The first progress report of the year, I'm cautiously excited for what I plan to get done these next few months. So since the last build release I've begun work on Re-adding Samara, Treu and Dr.Midday into the new combat system with some minor changes.

I want to cover that and the additional content restorations for the next build, so I'll start with the girls.

My main focus has of course been adding the other playable characters back into the game. For the most part the girls function the same in teams, with adjustments to their abilities.

Starting with Samara, she can still summon The Articulate Fighter into battle, provided the party isn't full.

The Articulate Fighter summon won't have her alternate twilight form anymore that was used primarily for support, but she will still be subject to most sex attacks.
 
Samara's Twilight state has been replaced with her Serferus Transformation that'll greatly enhance her supportive abilities and improve her capacity to take sex attacks without fainting.

This Form will gradually drain Samara's resolve however, and will have a chance to make enemies horny and trigger more h-attacks as a result.

Additionally Samara now has a passive ability that causes any single hit attack that would defeat her to instead leave her at 1 Energy.

Treu is very similar to her initial gameplay incarnation. Besides a minor change in her maid outfit, Treu will now be able to switch from her Bow, to her Umbrella Rapier stance.

The Umbrella stance will enable Support, more AOE and State affliction, while her Bow stance will enable strong, single target attacks.

Dr.Midday has had the least changes, working almost exactly as she did before, focusing on defense debuffs and ally attack buffs. Her primary weapon of choice instead is now an arm cannon she'll equip only in battle.

As a small note, I've mentioned before that Lilith's castle is being expanded and I've begun work on that for this build as well. The extra spaces and areas will be used for more NPCs and events to interact with.

I've also been working on re-adding the baths with updated art. Now when you enter the baths, anyone else in your party will join you and appear in the background, allowing you to interact with them while you buff yourself.

They'll also be subject to ambushes alongside you. Bathing spots will appear in the dungeons now, during Liminal exploration.

Lastly, I realized the actual development of the game isn't very clear, at least in terms of what order I'm working on things. So I put together a simple roadmap for at least the next few build milestones I'm working toward right now.

Hopefully this'll give at least a general idea of what I'm doing and in what order.

That's about it for this update post, there's plenty of art I need to work through so the next update post should be toward the end of February. Until then, take care everyone, and thank you as always for playing the game, your support and patience!

(づ｡ ◕ u◕｡) づ  

It was a pretty big relief to finally get that build out for you guys and figure out all those bugs and errors.

Now we're coming up on the next build for Vocator's boss fight and a bunch of fixes and changes. I also want to get into the builds that'll follow this one as well so let's get started with Vocator's Boss Reintroduction.

Vocator is finally finished and re-added, awaiting you at the end of the 1st Floor Chambers. She's stronger then her initial variation although I'm still making some last adjustments to her stats.

When Samara and Treu are re-added, you'll no longer have to defeat Vocator to unlock them, your initial encounter with her after Saki interrupts will trigger the next story segment.

Vocator's battle behavior is similar to before. In her normal Hydro state, she has a range of water based attacks, a Sex Grab and a special attack that will trigger a finisher animation if Journey is hit while she's under the Pressured state, formerly the Torn Clothing status.

In her Electro state, Vocator won't use sex grabs but her raw damage will increase. Unlike before she no longer summons her slimes or Electro Spikes, instead they now begin the battle at her side, with randomized composition.

The Electro Spikes deal single instances of damage and the slimes are still the same along with a Sex attack of their own.

In addition to her treasure and Celestial Fruits, one of the new rewards for defeating Vocator includes a new lewd journal entry with a bit of lore detail about her encounter.

I finished off one of the biggest more 'behind the scenes' changes which was how the game loaded the CG h-battle asset parts for characters and enemies. Before, each h-battle was separated into individual event/script pages and particularly for enemies, it was pretty bloated.

So since the last build, I want in and renamed every h-battle asset to be loadable via scripts and simple variables, removing alot of now redundant event calls, pages and increasing the load speed for the images themselves.

Journey's common h-battle art was also finalized, I mentioned it awhile ago in the discord. The new asset loading method makes it far easier for me to catch any bugs and nearly removed the need for references to the specific character you're playing in the scripts.

I'm going to use the Liminal Dungeons to expand the events you can encounter, starting with a Goblin faction stronghold encounter in this build.

The Goblin Praetorian is an Elite class enemy within their faction and personal soldiers of the Goblin King, Porci.

They'll appear in a goblin faction stronghold event you can find in the Liminal Dungeons where they'll be in charge of lower ranking goblin forces. Defeating them will reward celestial fruits you can use to level up and additionally weaken the Goblin Faction as a whole.

