Roadmap

A Bit of History…

Vixel and I have been wanting to get into the Game-development scene for a while! He has a ton of programming experience from earlier in his career, and I’ve done game assets professionally several years back as well. But only recently have we decided to be in full control and make all the calls ourselves.

Mid-2018, I kept hassling Vixel to partner up with me! He insisted he wasn’t ready yet, and wanted to properly dive into Unity himself - very respectable! So I waited.

It wasn’t until December 2018 when he approached me saying he was ready - to which I replied, HELL YUS.

We hit the ground running coming up with a sizeable scope, something flexible, something capable. Something super fun, with endless possibilities. A bit of a blank canvas if you will. And I had just the concept!

Inspiration…

To those who are familiar with my work. I had a line of commissions/pieces that I tagged “The Forest of Love.” The pieces were of random critters banging, with a forest backdrop. I always thought it was fun to consider that the same forest. Just a nice little place that’s popular for hooking up.

Thus started the foundations of our game.

The Beginning…

Over the rest of December and into January (2019), we focused on making the Game Document and fleshing out the lore/general story. We also had to finish up our own previous commitments before we could be fully dedicated to this game.

As of February 2019, we’ve been fully into production mode! In those 2 months, we’ve managed to create almost all of the assets and engine necessary for a Vertical Slice/Demo! We hope to keep up this speed as the year goes on.

Progress so Far… (August, 2020)

WHEW~! Where does the time go? Nearly a year and a half has gone by, production still going strong, but WOW did I overestimate the speed at which this would go!

In the first few months, we were able to cobble together the Vertical Slice! A small sample of what we wanted to provide. Fast forward a year and some change, and we’ve finally got the entirety of Act 1 ready. The game has changed SO VASTLY from our initial designs. Multiple systems had to go through multiple iterations to be robust enough for our needs, and satisfy our design standards.

The iterations, revamping, the multitudes of edgecases – It was a herculean task for sure! But one necessary for the quality we wanted to bring to the table. Hopefully, it’s evident how vastly different the game-feel is from the Demo released a year ago, vs Act 1 released now (2020).

That said. We will be vastly revamping our timeline. We will also include question marks to really push the point that the process is mercurial, and often times, delays are necessary and to be expected.

This is the phase we just completed.

After a successful vertical slice release, we saw what was/wasn’t working. What was necessary to really promote our game design and gameplay loop, and how we would need to revamp our systems to be robust enough for the future of our game.

Very rarely does anyone go into production of a game knowing exactly everything what will be involved and how to execute, implement, and tie in all of the elements. We had a HUGE game document, yet the amount of things we realized we didn’t account for is staggering! But as problems presented themselves with older systems, we knew it was clear that iterations would have to be done. And better sooner than later – this way it’s not a massive problem to fix later on.

A bulk of our “Phase 3” time was spent on iterating and reiterating. A lot of “polish” and “quality of life” that may seem overkill right now, but is essential as the game grows. At this point in time, Act 1 is done and released to the public. It has all of our main systems in it, some iterated a few times over for design/accessibility sake. We also wanted to throw in some specific things like mini cutscenes, mini games, collectibles and all sorts of other methods of interaction to map out how we’ll be dealing with all of these elements in the future.

We’re INCREDIBLY proud of how far this has all come, and we appreciate your guys’ patience so far. I know this may seem a bit “overkill for just a porn game” – but I’d like to think we’re making more than “just a porn game.” So we thank you all for waiting and sticking with us!

Phase 1

Preproduction, and previsualization.

(December 2018)

Phase 2

Vertical Slice, Initial Systems, Public Launch.

(February 2019 - June 2019)

Phase 3

Iterations, Revamping systems, Fleshing out assets and Story content.

Act 1

(June 2019 - August 2020)

Phase 4

More content. Larger tune ups. Even more cleaning up code. The real meat and potatoes.

Acts 2, 3, and 4

(August 2020 - Present)

Phase 5

Finalizing, Compiling, Quality of Life polish,
and Distribution.

Act 5

(2022?)

Phase 6

Extra Content. Collab-Tier Content.

(2023?)

A majority of this was done during the first few months of this games life. I wanted to make sure the foundations were set in stone before I drew a line, or Vixel wrote a line of code.

We established our goals and ideals, which started our path onto what game we’d make.

We designed the general game play experience and player interaction. The world, the character. The story, the lore. The personalities, the quirks. The general attitude and feel of the game.

After about a month of work, we had a 25 page Game Document, and a solid plan.

(I just made this phase because it’s so dang important, and it needs its own section. Making a game is more realistically broken into like, 20 phases, so bear with me)

This phase is the Vertical Slice phase. Cobbling everything together, and making a proof of concept of something. That was our demo! This gave us a good idea of what sort of challenges we’ll face, how the gameplay loop feels, what sorta additional things we could do to further flesh out the experience, while staying faithful to the original design and celebrating what makes it unique.

Initially, I wrote that we weren’t planning on working on this game for years and years. It’s quite clear my original time line was way off! Realistically speaking, we will be on this game for quite a bit longer than initially planned. Act 5 especially will be a large amount of work as that will have the additional Patreon Collaborative Tier content!

Act 5 is meant to be the game’s Post-Game.

At this point in the time, the player will have: full access to all locations, some fun tricks up their sleeves, be quite familiar with the main cast, and experienced all the sex scenes planned for the main story line. This is when the Patreon Characters will be introduced, giving the player new critters to meet and extra things to do!

Due to the amount of interest, we’re quite confident Act 5 will be a wonderful addition to the game! But also a lengthy one to completely implement!

Before I wrote stuff like “bug crushing, polish, and distribution.” – But we’ve quickly learned that that is NECESSARY throughout every point of the production phase. (Mainly because we’re doing monthly builds).

That said, Phase 5 is likely other extras. Localization, Extra content (BEFORE Collab Characters in Act 5) – perhaps revamping some older content to be better designed. Mainly pursuing general “todos” that weren’t mission-critical.

Phase 5 will also include the base production of Act 5, and preparation for the collaborative tier folks!

This is the next frontier.

At this point, the entirety of the game’s functionality is in here, AND they work well. (We do have some surprises planned)

There’s still plenty of cleaning up and optimizations that need to be done, but at this point, we will be focusing a lot more on the actual content! We’ve already been in production of Act 2 contents for a while now, so we’re excited to start building up on the foundations we have set!

Phase 4 will be the production of Acts 2, 3, and 4! I believe a majority of our time will be spent in this phase. We have a lot planned, and we have a lot to do, but this is where the meat and potatoes are in terms of the campaign! I really don’t want to give a timeline on this, but at our current rate, this will likely take us through 2022. A lot of this depends on how our support goes, and how expanding our team goes. There’s a host of new challenges when expanding a team, so we will be weighing our options carefully!