Maids & Masters (& The Strategy Guide & Precious Kouhai v1.0)

With Precious Kouhai checked off the list, that's one "major" project checked off the list, one left to go before I can put all my attention on the Maids & Masters guide. The other one is Divine Intervention, which I should really have had the chapter written for by now, but the writing is still significantly further out than the renders, so there's not a lot in the way of pressure to get that done outside of the pressure I'm putting on myself to complete my work.

 

Going back to Precious Kouhai, this is something I'll be posting to Patreon and Subscribestar as well, but it hasn't been said anywhere except the itch dev blog yet, so to recap that:

Precious Kouhai ended up even shorter than I initially anticipated it being, but at this stage in my projects as a whole, PK kinda became a to-do item that I'm glad to cross off and free up the brain space to dedicate to other things.

As you might have noticed, early access is a paid thing on the itch page. Now that the project is finished and there aren't any updates to rotate into free public access, there are a few things to call out in reference to purchasing early access.

First, if you don't think it's fair that something you're buying will eventually be free - don't buy it. While I'm an independent solo dev and every little bit helps, I know how tough times are just as well as anyone. Don't spend money you don't feel good about spending. At this stage, early access is mostly a tip to me for making a thing you enjoyed than it is a purchase for a product.

Second, PK v1.0 will go into early access once the MnM strategy guide is released. I'm expecting that to take a solid couple months, so as a vague general estimate, probably sometime in April. Maybe May. Then PK v1.0 will be free for everybody, including the mobile version that I've been keeping exclusive to early access.

The other point I want to bring up is that - unlike Maids & Masters early access - there isn't another related product coming later on that you'll get to replace your purchase of early access. I do my best to be honest about these sorts of things, but just so it's stated in plain words, buying early access means all you get is early access. Once v1.0 is public and the game is fully released, early access ends.

As a follow-up to that, I'll also be turning off payments on the itch page once early access ends. I would like to leave them optional as a tip jar, but due to censorious payment processor shenanigans, monetizing adult content is extremely difficult these days and itch won't index the project page unless I turn payments off. I don't blame itch for that, it's a payment processor overstep, but obviously there's not a lot that I as an individual can do to affect that.

 

And that's probably the last you'll hear about Precious Kouhai until v1.0 goes public. I have made slightly more progress on the MnM strategy guide, and I do have a better estimate on how long it's going to take to complete, which (unless I get into a rhythm and speed way up) is going to be somewhere between 48 and 72 days of work. Much more manageable than my original estimate based off of how long it took me to complete the Arrival portion of the guide, but that number also doesn't account for any days I try to take off (which I usually end up doing some work during anyway despite myself) or any extra time I dedicate to things like appendixes.

That does probably also mean the public release of PK v1.0 is going to be in the May/June part of the year, possibly July, but that still feels way better than the notion of spending another 1500 hours over the course of the next year on this guide, which would burn me out something fierce. 

Precious Conclusions

Precious Kouhai is now down to only needing two more animations to be finished, leaving just enough time for me to wrap it up, do some testing, and still have some time left over to do something other than work between now and Friday.

 

As much as I want to go back and add more animations to the first part of the update, I don't think I will. Once PK is done, I have a web build to try and figure out (though probably not one for PK, since I'm not sure if the file size will cooperate - it depends on where the game ends up) and obviously I have a lot of work to do on the Maids & Masters strategy guide, so crossing PK off my to-do list feels like the best way forward.

 

Even if the way PK ends is kinda bait. You'll see what I mean about that once you can get your hands on v1.0.

 

Since this post is ending up a little on the short side without saying more, I'll give you a little extra bonus.
The Valentine's Adult Games bundle has already ended, but it managed to cross the threshold for the final stretch goal in the last 24 hours it was running, so I'm running a sale on my Patreon tiers.
You can get 30% off Supporter and higher tiers with code VAG26, or (if there are any left, I'm only giving away 5) you can get your first month of Eternal Gratitude completely for free by clicking this link here.
Or, if you actually want Precious Kouhai, you can get early access on itch for just $1 by clicking here.

And as one last thing, if a bundle is what you want, there's a completely different bundle running over here. I'm not hosting it, but it is another opportunity to pick up Precious Kouhai along with a ton of other games.

