v0.25 (And an Important Announcement​)

 And here it is, the next version released. 

Since the last dev log I’ve done quite a bit of thinking about the future of this project, and it has caused me to forego my last dev log goal (making more props for the Field stage, making a ‘barn’). Instead I decided to focus on the bare minimum to get the next release out quickly instead.

I didn’t get to my original set of overall goals for this release, so I decided to just call this version v0.25a instead of v.030a. I’ll explain why later, but first I’ll go over the progress I did leading up to this release.

Colliders were added to the areas so the player would shift ‘behind’ the wall sprites. I also put solid colliders in the right and left corners as with isometric art like this, sorting layers becomes a problem in those areas. So I was lazy and just blocked the player from getting into the corners.

The two monsters I made previously were placed on the field. While there is no risk to the player dying as I haven't made those constraints yet, it still give a sense of engagement when enemies are chasing you. There are no loot drops for slayed monsters. And the AI is somewhat buggy (haven’t fixed it from previously), but I’ll worry about that later.

After that I felt like tackling the next big thing that needs to be done: The monster girl encounter. For the necessity of saving time, I’m forgoing the whole ‘barn’ and dealing with the monster girls offspring. The Wolf Girl will instead relocate to the players house after beating her in a contest of will and strength.

A simple mini game was implemented to represent ‘capturing’ the Wolf Girl. I put in a bunch of animations for the contest and made a few HUD elements to show the progress. And finished it off with a lose and win scene. The animations are in a great need of polish, but they will suffice for now.

I decided to just turn the clock off for now as it was not doing anything productive and making it work properly would have just added needless work to the current release target.

A fade in and out was added to the bed to show the player that they are indeed using it. (currently only advances time for the farming tiles)

After animating some ero scenes for the MC and Wolf Girl, I created a new ‘level’ that would be dedicated just to working with these scenes so I wouldn't have to worry about memory constraints. As always I could polish up the animations more, but for now, it’s time to ship.

Added a few music tracks and some sound FX from my library of royalty free assets.

I did a few bug fixes and polished up a few things, and that is that for this update.

So with the update rant out of the way I’ll now talk about what’s going to happen moving forward.

Those of you that have been following my dev logs know that I’ve been concerned with the increasing trend of banning/ghosting games, and the overreach of payment processors involving games with adult content. The current situational developments have caused me to be concerned with the future of my development journey.

This would be fine if I didn’t need to think about income, but sadly I still need to put food on the table. My concerns have taken up too much real estate in my mind as of late and is causing me to just lose my will to keep working on this project the more I think on things.

The issue I see down the road is, even if I manage to get this game on Steam or start earning some revenue, I’ll likely have to adhere to some strict guidelines, and ultimately compromise my artistic vision. While this game is very tame comparatively speaking, someone is more than likely going to complain about things like, what body types I use for the monster girls. And although violence is going to be very limited, I can still see the typical crowed taking issue with that as well. I’m sure they will find other things to complain about too. Sad reality is that these kind of people have a lot of pull with vendors and payment processors. And I really don’t feel like chewing through the metaphorical restraints right now.

So you’ve probably already figured out what I’m getting at with this long winded exposition: development is getting put on hiatus..

Well not entirely, it’s more like the monthly updates are getting put on hiatus. I still want to do work on this title, and it would be a shame to just drop it, seeing how popular it is. (almost 900 downloads for the Android version alone)

This game was originally a part of the much larger game that would have been similar to Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley. I cut down the project to just the monster girl capturing and breeding part of that game to make this stand alone title. I was considering making that game as I could just omit the adult content. However thinking on it more, I’m not quite ready to ‘paint black lines’ over my artwork.

Instead of just procrastinating and worrying about the things I don’t have direct control over, I will start work on an ‘all-ages’ title that I thought up several years ago. The game may have some fan service scenes in it, but is meant to be more like a semi-serious with good dose of comedy, 2D action JRPG. Hopefully the main cast of 4 characters are memorable too.

I don’t know if this is a good move right now, but as thing stand I’m falling more and more into a state of anxiety and un-productiveness. And at the rate I’m going I’ll end up stalling completely and eventually stop working on game dev all together (something I don’t want to happen). I think it’s better to just work on ‘I couldn't become a farmer’ in the background with no stress or timeline (not that there was one to begin with) while I focus on something that I feel will have less friction when comes time to release.

I’ll keep monitoring the situation and pivot as I feel is necessary. Hopefully this is just a phase the gaming and anime community are going through, and it all blows over with some time. Or I decide to just say ‘fuck it’ and take my chances.

As for the new title I’m going to be working on, I previously made some assets for it a long while back. I abandoned working on it due to not knowing enough about art and programming. I’ll be dusting off the old files and starting from there.

Sorry to disappoint anyone that feels let down by this news.

I hope you enjoy this version, until next time.