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May 15, 2025 12:10 am

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Dev Blog #7 - 2025 Roadmap

Greetings everyone!

Today's dev blog is going to be a fun one, as we lay out the roadmap for Brothel in the Woods and The Company for 2025, and talk about some of the upcoming features in BitW! Settle in, this might go long.

The Roadmap

Below is an overview of what's coming from both games. After that, we'll dive in a little deeper and expand on what can be expected from these various phases.

Brothel in the Woods - Alpha Roadmap: (Now - July 2025)

Complete all systems implementation with room for cleanup and improvement
Introduce all major NPC's and their first round of quests (Claire and Saya, for example)
Complete the first chapter of the Velvet Root quest line
Add more items, quests, locations, enemies, images, etc.
Expect to enter beta End of July 2025

Brothel in the Woods - Beta Roadmap: (July 2025 - December 2025)

Enter beta once the above goals have been achieved
Complete all quests and scenes for NPCs
Complete Velvet Root quest line
All systems are complete and stable
All character endings added to game
All quests, content, images, etc. added to game
Free Play (NG+) added to game
Expect to enter full release End of December 2025

Brothel in the Woods - Post Launch: (Q1 2026)

Open more modding option where applicable
Release modding / whore creation documentation

The Company - Backend Roadmap:(June 2025 - December 2025)

Reevaluate and rebuild condition checks throughout the game
Update code base, improving readability and efficiency and removing (lots) of depreciated functions and passages
Update UI elements and identify QOL improvements
Expect to re-release The Company January 2026

The Company - Release Roadmap: (January 2026 - December 2026)

Start work on implementing Chapter 5
Finish adding character content for characters lacking it
Wrap up any remaining systems that need it
Add endings and epilogues
Expect to release The Company in H2 2026

Brothel in the Woods - Growing through Alpha

While we are nearly out of Alpha, there is still a lot of major work that needs to be done. What we're going to go over in this section are items that players should expect to see getting attention very soon.

Intro progression is still getting dialed in. Players are already getting creative with subverting the event flow in the game's opening, which is itself fine, but the issues that are arising from it need to be addressed. Expect another quest or two plus a handful of fail-safes added in to ensure that nothing gets missed or overlooked while starting your journey.

Character progression is also going to see a more defined change with the removal of Affection. Think less stat grinding and more confidants from Persona. Each romancable character will have their own series of quests for you, approximately 6 per character. These quests will unlock at various stages of the game, often relying on other milestones or objectives to be completed, and will offer gradually increasing rewards... particularly of the spicy variety. Of course, options will be in place to avoid being intimate with characters you don't care about in that way, so there's nothing to stop you from completing the game and reaping the clothing-mandatory quest rewards.

Combat and equipment re-balancing is a major priority, and will likely be the theme of the next major update. Combat itself feels pretty good, but lacks ability variety. Things like AoE, status effects, and enemy healing are all going to find their way into the combat system, hopefully making for a more dynamic experience, particularly when it comes to boss encounters. What doesn't feel good is spending half your MP to miss with an ability, that could do anywhere from 3 to 14,819 damage depending on RNG... this is getting addressed. Risk in combat shouldn't come down wholly to a bad die roll.

Equipment felt good on initial implementation, but has kind of petered out when it comes to progression. I don't want to speak too much to this as we're still evaluating options, but the way equipment works currently is going to get a complete rework to allow for more, and more types, of upgrades. Right now there's not a sense of "Oh cool I got a better weapon!" and getting that is critical.

Leveling up feels bad! I mean... I guess it doesn't really feel like anything right now... which is still bad, right? Leveling is, at present, a complete afterthought that we now need to address, and I'm excited to get into it! First, XP is being decoupled from characters completely, instead opting for a full on Pokemon XP Share system. Your party members, even the ones not in your party, will always be the same level as the MC. That's fine, basic stuff, the real meat is in giving players something to "do" with those levels.

Skill points will be given to each character with every level up, and can be used to increase base stats like Health and Mana, improve or augment abilities, and apply passive bonuses like weapon specializations and resistances. Some characters may even have leveling perks that apply out of combat bonuses like lowering food usage or increasing brothel functionality.

Navigation and gathering will also be seeing some improvements. It's already starting to get a little clunky trying to get around and with more dungeons coming soon that's something that will need to be address. The current plan is a sort of "world map" system, making it easier to jump around from your farmstead to the village to gathering sites, to dungeons. Gathering will also see a rework to make it less grindy, but more info on that will come later.

The Brothel itself will see some further expansion and upgrade options that will affect workers' trust, affection, health, and income. Speaking of income, both the numbers and the nightly report will see adjustments as the in-game economy expands.

