit game and stop playing?

😔I should stop thinking like that.

To a different but related topic, my original idea for all of the cards is that they are all useful. It's won't be like in other Slay the Spire type games where you would get a card in the early game that is like spend 1 mana to deal 5 damage and then later on in the game you can get a card that is like spend 1 mana to deal 8 damage. Getting new, better cards that obsolete old cards is the form of power progression in card games. But since cards in Amelya Opus are based off of what outfit piece you're wearing, if I do that then it would be similar to Meltys Quest where you stop wearing the earlier outfits and usually with a few exceptions, keep changing to the latest unlocked outfit.

But with a dozen outfits and potentially up to twenty outfits, if the earlier outfits are just as good and useful as the later outfits, what would be the point of crafting any new outfits... That brings us back to the early scenario of spending resources to make a new outfit piece only for it to be side upgrade at best, and a waste of time at worst. And if it's useless, then there's no reason to do Resource Encounters outside of quests, destroying a huge reason for resources to be used.

So I think I have to give up on the original idea. While it won't be so dry and basic such as the difference between a card that does 5 damage and a card that does 8 damage, the later outfits will have cards that are a bit better number wise. Of course, the plan is still that in the right build, you can still use pieces of Act 1 outfits even in Act 3. But maybe it's better for general progression that other than the experts who know the game inside and out, you shouldn't go wrong with switching to a new Act 3 outfit in Act 3 from an Act 2 outfit for example. The plan still is that every card except the literal Trap Cards for the Trap Deck has uses somewhere.

And the plan for not letting earlier outfits be obsolete or useless, and also for later outfits to have a reason for existing even though you found a good build with your current outfit pieces, all have to do with the Mastery system. I have yet to describe or talk about the Mastery system in any of the Rem Diaries so far, and that is because the Mastery system has gone through so, so many redesigns already in my head and on paper. It is after all like I said, the system I had planned on using to both have early outfits not be useless later on, and also have later outfits a reason for wearing and experimenting with even after settling on a build you like. However I've yet to spend time thinking about the Mastery after my new and current decision to let the later outfits be stronger than earlier ones. After all, a decision on one system changes all the things that are connected to that system.

I'm going to call it here for this week's? This month's? This... year's??? Rem Diary. (just kidding on this being the last post of the year, unless......) Stay safe, stay hydrated, don't be like me and get proper rest and breaks, and I'll see you all next time!

Rem Diary 8/13/2025

AAAHHHH it's been two weeks and a half from the last Rem Diary and the more I put it off the longer it's gonna get AAAHHHH

Hello everyone, let's get straight right into talking about Amelya Opus.

So I decided a week after the previous Rem Diary that I wouldn't write one up because I was still in the middle of worrying and thinking about some stuff. It was a good question of what's the point of making an eroge if the sex is so separated from the rest. But also at the same time, like, some of the best eroges out there whether it is Fate/stay night or the Venus Blood series, technically and in the case of f/sn where it literally happened, you could patch out the adult stuff and it would still be excellent eroges. So being able to patch out the adult stuff doesn't mean it shouldn't have been an eroge in the first place or that it's totally meaningless.

But, I do want a better form of integration into the adult themes with gameplay, even if I want to do it without resorting to battle fuck. So the original vision was that Amelya could cheat on her boyfriend, and it would be kind of be the player's choice and not forced onto the player.

So I thought and think and thought and think and think and thunk and contemplated. For quite a bit. I even broke my 3 week-ish long self imposed ban on using AI to create porn for me to masturbate to. I was stressed out, as it often happens to people relapsing back to their addiction. But hey, frankly, it was taking too much time also to just find and search for stuff to masturbate too, it was novel and nostalgic to re-visit old mangas and eroges and stuff but there was a limit and the limit was then since I didn't want to waste too much time just to satisfy my libido and this time, fingers crossed, I just won't overindulge and spend the whole day using AI for porn. Because this time, I'm just busy as fuck with Amelya Opus.

After a bit, I found a path that I was satisfied with. So there are some criteria. I don't want to do battle fuck. Been there, just done that, wanna try something else next. I don't want game over r*pe, as it's often called in RPG eroges. I don't want the Amelya cheating and doing lewd stuff with other people to be something that's forced, as often the case with NTR eroges. But, I don't want it to be totally 100% the player's choice whether it turns into NTR or not.

What? You think to yourself. What are you even saying, you ask me.

What I mean, is that I want a gameplay reason for the cheating to become an option for the player to take. And also I want a gameplay benefit, for just cheating out right and barreling down the slut path. I want the gameplay decisions, to affect the decision for adult content.

In other words, I needed to improve the original vision to mingle the gameplay with the adult stuff, unlike the totally separated original vision.

And so I came up with the Corruption system. Very original name yes.