 

Still a pretty short blog post, but hey, now you get free/cheap stuff out of it. 

Precious Little Left

Since I want Precious Kouhai finished by the end of the month and I've kinda been neglecting working on it to get started on the Maids & Masters guide and trying to finish writing the chapter for Divine Intervention, so now those two projects need to be set aside so I can focus on PK.

 

With the commitment made more to the release date than the amount of content, PK v1.0 is basically entirely written and only needs to be animated. I'm still dialing in how exactly I want to work on animations to find a good balance between quality and speed, but that's exactly what I started making PK for.

I could easily spend most of a day working on a single animation even using all of the time-saving techniques that I've learned, doing little tweaks and fine-tuning the movement to make things look as good as possible from as many angles as possible, but I do feel I eventually hit a wall in terms of diminishing returns. 

Granted, I don't want to just maximize speed and be sloppy, either. Especially when the animations are intended to loop, any flaws it has become more obvious with every loop that goes by. Making a loop that's less than a second long can make that problem exponentially worse, since you see that many more loops in the same amount of time spent looking at it.

 

As much as I want to believe the characters and narrative are the most important part of a story - and they arguably are, and they'll remain my top priority - it's a bit foolish of me to take the stance that people will look past the visuals in what is ultimately a visual medium. I want to at least put enough effort into the visuals of my future projects that the average person won't disregard or lose interest in whatever the project is because I've put so little effort (or it appears that I've not put very much effort) into the visuals.

 

Unfortunately I still have some obstacles that need resolving before I can get the full benefit of my updated software (the broken teeth texture continues to haunt me), but the main thing is that I'm continuing to improve, and the bulk of the improvements that came with the software updates are still being used, even if it's not to the fullest. Between that and PK being fully written, my hope is that the animating that's left to do will go relatively quickly and the rest of my February will be nice and productive.

Precious Little Time

This is mostly going to be a recap of what was said in the Precious Kouhai v0.3 preview on Patreon and Subscribestar, but with a little extra detail. And without the image, so if you want to see what PK looks like now that I'm using GraphicsMod, you're gonna have to click a link and go over there.

 

The main thing I want to call out is that Precious Kouhai is highly likely to end up even shorter than I originally intended. Aside from it being a practice project that I'm mostly only taking the time to complete so I don't have to say I abandoned it, I don't have a ton of time to work on it right now. The original plan was to double the size of the updates so there'd be four new scenes in v0.3's release this Friday, and four or five new scenes in v1.0's release at the end of February, but the time it takes to render more than doubled due to all the extra work HS2 needs to do with all the added mods. That makes it a lot harder to crank out all the minor animations, even if creating them using the newer techniques I've learned means it only takes a couple minutes instead of nearly an hour to animate a breathing cycle.

 

That doesn't change the plan for Precious Kouhai, though. Things might be different if the reception for it was better, but I'm perfectly okay with the reception for it being what it is. I don't have a lot of interest in making do-nothing VNs about getting laid; I want to make more games like Maids & Masters. PK not being popular means I can finish it off to say it's finished and move on to the next project (one of which has finally pulled ahead as we get closer to the deadline - more on that this Friday on Patreon/Substar). It also means I'm very comfortable sticking to the release schedule and letting that dictate how much content I have time to make. If all I get done is two scenes worth of content, that's all that'll be in the update, and then we get to move on to something more exciting.

 

Precious Kouhai news aside, most of my attention is going into Divine Intervention at the moment. With the prologue finally published and playable, I need to get Chapter 1 written and at least mostly set in place so ChainZ can get to work on the renders without needing to worry about something changing significantly enough to warrant changing a render. If you want to read specifics, there are dev logs being posted by ChainZ, so I won't get too deep into the details here. You can click that link and read up for yourself.

 

There's also the usual real life distractions (though those are mercifully few and minor, even if one of them is the encroaching tax season), a new Noditu bundle on the way as we approach Valentine's Day, and some bonus material for Divine Intervention that I won't talk about much beyond mentioning that I'm working on it because I have no idea when it'll be done and we haven't fully decided how it'll be distributed yet. I'm also still working out some of the details on how to best use all the new assets and tools I have in HS2, which is something else that's stopping me from making more of PK even though that time is spent working on PK.