Elite enemies are more akin to mini-bosses so he won't go down easy but he'll welcome the challenge.

After Vocator's boss build, the next will focus on Re-adding Samara, Treu and completing the unfinished Faction Subjugations for the Goblins, Demons and Bandits.

The goblin's area was unfinished before I overhauled the combat system so the plan is to finish the remaining two rooms. I also want the Demon and Bandit faction areas to be done as well since I already now how they'll look for the most part.

Samara and Treu will have some of their skills updated like Journey did, with Samara gaining a new form in addition to other buffs.

I've updated Treu's outfit as well and she came out much cuter. I wanted to place a greater visual emphasis on her role as a maid to The Duchess.

The following build after this should have Brigit and Dr.Midday re-added with their recruitment quests and the 2nd Floor with Abaddon. By then I expect to have the next story portion added along with it, but I'll talk more about that once I get a bit more done.

Now that about covers this progress update, I should have the next build ready to post soon. Thank you again for your patience and support while I chipped through all of that, I know it was a bit of a wait.

As usual I'll have smaller incremental updates on the discord. Until next month, take care everyone!

(づ｡ ◕ u◕｡) づ

After months of retooling and adjusting the main combat system and the other parts of the game affected, It's finally time for me to start rolling out builds again and get back on track.

There's a few things I want to cover about the gameplay loop and my to-do-list, so let's start off with the next build in a few days.

This build has 4 enemies, The Demon, Goblin, Raider Bandit and Brimdine Hound. These 4 enemies cover the more 'basic' range of interactions and skill types the common enemies can have.

Vocator as a full boss will admittedly take me a bit longer. her movelist and abilities are more advanced then common mobs, along with her sex grabs and finishers.

I'm going to take a few days to bug run through the game with some friends to catch anything critical I may have missed, after which I'll be posting the new system test build for everyone. I really appreciate everyone being so patient while I worked on this, I reviewed and it's been quite a while since the last build, I really underestimated how much I had to do.

I want cover the new gameplay loop of the dungeons next.

The Luminal Dungeons are fairly straight forward in concept. With each Floor containing 4 Chambers, each chamber gate you pass through, with the exception of the last door that leads to the boss, now leads to the overworld instance of the Luminal Dungeons in the Serferus Realm.

The Luminal dungeons are essentially the journey within the realm from one chamber to another. They have 8 "Dungeon Rooms" that are randomly pulled from a pool based on the Floor you're on.

You must clear a path across the Luminal Dungeons to reach the next chamber. The fastest route is of course straight, which requires only 2 rooms be cleared. Rooms are cleared by finding the key and unlocking the room door, which is either found in a purple chest or in the possession of an enemy.

Besides the dungeon rooms, there are also event encounters. These will be H-encounters, random encounters, respites or character/NPC encounters. Like the example above, if a character isn't in the party or Subjugated, they may have a random chance to appear, like Saki.

Events can block your path, so some, like special fights or other encounters, may convince you to take alternate paths. In this build only Saki and another character will potentially spawn as events.

This system took a few days to get right, surprisingly I haven't found any major issues with it yet so hopefully testing will reveal anything that slipped through the cracks.

So while this build is being stress tested, going into October I'll be working on Vocator's boss and beginning the implementation of Samara and Treu.

Treu will have an alternate stance she can assume in battle and Samara will be given her 'Serferus' Transformation state, which will allow her to use sex attacks against enemies in battle. After I implement Vocator and the rest of the girls, Abaddon and the rest of the few enemies and bosses will be my priority.

That about covers this update post, I'll be crushing out a few more minor bugs to get things ready, in the meantime thank you very much for your support, this update took longer then anticipated so I apologize for that, and thank you again for your patience with me.

(づ｡ ◕ u◕｡) づ

Hey everyone, it's been a really productive month for the update overhaul. To start off, Journey's base skills and animations are completed and the common Demon has been finished, as the first enemy I can now use the updates and changes I made for him as a template for every enemy after.

Being able to animate their moves and grabs has been incredibly fun and added a layer to the development of each enemy I've been enjoying alot.

Now in this update I'm going to cover some more of my progress and my plans for this coming month.

With the demon finished, I'm planning 3 more enemies for a private build I'm hoping to stress test this month with a few friends, it will include the common Goblin, Bandit and updated Vocator boss.

I'm hoping to comb through a find any possible critical errors I may have somehow missed, while I've been testing the new rpg system, h-battles and other interactions myself, something usually slips through the cracks.