So the game setting is that there is a mysterious disease/illness/sickness/whatever affecting the inhabitants of the town and the area around it from which the game will take place. Humans become comatose from catching it, and even after Amelya starts curing them, they have side effect of vastly increase libido.

Now this mysterious sickness won't have as big of an effect on Amelya, but it still has an effect. And it is reflected with Corruption.

The Corruption value has two effects on Amelya: 1. Once it hits a 100, Amelya can not go on Field Trips aka the gameplay part of battling out with cards for resources needed for recipes to progress the game and make various outfits. 2. Based on the Corruption value, at the start of an Encounter, there's percent chance for each the un-upgraded card in the deck to turn into a Corrupted version for the Encounter.

So how does Corruption get increased? 1. Amelya's Lewdness value gets added on to her Corruption at the start of every day. 2. Corruption increases by 2 whenever the deck runs out of cards and cards from the discard pile gets re-shuffled back into the deck. 3. Enemy attacks and rare card abilities can also straight up increase Corruption.

So how does Corruption get decreased? 1. There's only one way. By performing a Ritual (aka sexy time) with someone. At the start, Amelya's partner, Gene, is the only valid option.

Let's talk about Corrupted cards for a second. Most cards have four versions. The first is the base, un-upgraded version. Then you have the Enhanced (green) and Primal (dark blue) version. These are upgraded versions and are mutually exclusive. The upgraded versions are better than the base version, but Enhanced isn't necessarily weaker or stronger than the Primal version and vice versa. And finally, there is the Corrupted (pink) version.

The Corrupted version CAN be stronger than the upgraded version. They often are. But most come with drawbacks. For starters, almost all of them will add the "Exhaust" keyword, which means they get exiled and disappear from the deck for the rest of the Encounter after being played. The Corrupted version also usually after being played, will have an additional effect of Drawing cards from the top of the deck, or Discarding cards from the top of deck. Either Draw or Discard combined with the Exhaust functionally means that your deck is getting thinned and also cycled at the same time.

Now remember that Corruption is added whenever a deck runs out of cards and need to be re-shuffled. So Corrupted cards make it easier to gain Corruption, and the more Corruption you have, the highly likelihood that your cards get Corrupted. It's a vicious cycle where you want to keep your Corruption as low as possible in the first place.

But it could also be a strategy, whether on purpose or a makeshift strategy by accident, to have high corruption and keep a few key cards upgraded to prevent them from being exhausted, while other cards are corrupted and thin out the deck. Also remember, Corrupted cards have much stronger effects compared to even the upgraded versions. So even if not planned for, a Corrupted card will do serious work for you when played.

But, back to the matter of keeping Corruption as low as possible. Initially performing a Ritual with Gene during the Night Phase is the only option. But, what if it's not enough anymore? Maybe one or two poor plays, some bad Encounters, and Corruption is getting higher faster than you can lower at Night with Gene. And remember this game has a Persona-like timed component for the main story so you can't just waste days not going on a Field Trip because your Corruption is too high.

Then... well...

Maybe it's time to sneak behind Gene's back and find one of the now cured but horny Townspeople to do a Ritual with.

Staying faithful is going to be hard mode, because it means you are really good at the game and know its system inside-out. And it's this similar dynamic of player skill allowing both the freedom of successfully pursuing the pure route OR the slut route that is similar to Karryn's Prison that I think is going to be fun to see. >:)

So that happened, and figuring out the Corruption system brought a huge relief to my shoulders. Then the flood gates opened and it was time to start planning out the game. For Karryn's Prison, this was "just" planning out all the Passives and Edicts from the start. For Amelya Opus however, I need to plan out all the outfits, and the cards that they have.

And the planning and brainstorming I did, and are doing and will keep doing. So there is going to be 6 outfits in Act 1, including the Healer outfit that Amelya starts with and being naked. I haven't done a hard count, but I think I've came up with around an average of 8 unique cards per outfit. Cards that don't belong in the Field deck will also have three additional versions in the form of Enhanced, Primal and Corrupted. Then there's the 'Mastery' cards and I won't go into the Mastery system today since this post is too long anyway, but I think there's an average of 4~5, let's go with 4 unique cards per outfit.

Currently, there's 20 outfits kinda planned. 2 of these are kind of like post-game achievement reward so I won't worry about these for now. That brings it down to 18. 6 including the starter Healer and also the no clothes 'outfit' are available as possible options in Act 1. Then 7 more outfits are planned to be available in Act 2, bringing the total possible options to 13. And finally 5 more are planned to be available in Act 3, but really these 5 are also potentially available near the end of Act 2 too, but I'm just going to categorize these as Act 3 outfits because they are low priority. And of these 5, 1 or maybe 2 of them are kinda iffy for now.