 

So yeah, despite my wanting to take it easy and slow down for the start of 2026 with Maids & Masters functionally complete, I'm still keeping myself plenty busy. 

Precious Little Sanity

I've managed to find enough workarounds that it's not actually impacting my workflow (or, more accurately, it's not impacting my workflow enough to stop me from working entirely) anymore, but updating all of these assets came with their own fun and unique downsides.

 

One such downside was that certain parts of the character models I'm working with (like the teeth and gums) weren't loading in the new textures correctly once placed in the studio environment so I could start posing and animating. What made this so frustrating and difficult to fix was that when I was in the dedicated character editor, the textures seemed to load fine and I didn't have the issue. This only got worse when I tried to reset the textures, because whatever way the new texture didn't load in correctly now applied to all textures for that part of the character within the studio. With the help of another dev, I found a workaround, but it required me to basically hard reset the character's entire head, which also reset every other updated texture, which meant spending more time updating Kouhai than animating her, especially any time you needed to see her teeth. Incredibly frustrated for a character that's supposed to be one that does a lot of smiling. And teeth weren't the only body part that had this issue - Senpai had his own problems.

 

The upshot of this is that it forced me to learn a few new things and get familiar with a few more new assets that opened up a few more new possibilities. Obviously it's pretty far from perfect since it's the first time I'm using some of these, but practice makes perfect, and that's what Precious Kouhai is for. All of this is going to go a long way toward making the visuals of my next major project much higher quality. And hopefully I'll have most of the jank ironed out by the time I start working on it.

 

I obviously still expect to get better over time as I use all these tools, both new and old. Putting time into individual animations is a big part of how good they look, and part of what I'm trying to improve on right now is speed. Which of course means the other thing currently driving me up a wall is trying to avoid spending three hours animating a custom walk cycle that I only need to work for about three steps, but knowing walk cycles are really difficult to animate and time correctly and actually having to figure it out for myself are two very, very different things. It'll probably still look at least a little weird if you actually stop and look at it (or roll back and replay it a bunch of times, since it only plays once before the game moves on) but I at least got it to a point where Kouhai didn't look like she was shifting into gear and sliding off-screen, and that's good enough for now.

 

There's plenty of other little bits that I still need to put some time into figuring out, but at the very least, I've learned some new things - which is always good - and I'm able to get some animating done - which means Precious Kouhai won't do what Maids & Masters did and balloon into taking more than twice as long to finish developing as I expected it to because it got more complicated the further into development I got.

Precious Little Storage Space

One of the many things I've been looking forward to doing once Maids & Masters hit v1.0 is updating a bunch of my assets and tools so that I'd be able to move entirely away from using things that are 10+ years out of date. However, now that I've done so, my first business expense of 2026 needs to be storage space.

 

See, while I already have 2TB of storage to work with in the form of two separate 1TB drives, I'm far from some giant game studio, so that 2TB is on my one and only PC. I don't have a separate workstation with another 2TB of storage. I don't have a storage rack to keep backups and archives of renders and game files. I don't have the income to pay for premium accounts large enough to store it all online. I definitely don't have a ton of space left over to install games, whether they're for research or just for fun.

 

This hasn't been a problem before now because my work files have only been about 300GB. That leaves more than enough space for me to create redundant backups on one drive and keep the rest of it for personal use, and keep the other drive as a "work drive." Updating HS2 so I could improve my visuals and familiarize myself with GraphicsMod along the way for the remaining development of Precious Kouhai, however, was another 400GB. And not 400GB of updates - 400GB of new files and assets. HS2 alone now measures well over 700GB, meaning there's really no room on my work drive for anything else. Including the game files for my projects. I had to take the majority of my stuff off that drive just to have space to complete the update, and now that it's done, I can't really put all that stuff back, even after pruning a couple hundred GB of old and unused stuff I don't need to retain. Having a drive that close to full isn't great for a number of reasons that I won't get into here, but suffice to say I need to upgrade, and with AI making everything worse for everybody, that's not going to be cheap. 