Reese, the local slaver, will see actual functionality added. He will provide a way to acquire new non-story brothel workers, and give players a chance to recruit story workers that they may have passed on for some reason... at a steep cost, of course.

The Economy sucks, and also in the game, too! Everything above is going to have some impact on what you can spend all that gold the brothel is generating on, while still navigating your tenuous relationship with Samuel. New gear, weapon upgrades, building upgrades, various progression systems, will all be tied to gold with the intention being that players will need to set goals and have an idea where their finances are going every week. This will, of course, take some time to balance, but that's the intent.

Also... mail system, NPC dialogue expansion, party member management menu, and probably other stuff I missed!

Entering Beta and Release

Once systems are shored up in Alpha, we'll be entering Brothel in the Woods' beta era. This will see a major focus shift from gameplay to content, as characters all get their personal quest lines built and expanded, databases get filled in, more brothel workers are introduced, and the main questline is further established and completed.

Once all that's wrapped up, so too is Brothel in the Woods! Bugfixes and modding documentation will release soon after 1.0 does, and whether or not it gets officially maintained and expanded after that will fall mostly to the community. Regardless, with the release, The Company will make its way back into the spotlight.

The Company - Working Under the Hood

So for those who have been paying close attention, this won't be super illuminating, but right now the biggest thing holding back expansion and development of The Company is the fact that over the years of learning and stumbling, the game has become a tight, entangled web of mysteries... which sounds cool but super isn't.

To put it more plainly, if I wanted to add new scenes or change how something works, or even address bugs and issues, it means navigating a dark labyrinth of conditions and events that reference events that reference events that use a macro that was made for the one event that has to be referenced by... you get the idea. This specific complexity is further complicated by the game's inherent need to account for all possible MC and NPC states in any given scene, which is of course the game's bread and butter.

The only way to address this is to go in with a sledgehammer and start ripping out legacy, antiquated systems and functions, and rebuild the engine in a way that is presentably familiar (if not identical) but mechanically sustainable... and the only way to do that is too effectively halt development on the game entirely until renovations have completed.

Without the need to release steady updates for the game, this is a task that I'm now actually excited to tackle, time consuming and frustrating as I expect it to be. The end result is going to be a version of The Company that, from a developer point of view, actually MAKES SENSE for once. For the players, this translates into a way to quickly and easily introduce new content into the game, and identify where things are going wrong.

I expect this to be finished by the end of the year at the latest, which means 2026 is going to "start" with The Company going full bore on implementing Chapter 5, wrapping up character arcs, and introducing proper endings and epilogues to the game. You can expect dev blogs to drop from now til then going over progress being made to this end!

This has been a lengthy one, which is actually kind of comforting for those who remember how we operated from the beginning. I can't wait to share more on both games, and until then, thank you all for your continued feedback and support!

DevBlog

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The Company

Apr 10, 2025 09:02 pm

Public post

Dev Blog #5 - Styling Improvements

Greetings everyone!

Not a ton to talk about this week, but some fun shares all the same so let's get right into it!

General Facelift

Button, fonts, and dialogue boxes have all been updated, and will continue to be refined over time. The new theming is mostly completely rolled out on the dev build, and already goes a pretty long way in improving the game visually.

Quest Log!

Alpha 0.1.2 will be introducing both a handful of new quests, as well as a way to track them! Quests in the game serve a couple purposes beyond their written rewards - exploration and relationship progress.

New dungeons will unlock through quests, pushing the player to explore new areas and take on more and more powerful enemies. The first few quests in the game will take players to the existing Bandit Camp, Light Woods, and Forest Keep dungeons in much more natural way, with more coming in the near future.

As for relationships, we're taking a more linear approach to this. "Affection" as a value is being removed completely, and instead you'll be able to progress with your preferred partner(s) by completing quests for them, each one unlocking new scenes and interactions! All romance partners will follow the same "Quest -> Scene -> Quest -> Scene..." pattern, offering a clear and concise gameplay loop.

Mobile Kombat

The next update will also be addressing the nearly unplayable-on-mobile combat issue, with a new mobile-friendly(er) interface that should cut down swiping significantly.

We'll continue to be looking for opportunities to improve the interface for mobile as well. In fact, this is as good a time as any to point out a few of the major updates coming to Alpha 0.1.2:

Improved UI elements and styling
Improvements to gathering and travel scenes
New quests and scenes for Claire, Reena, Saya, and Dadrius
A new dungeon to explore
Auto-attack button for combat
A new parallel dream story line!
New spicy content!