Most of the enemies that transition to the new animated rpg battle system will work mostly identical to their original versions with changes to attributes. The biggest changes of course will be to their sex grabs.

Enemies will have a varying number of animations with the demon possessing 3 on the higher end. Goblins will have 2, one of which will be focused on the character's breasts.

I'm taking this opportunity to add more variety to the orifices or areas of the body enemies prefer, like the breasts or legs. With some enemies being noticeably tougher, this should help improve the value of defensive equipment to protect characters with vulnerabilities that a particular foe likes.

I've replaced the attributes for enemies with a list of their primary skills in the bestiary, if the attack uses an element or inflicts a particular state, it's icon will be listed along with it.

Besides Vocator, enemies won't have much visual change to the new system. I decided to update Vocator's final design mainly as personal taste, and to express more emotes when she's speaking.

Vocator will also have a sex attack of her own, excluding her AOE hydro tentacles or slimes.

As for the heroines, I updated Journey's final dialogue CGs as well as Saki's with a slight update to her final design, I wanted to add a touch of cute to her standoffish nature I felt she was missing visually.

Lastly I touched up their exploration sprites to their final version to better match their CG changes.

 
This coming month I'll be focusing on getting the private build ready and tested. This version only has Journey as a playable character and the first floor. If all goes well with the test I'm hoping to touch it up abit and release it for everyone else to try shortly after.

While the private build is being tested I'm going begin work on the rest of the girls, starting with Samara. 
She's going to receive an alternate form with sex attacks she can use in battle, which is as complicated as a character can get in Lilith Descent, I don't think there'll be any issues, but since she'll also be the first transformation character in the new combat system I want to be extra attentive with her first.

I want to take a moment to mention the Visa, Mastercard situation. While it hasn't affected me too much, it's affected a few people I know and respect. I first noticed this issue during the Patreon purge situation, it's a big reason why I abandoned any intentions to associate with it for Lilith Descent.

None of the creators I know produce illegal content, nor invite or tolerate minors in their spaces. People have been calling the payment processors in the thousands about this and I'm personally hopeful things will reach an equilibrium at some point, because censorship like this is indefensible for so many people and so many reasons.

I lastly want to say that in the worst case scenario if Subscribstar is affected, I won't stop working on Lilith Descent. I'll keep creating for passion and out of spite for the censors, I can't overstate how much censorship or people who call for it piss me off. This game isn't my livelihood, it was always a hobby and labor of love for the genre.

That wraps up this progress report, I'll be talking more about Samara and the others in the next update with a report of how the private test goes. Until then, thank you everyone as always for your feedback, support and patience most of all. I should be posting incremental updates in the discord as usual, keep cool and take care.

(づ｡ ◕ u◕｡) づ   

I spent the majority of June fixing and improving the new core combat system and since my last progress report I've set up all the system changes I'll need moving forward. 

I've made the occasional post in the discord so now I'll go into full detail.

An important piece of feedback I received regarded the command wheel. Navigating it wasn't comfortable and after I demonstrated the rpg combat overhaul it didn't mesh well on the screen with the 2D plane.

In it's place now is the the command menu, now also shared between RPG and H-battles for consistency. I've moved around some menu elements such as the descriptions and targets to the top of the screen so the character statuses are always visible. This all didn't take long thankfully, maybe 2 or 3 days getting the style and positioning right.

Polishing the sexual actions opponents can take in battle was at the top of my priorities.

Enemies have a varying degree of sex attacks with different positions. Most enemies will have 1 or 2 while a select few like the common demon will have 3.

Enemies now also have two variants of sex attack. The first is demonstrated above, a single action animation grab, and if the targeted character is Off Balance the attack ends in a climax, dealing additional damage.

The 2nd variant of the enemy sex attack is a full grab that operates like the original battle system, locking down the character's actions until they escape, climax or the grab expires. Special capture grabs like the Dithonion's that can instantly end a battle will function the same.

Additionally an alternative faint animation will be used if the character is defeated in this manner.

With the heavy lifting done I've been updating the last of Journey's attacks and the Demon's attacks. I'm going to stress test a build of the game with a few friends using only Journey so I can ensure everything is functioning smoothly.

Before the stress test I'm going to add a few more enemies needed. If all goes well with that test I'll add a few more of the enemy types and post that build for everyone to try before I finish the other girls.

That about finishes this progress report, I'm really thankful for everyone's patience and feedback, going through with this update wasn't easy but waiting couldn't be much easier so I thank you guys it really means alot.

I'll keep everyone updated with more minor posts in the discord until my next full report in July. Until then take care!

(づ｡ ◕ u◕｡) づ