 

The good news is that - outside of one specific bug that's stopping me from getting any actual rendering done - I'm really happy with the jump in visual quality. I still have a few things to learn and dial in the rest of the way, but I think you'll be happy with the new visuals, too. It makes me that much more excited to dig into the next major project once PK is done.

 

Speaking of, you're probably sick of me reminding you by now, but if you have an opinion about what I should be doing next, there are polls both public and supporter-only on both Patreon and Subscribestar. I want your opinion, and there's only a few clicks between you and deciding where my time goes.

Following Up On Precious Kouhai v0.2

It's been... a weekend. I really don't want to turn this into a "venting" post, because this is a development blog and not a personal one, but Patrons tend to support the creator rather than the project and motivation has been low, so it only seems fair to make information about myself available when it affects development.

To actually follow up on the release of Precious Kouhai v0.2, it's been okay. I'm not sure if it's due to another algorithm change on itch or if something else is happening, but traffic suddenly cut in half a few days before v0.2 went into early access. One day I was holding an average of 200 views per day - something I've never even gotten close to with Maids & Masters - and the next it was half that, barely breaking 100 views per day. Following the release, views did increase back to roughly 200 per day and has stayed there over the weekend, but this is still a little strange. Everything else I've seen, both in my personal metrics and in analytics shared by other developers, shows a spike when an update releases with a gradual taper off to normal. Instead, things just sort of returned to what normal was before the drop. The same goes for the other things itch tracks, like downloads and browser plays (though browser plays in particular are still a little below normal).

At this point, you might be wondering why this matters, and why I care. That subject is actually fairly complicated, but I'll try to give a basic breakdown.

Putting aside that it's demoralizing to see the numbers go down, analytics like this are how developers like me gauge public perception. I'm still a very small dev, so I can't go to social media and look for a hashtag and see what people are saying. No one goes out of their way to ask me about my work. I can search the internet for myself or my projects, but that usually only leads to websites that host my work without my permission (which is why I have in-game options to find me; these websites rarely modify files, they just upload). When views drop like they recently have for Precious Kouhai, and like they have more than once in the past for Maids & Masters, it usually indicates something is wrong. However, because I have so little to go off of, outside of obvious changes like itch announcing a change in their algorithm, I can rarely tell what is wrong or what I can or should do about it. That's a big reason feedback is so important to me; you can tell me what's wrong, sometimes before it even gets as far as being a problem. It's a huge help.

These numbers can also be used to help me figure out if I'm succeeding or failing. Metrics like click-through rate give me a percentage of people who see my game and decide to click on it. That number is normally fairly low, around 3-5%. For Precious Kouhai, that number has fallen to 1.3%. It being that low is bad because that's how I get new Patrons. Someone clicks on my game, then they click through to Patreon, then they decide to become a Patron. Doing a bit of math, this means roughly 20,000 people see the thumbnail for Precious Kouhai every day. 200 people decide to click on it. Only 2 people end up on my Patreon page. Add in Maids & Masters, this blog, and so on, and that becomes 3-5. This lines up with the analytics Patreon gives me - on average, I get roughly 4 page visits per day, excluding Patrons. According to Patreon, it usually takes 3-5 visits for someone to decide to become a Patron. That means I need to get the attention of those four people 2-4 more times. Assuming they don't check the page more than once every update, that means it takes 3-5 updates (or, since I do monthly updates, 3-5 months) for me to gain just four new Patrons. Trying to grow as a small, solo developer is a slow, arduous process.

This is where I've lost a lot of motivation recently. Maids & Masters should, in theory, be bringing those one or two new Patrons with every update. I have gained one or two new Patrons every month, but nearly all of these new Patrons have cancelled their pledge within a few days of joining. Sometimes that new Patron isn't new at all, and it's one person joining to get the new update before canceling again. I understand doing it, and I still appreciate the support, but put plainly, it sucks seeing that cancel notification. Precious Kouhai seems to have brought in a few new Patrons, but the same problem exists. There's also the issue of new Patrons almost exclusively subscribing to the lowest tier possible, so even with those that stick around, my monthly income has been on a steady decline for the past 5 months even as my total of paid Patrons rises.