That's it for this week! New dev builds will continue to drop leading up to Alpha 0.1.2's release later this month! As always, thank you all for your continued feedback and support!

DevBlog

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The Company

Mar 13, 2025 06:00 am

Public post

Dev Blog #3 - Bright Side of Death

Greetings everyone!

This week has been spent shoring up established systems in Brothel in the Woods, such as stats, equipment, and combat, as well as implementing the new Dungeon system. All things considered, it's been a fairly successful week!

You Have Died

One of my personal focuses for Alpha 1.1.3, the latest development build, was to fix how jarring the scene transitions when dying or passing out were. That's been fixed, and the fact that the player is debuffed is much more obvious.

Additionally, active debuffs are now shown in the sidebar, and soon their effects will become more apparent when they fall off overnight.

Death and Taxes

Proper day tracking has been added to BitW in the latest update, meaning Samuel is now able to come collect taxes on Sundays.

Don't have the money? You'll have to find some other way to pay, or try your luck against Samuel's men in combat!

In addition to the above, more features are planned for the upcoming Alpha 1.1:

Options will be added to help guide combat in the form of fighting stances
Quest tracking is being added for a quick way to look up needed materials for house upgrades and other active quests
The first major dungeon, The Forest Keep, will be made available, allowing players to start collecting iron ore
Dreams are being added for some spicy flair

Speaking of Alpha 1.1, expect this to release to ALL backers at the end of this month, and to the public soon after that! Next week we'll have a more in depth dev blog going over everything being added in that update.

That's it for this week, look forward to a much longer post next Thursday! As always, thank you all for your continued feedback and support

DevBlog

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The Company

Mar 06, 2025 06:00 am

Public post

Dev Blog #2 - Dungeon Diving

Greetings everyone!

It’s been a week since launching the first public alpha build for Brothel in the Woods, and there’s been a ton of good feedback from both internal and external testing. I wanted to go over some of it today, while also discussing the focus of the next Alpha Release.

The Company News

Firstly, I want to make it a point to keep any news concerning The Company circulating. At the moment, the community has already taken point and started working in the Discord to set up a git repo and start working through the code. I encourage anyone interested in modding, tweaking, and otherwise creating content for the game to check it out!

I’ll be making a return to the code myself in a few weeks, working on untangling the self-created mess over the course of the year to ensure smooth and rapid development next year. In the meantime, I’m excited to see what comes from the community!

Brothel in the Woods Feedback

Most of the feedback received so far has come in two flavors: Bug reports, which are being addressed as I can get to them, and balancing issues. Balance will be an ongoing endeavor in terms of enemy stats and equipment, stamina usage, and economy.

Alpha 2 will be overhauling the starting equipment options in the game, as well as making a few tweaks to combat calculations. Specifically, weapons now have weapon types and strength requirements, costs have been adjusted, and armor has been improved in terms of combat math. Additionally, critical hits are now tracked in combat. We’ll go more into combat in the next section, so stick around for that.

Stamina usage is something I’m keeping a close eye on, as it’s designed to limit the number of actions you can take in a given day while still making sense in terms of what’s needed where, Right now, it’s possible to have nearly infinite stamina in a day, and passing out from stamina loss feels both abrupt and non-consequential. Passing out (and player death) need a major adjustment in terms of both impact and communication, and will be a priority after getting the next feature off the ground.

Lastly is the economy. While we have plans for how this will look, until time and taxes are added to the game, this is a hard thing to track well in practice. Money shouldn’t be meaningless, and it will be a careful thing to balance especially as the brothel starts to grow. Gold and commerce will be the main focus of an upcoming update, and I’ll share more on that front as it develops.

Other feedback…

Better interactions with your workers are coming, and will account for character creation
More spicy scenes in general are definitely coming, with the focus being on the villagers
More brothel workers, and means to acquire them, are coming
UI updates, particularly to track needed items for house upgrades, are coming
New zones and areas to explore are coming
Iron Bars are coming
Day tracking is coming
Leveling and perks are coming
Again, more spicy scenes are coming!

Combat Overhaul and Dungeons

Finally, I wanted to share a couple major features coming with the next Alpha. Firstly, combat is being radically overhauled to become an automated affair. Rather than clicking dozens of times through multiple encounters hoping for cloth scraps, the entire combat is now simulated behind the scenes and summarized with a post-combat report. Some new visual flair has been added for engagement, and I think the new system will be much more respectful of peoples’ time. It also opened the doors to our next major update - Dungeons!

Dungeons are multi-floored instances found in the game world that contain combat encounters, treasure, boss fights, and story elements. The next Alpha will immediately introduce the Light Woods dungeon, a 5 floor excursion in the woods surrounding the player’s farmstead ideal for collecting animal meat, and the Bandit Camp off the road to the village for stocking up on cloth and gold.