So really, I'm looking at planning out 13 outfits for Act 1 and Act 2. And honestly, even we stop here, based off of the above math, this is around 12 x 13 = 150ish unique cards to plan and design from the get-go before anything else.

And oh, also, remember the SECS stats I mentioned in previous Rem Diaries? The Stylish - Elegant - Cute - Sexy stats, standard RPG stats really. I will be using them to scale the effects of the card so I do not have the luxury of bloating the card pool with cards that are like, 'Do 4 damage' but the next card is 'Do 6 damage'. If you count a card that does 4 and a card that does 6 as two unique cards in other games, then we are looking at 150 x 4 = 600 unique cards with just the first 13 outfits because of their Enhanced, Primal and Corrupted versions.

And with the cards keeping up with theme and class archetype of each outfit, I need to bring 150ish cards for 13 outfits before continuing.

So the Sunday that just passed, August 10th. That would have marked the two weeks mark since the previous Rem Diary. I originally planned to write a post then and there, talking about the Corruption system as I did in today's post. At the moment of time of August 10th, my progress with the outfit and cards was that I was working on the 6th and last outfit of Act 1. But then I was thinking. What if this task is going to be much more challenging then I anticipated? What if I do a big post yapping about Corruption and current progress on the outfit and card designs, but then end up getting a writer's block and such, and get stonewalled in the planning?

So I decided not to post. I want to have more work done to be sure that at least 13 outfits is even feasible.

So right now as of this moment, I would say 9 out of 13 have their non mastery cards planned out. 5 out of 13 have their mastery cards planned out. 11 out of 13 have their Ultimate planned out.

I would say I'm making pretty good progress compared to three days ago to be confident that I can at least come up with 13 outfits for the game. 12 if you discount being naked as an outfit. It would still be a lot of different builds and styles of play. There's even one potential infinite combo that isn't a true infinite but it comes pretty close and would be cool to experience if all the pieces line up. Basically a meme build and who doesn't love shooting for the stars for meme builds in strategy games

There's a lot of dynamics at play here, because unlike a normal Slay the Spire-like cardbuilder game, cards are chosen beforehand based on the outfit pieces you selected. You don't really get more cards into your deck as much as you swap some cards for others. And it also turns conventional learned cardbuilder wisdom of trying to trim or cycle your deck as much as possible on its head because remember, that will come at cost of causing you to gain more Corruption faster. Yet at the same time, it does bring you consistency and control so it's not a bad thing.

So there's a lot of things going on. But it's fun!! Honestly, the planning and brainstorming is both the funnest and hardest part. Back for KP I basically slept, ate and brainstormed and that was the whole day every day. And right now it's the same with my work-life balance being completely wrecked and one-sided again. But I also just can not wait to finish up this post and go back to coming up with ideas so that's what I will just do.

See you next time and thanks for reading!

Rem Diary 7/27/2025

Already once again another week, another unstructured post by yours truly.

First, Project Amelya now officially has a name!! And it is "Amelya Opus"!!! Amelya Opus will be the third title in the Remtairy Heroine series!👏👏

So for this week, I started off once again on the Settings menu code, and I got the ingame language setting working, which was the main reason I set out to work on it first. It's boring technical work but it's done for now and good riddance. There's still stuff like control remapping and fullscreen toggle and all that stuff but that's in the low priority list now. I probably won't even work on that stuff for the first alpha build.

Then, I brought the card game combat plugin for RPGMaker MZ and have been studying and tinkering with it. I've already started the preliminary stages of coding in the four decks and all the work that revolves around that stuff. This is also technical stuff like the settings menu but to me it's way more fun and challenging to play with. I already have so many things I want to do but I'm squeezing and pinching myself to only focus on the most important things and to do them step by step before I overwhelm myself with too many things to work on at the same time.

And finally, for 3ish days in this week, I've been relaxing (escaping) a bit playing new games and checking out some anime. One of new games I played was The Great Villainess. The more I played the more disappointed I got with it. Battles all play basically the same way, so there is no tactical aspect involved. The map has very little strategic element to it, there's basically one right way to tackle the objective and trying to do it any other ways just means wasting more time doing the same battles over and over again. It was tedious and grindy and time wasting. No tactical or strategy value. And there was no feeling of getting stronger since the difference in level up was minuscule with the enemy scaling up to you in the next chapter. Like sure, Fire Emblem is the same in that enemy stats also get higher each chapter, but despite that you definitely feel stronger with more tools to play with.

It was another valuable lesson in game design. It's going to be very important to me that Amelya Opus does not end up feeling like that.

As for the rest of the 3ish days, I randomly put on an anime to watch while eating lunch, and I ended up enjoying it alot. The first episode was pretty meh, but then the not-Chopper character showed up in episode two and it got significantly, drastically better for me. I ended up finishing the rest of the season after dinner, and then I went straight into the manga the next day and ended up reading the rest of the 150-ish chapter.