 

That loss of motivation makes it challenging to return back to work on Maids & Masters. If I'm seeing support decline like this, it makes me wonder if the project is worth the time and effort it will take to complete. I still want to complete it, but the combination of Precious Kouhai completely outstripping Maids & Masters in terms of performance and seeing my monthly income drop makes me re-evaluate what the best path forward is. For the time being, I've been taking some time to learn Godot (which is a very long-term thing; don't expect me to make any demos in that until at least after Maids & Masters is complete) and work a bit on the tactical RPG demo I mentioned a few weeks ago as a way to stay productive while still taking a bit of a break. 

 

Though to be clear, work is not ending on Maids & Masters. I still plan on having the first test build for v0.15.1 ready for next week so VIP Patrons can test out the new love shack content. 

I'm just dragging my feet a little. I'm also doing my best not to rush what's left of the second act and skip to the end so I can start working on something with more mass appeal. So, if you're here for Maids & Masters, don't worry - I'm not giving up on it.

Ultimately, my hope is that some of the recent changes I made on Patreon - adding annual subscriptions, making use of the community feature, etc. - will help keep some new Patrons around. There are only so many ways I can add value without pay-walling things, so hopefully that's enough. Seeing this happen has also really made me appreciate my long term Patrons. Some of you are generous beyond words, and I really am eternally grateful for the part you play in my attempts to chase down my dream of making games and writing stories for a living. It genuinely frustrates me that so much of this process comes down to money, because the only thing I want money for is keeping my bills paid so I can keep doing this. Those of you that stick around, even if you're in that $1 tier and haven't said a word since you joined, are the ones that keep me going. If you want to be one of those people, I'd appreciate it if you became part of that 1.3% and took a look at my Patreon page.

Precious Kouhai v0.2 Release Date

I really wanted this post to be "the update is done, it's just a bit of testing and then I'm back to work on Maids & Masters" but my computer had it real rough the past couple of days. If the software wasn't freezing up or crashing during rendering, my whole computer was freezing up or crashing. Thankfully I didn't lose a lot of work thanks to autosaves, but it still made the whole process highly frustrating and significantly slower than it otherwise would've been.

That's it for the bad news, though. If you don't follow my Patreon, the test build still went out to VIPs last Friday, and I wouldn't have done that if I weren't close to finished with the update. Even after the scene got a little longer than I originally intended (which is still good news - it means more content for you) there are only a few animations left to pose, animate, and render. Even if the crashing continues and I'm only able to get one or two renders done in a day, v0.2 will still enter early access on Friday, the 19th.

After some thought, early access will also launch on itch with v0.2. I was originally planning on waiting another update or two so the game had a little more content before I did the extra work that comes with making it available in early access as well, but if I'm being honest, Precious Kouhai is such a small project, it might be close to done in another update or two. I've only ever had enough content planned for about an hour's worth of reading, and if each scene takes about 5 minutes to read through, v0.2 is already about a third of the way there.

There are also some extra bits I want to try and fit in, but those may not make it into v0.2 if the freezing/crashing continues. It's nothing major, but I want to see if I understand a handful of coding things with renpy for the sake of future projects, like having the title screen change according to a variable.

One last thing that's completely unrelated - Maids & Masters is part of a paid bundle where you can get a bunch of paid games at 50% off (including Maids & Masters Early Access). There's only 3 days left to get it, so if you want it, click here to get it before it's gone. I even made this promo image for it.

Progress on Precious Kouhai v0.2

I want to call this "Precious Kouhai v0.2 Release Date" but I'm still not totally sure what I'll get done before Friday, so I'm not going to commit to a release date just yet. I have some real life things that require my attention, and while one new client has their draft and doesn't seem to want any edits, I'm still waiting on a bit of feedback from the other client before I'm fully free and clear of outside work. That said, some good progress has been made.

The first of the two scenes coming in this update I managed to completely finish last night. That's a total of 13 new animations, bringing the total up to 48. I'll be starting to animate the next scene today, which is already mostly written out, so it's basically just the animation left. The only downside to that being that the animation is what takes up the most time. Depending on the complexity, it can take as much as a full day to make a single animation. Most of mine are relatively simple, and this project has definitely helped me maintain a decent level of quality while vastly improving my overall speed, but it can still be a very time consuming process.