Dungeons are identified by a unique button icon, and will have an upfront stamina cost to enter. All non-treasure loot collected within a dungeon is rewarded to the player after completing (or otherwise safely exiting) the dungeon. Dying in or fleeing the dungeon will forfeit your acquired goods, but you can always try again later.

The Forest Keep dungeon, a 10-floor dungeon to be introduced in a near future Alpha build, will offer up the game’s first boss enemy, as well as a new brothel worker and the introduction to trading and auction mechanics involving Reese in the village.

Dungeons are meant to be fun, lucrative, and replayable, offering incentive for exploring within the game world as areas are opened up to the player.

That’s it for this week! A new Alpha build will have already dropped for Dev Build testers around the time of this post that offers a first looking into dungeon testing, and it will be available to backers and followers in the near future.

Thank you all for your continued feedback and support!

DevBlog

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The Company

Feb 28, 2025 02:54 pm

Public post

Dev Blog #1 - Touching Grass

Greetings everyone!

So… it’s been a while… Let’s get right into it!

The Sob Story

Before I even get started, let me be clear that none of what I’m about to get into is meant to be some kind of excuse for my general absence over the last few months. I think some kind of explanation is still deserved though.

To put it plainly, last year was something of an unmitigated, unrelenting shit show.

We bought our first home, only to have it start to immediately start falling apart at the seams, all while getting hit with one financial emergency after another. The Company got taken down by Patreon, and while we recovered services quickly enough, the financial impact was substantial, adding to existing issues. At the end of 2023 we discovered we were a lot less of a “Jeffrey” and a lot more of a “Jennifer”, seemingly to the surprise of no one. While I’d never walk back on that, it came at the cost of much of my family, and in fact, my second marriage. The political climate in the US now, especially in a red state, has done me no favors either.

Towards the end of fall 2024, while attempting to add minor content to The Company, I found I could no longer even recognize my own project anymore, let alone manipulate it… cue the existential crisis and full blown breakdown.

The Action Plan

At the very end of 2024, Haseo and I sat down and had a number of meetings to address the sorry state of The Company, and The Company’s developer. I’ve been trying to fight it for months, but at the end of the day there was no more denying that burnout and feature creep had finally taken their toll, and it couldn’t be ignored anymore. In my hands, in my condition, The Company was incapable of growth. For this reason, we made the decision to make three major announcements today.

The Company is Going on a Hiatus

After all the lead in, this should be the least surprising of today’s announcements. The Company is going into temporary maintenance mode likely through 2025. This is one of the most difficult and terrifying decisions I’ve had to make, but simply letting it coast without seeing any meaningful updates was a far worse option in my mind. Don’t be surprised to see occasional minor fixes get pushed, but the most recent update to The Company will be the last coming from “me” in 2025, segueing nicely into the second announcement.

The Company Source Code Release

Today, both here and in Discord, I will be providing a link to the complete source code directory for The Company. Every passage, feature, function, annotation, reminder note, and general fuck up will be yours to peruse in its fully decompiled form.

To any budding explorers, let me warn you - It’s bad. Think of it like a look through my journey as someone who could barely write code to… someone who can still barely write code but took some online classes. It’s a mess, but all the pieces are there, and with a simple TweeGo compiler script, you can generate and share your own builds of The Company.

In fact, just like image packs, modded versions of The Company are something we’d like to offer visible sharing for. Expect channels for it on the Discord server, as well as occasional featured content pieces for particularly ambitious ventures.

While it is my intention to see Chapter 5 finished, I don’t want that to stop the community from having fun with the engine and innovating in the meantime!

Download Here!

Now, the final announcement of the day is a big one.

I’ve already mentioned how The Company has been an incredible, if not sometimes painful, learning experience when it comes to writing and coding. In a similar matter, it’s also felt extremely confining. That is, for everything new I learn, I see missed opportunity when it comes to the project I’m attached to. It would become a daily conversation in my head that, if I could just start over…

I think this is common among creators, obsessing over their next project, thinking about how they could apply all their gained knowledge.

So, during our meetings, the decision was also reached that by temporarily shelving The Company, it would mean redirecting all resources towards something new. We spent most of January this year in the planning phase, making sure that this next project would be something we could actually maintain a reasonable scope with. Something that could allow for some level of user generated content, and most importantly, something that would actually see the light of day in a realistic time frame.

Then I started writing.

This is Brothel in the Woods, an amalgamation of ideas from a number of whiteboarded projects including parts of what was going to be The Company 2.