I am talking about "I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability". There are quite a bunch of major sus stuff in the anime/manga. But if you can ignore it, then what you get is IHMO a very comedic light hearted story with a serious character moments here and then as well as the wonderful trope of enemy turned friend, which is always a joy when it is done well and for me it was done very well here. I loved all the chibi and tsukkomi comedy and silly faces/reactions. Its bad point really is the sus stuff that makes it hard to recommend to more polite company.

But a light hearted comedy with a bit perversive and a bit serious was exactly what I needed. Because oh boy, if you haven't been following what had been happening in the adult gaming world the past week and all the news around it. It's honestly depressing and distressing. And it didn't start just from the events of this week.

If you know me, I dislike talking about politics and all that stuff. But just because I dislike it doesn't mean it just goes away. In my earlier Rem Diary this month, I talked about the main reason I haven't outputted anything in the ten months before this. But before AI Porn Addiction took a hold of me, I had a different worry and issue going on for a while by that point. The events of this week, for those who are unaware, where 'payment processors' have caused Steam to change their policy towards adult games, and Itch.io to self-immolate themselves and essentially hide or remove all their adult games, didn't just start this week. For years now, there has been an anti-porn attack from all different angles. Japan and sites like DLsite have been under fire for awhile with Visa/Mastercard. Countries like China have always been anti-adult content, and had been getting stricter with stuff like that since the Covid lockdowns began. Countries like South Korea and Germany have been putting bigger and bigger restrictions and bans on adult games. Culturally there are even attacks in the form of psyop movements with 'nofap' or 'semen retention' claiming this or that with unproven pseudo science. There's just been attacks from all angles everywhere from the people with money and the people with power.

It's depressing. It's distressing. And most of all, it's sad for me. In multiple ways, I would not be here today without the adult industry. But there are people out there actively fighting to oppress, ban, and make illegal for people who are different than them, people who want to enjoy and like things that have been legal since forever.

But what can I do. That's where I got lost. But since the incident earlier this month, and after finishing the current manga for the Reincarnated as the 7th Prince, I found my answer. I can't do the fighting. Because my skills lie in creating something worth other people fighting for and that would make a bigger impact overall. If the argument is not something general such as 'All Video Games Are Bad' or 'All Porn Are Bad and Must Be Outlawed', but more specific such as 'All Adult Games Are Worthless Meritless Shovelware or AI Slop and So Should Just Be Illegal Because blahblah', then I can provide the ammunition to counter that. Exhibit A: Karryn's Prison. An adult game that marries game systems with adult elements to create something unique and different. It's not everyone's cup of tea nor is it perfect, but at this point in time, I don't think someone can objectively call it a game that is not as good or interesting or deep as other video games.

And I want Amelya Opus to become Exhibit B.

When I first was designing Karryn's Prison, I had already planned a fallback plan: to make a safe version of KP where you would need to patch in the adult content like Club Bifrost and Island SAGA. But I thought the wind was blowing ok and never fully developed that fallback plan and just let the sex stuff fully integrate into the gameplay making it extremely hard to separate.

This time however, the winds are looking really, really bad. Who knows what will happen few years from now. But this time I'm designing from the start with the fallback plan of the game being playable without the sex stuff. Even without the events of just this week, I think with everything else that had been going on in the past few years, I would've ended up feeling this way, though not as strongly. In the first place, I have already said years ago that I don't want to create another Karryn's Prison, another battlefuck eroge. I want and need to do something different. And on Sachinama's end, when he first came up with this project that he intended to do on his own, he intended for it to be a bit of a spiritual successor to Minako, a NTR Rpgmaker game that had no gameplay. Except it would have gameplay this time.

Someone on Discord commented that vibe surrounding the project feels more like a successor to Meltys Quest then KP and that is definitely true for me.

If Exhibit A is proving that an eroge, an adult game, can have sexual content deeply integrated with tight gameplay. Then I wouldn't exactly want Exhibit B to just rehash that. No, I want Exhibit B to prove that an eroge can have tight gameplay while having sexual content. Instead of battlefuck style sex, Amelya Opus will sex scene that is visual novel style like Meltys Quest, the type of sex scene that is usually associated with anime style eroges.

This might be very disappointing to fans and supporters hoping for another game like Karryn's Prison from us because they are tired of most other eroge doing that VN style sex scene. But just like how KP is not everyone's cup of tea, Amelya Opus is also not going to be everyone's cup of tea. And I think that's fine. No video game or any piece of media is everyone's favorite. I think it's important that Sachinama and I just create the game we want to create right now.

I'm going to leave things off here today. It's past midnight and I still need to shower and get ready for bed and tomorrow. There's so many things to do, and the future looks scary but I'm going to try my best.