All that said, I'm still hopeful I'll be able to get enough done that I can present a test build to VIPs on Patreon this Friday, and Precious Kouhai can have its first proper early access release the following Friday. That does mean the update won't be available to the public until v0.3 comes out, but just like with Maids & Masters, my Patrons get early access to everything I release. On top of that, I recently added a bunch of features to Patreon membership. You can read all about it (and get a bunch of benefits for supporting development!) on my Patreon page.

Being a straightforward visual novel, that's pretty much all there is to say about Precious Kouhai until I've finished enough for a release date to be set. I can't lie, it feels really weird not having a changelog to post with everything that's been added, fixed, and updated, but outside of one syntax error in the preview build (which was fixed for v0.1), there's been nothing to fix in the existing content. There is one change, though - I've managed to find a music license for fairly cheap, so Precious Kouhai will start to feature new music in v0.2. Only one track was replaced and moved to a new spot, so it's not a particularly dramatic change, but it's nice having a proper library of options to use that still matches the aural theming I want to use. This sort of thing is only possible thanks to the support of my Patrons, so if this sort of good news is something you'd like to hear more often, I'd really appreciate it if you clicked that link up there and considered pledging to a tier.

April 2024 General Update

Today had an incredibly hectic start to it, and I'm kind of between everything right now, so I'm going to use today's post as a more general update to both collect my thoughts and share them in the same go. So, here's where that "everything" I mentioned currently stands.

In general Patreon news, some changes are coming. This includes annual subscriptions, some minor updates to descriptions to hopefully make certain benefits a little clearer (and make the "About" section a little less robotic), making itch benefits easier to find, and some potential changes to early access that you can vote on (and if you're a Patron, there's a second poll with a little extra info). Most of the reason for these changes is because I'm reaching a point where I need to push for monetary support a little harder, and there aren't a lot of ways to do that while still being consumer-friendly. If you want to know more about these changes, check the poll(s) linked above, or check my Patreon on Friday, when these changes will be getting implemented.

For Maids & Masters, I've finished my playthrough and have all my checkpoint saves created. I've tackled all the bugs and other minor fixes I found along the way, so now it's time to move on to actual development. I'd kind of forgotten how much I like my own game, so getting to play through it again was a little therapeutic in a way. I'm still debating whether or not I should roll v0.15.1 into v0.16 to make a bigger update - part of which depends on those polls I mentioned - but it's unlikely I'll have a release ready for April anyway. Even if I do split the updates and go with v0.15.1, I need to add the Love Shack content for six new characters (Vicky, June, Chloe, Setri, Caitlainn, and Celine), update Setri so you can progress with her during the first half of Act 2 while Cumhaill's Grow festival is active, and create the first round of affection quests for all the Maids (or at the very least, all of the combat Maids). That's probably going to take 4-5 weeks to get done, and that's without accounting for days lost to outside work or other potential hurdles. That means you're going to get another release for Precious Kouhai.

I'm going to try to do two scenes for Precious Kouhai instead of just one. They're short enough, and I'm used to updates having 20-45 minutes of content, not 5-10, so it seems like a reasonable compromise between the amount of content I think is expected of me and the amount of time and effort it takes to create the various animations. I won't say much more on that for now so I have something to talk about next week. In a perfect world, I'll find the time to finish up my outside work and have a test build ready for Friday the 12th with a release going out Friday the 19th, but with the surprises of today, I want to make sure it's clear that those are estimates, not promises. It might take another week. Thankfully, most of the posing and one of the more complex animations is already done, so the biggest hurdle will be getting outside work finished so I can work on Precious Kouhai unimpeded.

On that note, I have not one, but two clients waiting on work from me. These are projects I just write for, so the work (usually) goes pretty quickly, but it's still 2-3 days that I won't have to work on MnM or PK while I get it done, and another day every time there's post-work or follow-up drafts I need to do. If you don't like hearing that, I get it, but bills don't pay themselves. You can free up my time so I can focus more on my own projects by supporting me on Patreon.

Maids & Masters (& Starting on v0.15 & The Response to Precious Kouhai)

Before I get into the progress update on MnM, it feels necessary to say something about how the official launch of PK went. Not because it went poorly or because I got a bunch of complaints about it, but because it did so well that now I have complaints. Which sounds a little negative, I know, but hear me out.