While The Company focused on branching story arcs, and character and player transformation, Brothel in the Woods will offer a much more linear story, but with many more management and RPG features.

After creating your character and selecting from one of three story backgrounds, you’ll find yourself in a run-down shack in the middle of the forest. Repairing your little shack will take resources found in the woods which will need to be processed into crafted goods. Enemies can appear in dangerous areas, but drop loot and XP.

Brothel in the Woods, henceforth BitW, uses a stamina system to limit your actions in a day. Stamina can be recovered in various way, mostly through eating, but you’ll be penalized if you pass out before making it home. Gaining XP allows you to level up your character, potentially increasing their maximum stamina.

You’ll eventually find your way to the nearby village, where new characters can be met, interacted with, and romanced! As far as romance options go, you’ll have your pick of three men and three women, and one upcoming non-binary character. Interacting with these characters can increase their affection towards you, resulting in a few romantic, and a few more spicy, scenes. They may even offer to upgrade your brothel in some way!

The star of the show is converting your run down shack into a thriving brothel. After working your way through part of the story and amassing enough materials, you’ll find yourself in charge of running your own brothel! Now, this isn’t The Pit - workers aren’t randomly generated datasheets, but rather real characters you’ll meet and recruit in the game. What’s more, is that all brothel workers are loaded from external JavaScript files, meaning new brothel workers can be created and shared by the community right out of the gate.

Your workers can be assigned tasks, promoted in the village, or even “hired” for professional services, free of charge to the owner, of course.

At the end of every night, you’ll get a report on what each of your workers was up to that evening, and take in a reasonably hefty chunk of change for their efforts as well!

Honestly though, I feel like I’m spoiling a lot here, which is dumb considering the game’s first Alpha build is complete and available to everyone right now! This version of the game will also launch with three builtin image pack options - The recommended artwork, pictured above, is set as the default. Additionally, our community manager Haseo has provided both a live-action and hentai option that can be switched to and from, straight from the sidebar in game!

Updates for BitW will be coming out often starting today, both in the form of semi-frequent dev builds for people who don’t mind their toys kinda broken, monthly backer releases, with public releases trailing behind those.

New channels will be open on the Discord to discuss The Company source code and, of course, Brothel in the Woods.

I haven’t been this excited to be behind the keyboard in a long time, and I hope you all enjoy the ride with me!

BrothelInTheWoods DevBlog

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The Company

May 16, 2024 12:00 am

Public post

Dev Blog #152 - Back on Track

Greetings everyone!

It's been a little while since a dev blog made the rounds, and there's an update looming on the horizon, so let's get into it!

Website Changeover

So I wanted to go ahead and lead with this since it will be pretty impactful when it happens. After years of going back and forth with the current host for the official website, I've finally decided to throw in the towel. Issues with downtime, Wordpress, backend complications have been worsening over time, and with the renewal on the host coming up I've made the decision to go ahead and not continue with the site.

The alternative server, which has been rock solid for a long time now, is going to become the new primary server, and with it a new address.

You can now play The Company at thecompanygame.games!

DevBlogs will remain here and on our SubscribeStar, as well as the Discord server. We'll be cleaning up links to the old site over the next week or so.

For those who play on the current primary server, if you want to bring your save file over to the new server by exporting it to disk (enable Desktop Mode in mobile) and loading it into the game when playing on the new site. If you don't intend to bring your save over, or if you're playing the local downloaded version, you have nothing to worry about!

We expect this changeover to be finalized by the end of the month.

Update 5.9.1 - Penny Proper

The end of May should see with it the release of Update 5.9.1, a followup to last month's update that will complete Penny's available content.

This will include all serum route content, new conversations and events, and MCSX content for Penny. Additionally, we'll be using this update as a way to set up John's "Dom John" route epilogue, bringing The Company's first real ending into the game!

We're looking at releasing our first dev build for Update 5.9.1 this week, if not very early next week.

That's it for this dev blog! We'll have more to share about our next update AND our next project in the upcoming development blog, so definitely look forward to that. As always, thank you all so much for your continued feedback and support.

DevBlog

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Dev Blog #7 - 2025 Roadmap

The Roadmap

Brothel in the Woods - Growing through Alpha

Entering Beta and Release

The Company - Working Under the Hood

Dev Blog #5 - Styling Improvements

General Facelift

Quest Log!

Mobile Kombat

Dev Blog #3 - Bright Side of Death

Dev Blog #2 - Dungeon Diving

Dev Blog #1 - Touching Grass

Dev Blog #152 - Back on Track

Website Changeover

Update 5.9.1 - Penny Proper

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