For a little extra context, Maids & Masters has been struggling to break 100 views per day on itch since it launched. Even if I combine everything - the April Fool's Day specials, Arrival, and the main game - it still only hovers around 80 views per day. Even on days where an update launches, views don't get that high. The public launch of v0.13 is the best launch I've had so far, with launch day views hitting about 200, and some promotion causing it to peak around 600 on one day and continue to float around 200 views for a few days. About a week after that peak (which is much longer than normal; typically views level out within 3-4 days, not 10), it's back to normal at about 80 views for today.

Precious Kouhai brought in more than 2000 views on launch day, over 1000 for the next day, and nearly 1000 for the third. It was downloaded more times on launch day than MnM was viewed that day. Maybe this has something to do with itch's new algorithm pushing new games and de-prioritizing updates on in-progress games, but I can't say that for certain. I'm still absolutely floored by the numbers. I also have some conflicting feelings about MnM being something that has all this gameplay and care and attention put into it when the single-scene 8-minute preview that I did next to zero promotion for does this much better, but I think I'll settle on being happy it's doing well. And if you're here because of Precious Kouhai, thanks for being here. Expect more news on that in February.

Moving on to the actual MnM news, the intro scene is still just an idea in my head, but a little over half the maps for the new Estate are done now, and a few of the "common" interactions are already populated. The intro scene is also a complete idea, so all there is to do is actually put it in the game. There haven't been reports of many errors in v0.13 now that it's actually public, so I can put more energy into getting v0.15 done, and hopefully in roughly half the time that v0.13 and v0.14 took.

I've also had a lot more time to think on how the next segment should play out before my Patrons pulled a switcheroo on me and decided it was bunny girl time at the last minute (which I'm not mad at; I just wasn't ready for it). While I don't have the segment written out, I have a bunch of ideas I want to include, so it'll be less about making something from scratch and more about filling in the blanks to bring it all together, which is how development for MnM usually goes. I do have something else going on that may distract from development a little, but it shouldn't cause any significant delays. More on that next week.

For now, thanks for all the attention on PK. While you're waiting for an update on that, why not give MnM a try? People tell me it's worth a go.

Precious Kouhai

I've talked about this a few times now, but it's never gotten its own post, so let's fix that and make this official.

Precious Kouhai is a slice-of-life nukige-style adult visual novel. If you have no idea what that means, it basically boils down to not having much of a story. You'll see little snippets - slices, if you will - of the character's lives. The "nukige" part means that the snippets you see are going to be focused on the sex. Not to say that there will be no story, though. It is still a visual novel, and I'm still a writer, so there will be plenty to read. Just expect it to be short - maybe an hour or two in total once it's completed.

This isn't normally my style, but Precious Kouhai is (like most of Maids & Masters) in large part an experiment and an excuse to improve some skills. I'd like to think I've come a long way as a writer in the couple of years I've spent working as a writer and developer, but especially in terms of making entire games by myself, I've still got a long way to go. Precious Kouhai will help me improve in two big ways.

The first of which is visuals. In helping Berkili rework the renders for the first chapter of Companion of Darkness, I got to use a bunch of tools that I'd either ignored or weren't available to me when I started Maids & Masters. MnM now has a visual style that I don't want to stray too far from, so if I want to practice using those tools, I should start a new project - like Precious Kouhai. Since the visual style isn't established and the project will be relatively short anyway, I can try different things out from scene to scene without it being so unexpected that it takes you out of the experience. 

 

On top of that, while I have started making custom animations for Maids & Masters, it's something I'm hesitant to do because I'm slow at it. For Precious Kouhai, I want every frame to be an animation, not just the lewds. The title screen is animated, the mundane parts with the characters just sitting there will be animated, even things like the menu backgrounds will be animated. And not just animated - hand animated. HS2 has a lot of pre-built animated poses, and I'm not going to use a single one. This should not only help me improve as an animator, but help me learn how to speed up my process and create a unique experience since not many visual novels put the time and resources into animating mundane scenes.

The second way PK helps me improve as a developer is that it's the first project I'm creating in Ren'Py. While I want to keep my focus on making RPGs like Maids & Masters, Redemption Harem, and Love/Loss, eventually branching out into other genres like I have with Saccharine Soil, some of these games just won't work in RPG Maker, and I'll have to learn how to use different software. While I do want to eventually learn Godot or Unreal, Ren'Py is a much simpler first step.

Ren'Py is extremely easy to learn and work with compared to other things I've attempted learning over the years. I've also got a handful of stories that either I don't think will translate well into anything except a visual novel, or that will work best using a visual novel as the interactive medium instead of trying to shoehorn in game mechanics. As an added bonus, development in Ren'Py is also significantly faster than development in RPG Maker, so if I need a break from working on MnM, having PK as a fall-back project so that I can keep working without burning myself out grinding away on MnM will be incredibly helpful. It also means that if a month would go by without a release for MnM, I can spend a little time on PK and get a release done for that instead and keep up with making monthly releases without either project suffering for it.

As a closing statement - if you're the sort of person that gets nervous about developers picking up new projects because you've seen so many of them either drop the first project or stop developing altogether, do your best not to worry. I'm a little apprehensive about putting more on my own plate, too, but I've been working on multiple projects since I started Maids & Masters. Until I start making enough to financially support myself independently, I'll always be working on multiple projects. I abhor an unfinished story like nature abhors a vacuum, so you can trust that I'll be doing everything I can to finish everything I started, and that includes the games behind the demos I've been making.

Precious Kouhai's existing preview build will go public on itch and on Patreon this Friday.

Maids & Masters (& Progress on v0.14 & A Special Announcement)

Been a little while since we've talked about this, huh? Luckily all the news I have to share is good news. Things aren't quite back to the normal semi-permanent flow state that development work was for the first two years of Maids & Masters, but I've at least found a good deal of some sorely missed momentum, so development has been going a lot smoother than it did in December, even putting aside that I spent most of December sick.

v0.14 is very nearly done. Everything except the final step of the quest is done, then it's just the cult segment and making sure all of the side content is implemented - repeatable versions of the new scenes, the new characters appearing as they're supposed to, and so on. I'd like to say it'll be done and ready in time for this Friday, but given the growing list of things I need to do before I can call a build complete plus the number of bugs in each build seeming to grow ever larger, I'd rather give a little extra time to play testing to make these builds more stable. I'll announce the release date next week.

On that note, there are a handful of things I want to address since there's all kinds of side content that hasn't been making it's way into these builds the way it should be. The big ones being the love shack and affection quests. If Act 2 has felt a little light on content, it's because the side content was meant to be affection quests, which I haven't gotten around to implementing for a few different reasons. Once v0.14 is done, the segment for v0.15 is already decided on and can start right away (since it's the only option left in the Patreon polls that were happening). So, v0.16 (Act 2's halfway point) will probably be delayed so I can use v0.15.1 to add all of that content in. In may not end up being all of that content (because not a lot of the affection quests are designed yet), but at the very least, the missing love shack content and a few affection quests will be available.

Now for that special announcement. I've been thinking over this problem of my dev cycle slowing down for months now, and trying to find a solution for a handful of weeks. Over the last year, I've taken on a number of writing jobs out of necessity - I do this full time, my bills won't pay themselves, and as much as I greatly appreciate the support I already receive it isn't enough to pay my mortgage. Since the job that took up the majority of my non-MnM development time ended roughly four months ago, my development cycle slowed way down. If memory serves, I got two releases out in four months. When I began work on a couple of new demos, both demos were done in a month without development slowing on MnM any further. So, after a great deal of consideration, I've decided to start working on a secondary project - Precious Kouhai. PK is a short nukige-style visual novel made in Ren'Py, and should be between one and two hours long by the time it's done. 

 

There's even a preview build available for this new project for free as part of the "bonus episode" rewards for the Winter Games Bundle. If you want to check that out, go find a link to the bundle - the rewards are available on the bundle page, even now that the bundle has ended. The preview build will be public eventually, but the itch.io page is still under construction, so it'll be a little longer before that happens. Part of me is still a little apprehensive about putting more on my own plate, but with PK being as short as it is, it should give me enough time to find out if it's an improvement on my workflow or not, and if it isn't, it won't take long to finish and development will return to MnM as my sole project. If it works out great, I have more visual novels I can make. Either way, you get another game out of the deal.