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 v0.14 Release

There's not a whole lot to say about this release that I haven't already said. The only big omissions are things like the love shack - you won't find the new Maids in there. Everything that should be in the build is in the build. It's a little on the shorter side, but I hope you enjoy it all the same.

 

Early access is available on Patreon right now, and will be available on itch soon.

Here's the changelog:

v0.14
Added the next main story segment - a vineyard that delves into Phoebe’s past… and yours.
- A new Estate to explore and two new Maids to recruit with a total of four new scenes.
- A new trophy that provides a special Contract for Experimental Concoctions.
- The third cult investigation segment.
Added a bugfix feature to Trophy 30’s plaque in the trophy room to discover its Estate Info entry.
Added a version of Kala’s extra Freeze objective to Cumhaill if Deirlinn is close to giving birth.
Added Freeze interactions for all Maids to pregnant Deirlinn in Cumhaill.
Added missing interaction events to the Bancroft Estate guest wing.
Added a plugin to allow more than three options to appear on the title screen.
Added a bugfix to prevent being locked out of completing the Guiding Lost Souls side quest.
Added a bugfix feature to award Trophy 30 if the bear is already dead on entering the cave.
Fixed a bug that caused the Estate Info entry to not be added when Trophy 30 is earned.
Fixed a bug that caused a fireplace to provide infinite Scrap Wood.
Fixed a bug that caused Deirlinn’s birth phase to change instead of setting Vendra’s.
Fixed bugs that caused incorrect dialogue/character placement at the Bancroft Estate.
Fixed a bug that caused a maze reward to give Pearl Earrings when Pet Collar was stated.
Fixed a pair of infinite item bugs in the Amaira Estate guest houses.
Fixed a bug where the freed prisoner would repeat her initial dialogue.
Fixed a bug that caused some customized statues to disappear during the second Freeze.
Fixed more bugs that allowed the player to stand on wall and ceiling tiles.
Fixed a bug that may cause Trophy 30 to not be awarded correctly.
Fixed a number of missing interaction and wall/ceiling collision bugs.
Fixed a bug that caused the fourth objective of The Color Green to not complete correctly.
Fixed a handful of bugs that caused the player sprite to be temporarily incorrect.
Updated the Sword Butler in the dungeon to not attack from the other side of the wall.
Updated the Trophy 30 puzzle to remove an issue that could prevent earning the trophy.
Updated Vendra with new dialogue after Celtchar is born and to correctly use her own variables.
Updated title screen links to include itch.io.
Updated the dance puzzle hints to be more like dance instructions (and hopefully more helpful).
Various other minor dialogue, text, BGM, and event fixes and updates.

Maids & Masters (& A Release Date For v0.14)

The update isn't entirely done, but it's close enough to done that I'm plenty comfortable fully committing to this Friday, the 19th, being the early access release date for v0.14, which means v0.13 is going public the same day.

Based on the feedback coming in from playtesting, this update does seem to be a lot more bug-free than the last one. Part of that probably has to do with the update being on the shorter side, but I'm taking it as good news. Some less good news is that there may need to be some rewriting done. Even with the segment being as short as it is, it feels like it treads water a little in some places. There's also not a lot of places where the drunkenness mechanic has much of an effect, which I'd like to change. Or maybe it's fine and nothing will change; if it comes down to it, I'm not going to delay the release for rewrites.

I've also got the rest of the actual build to make. Depending on time, there might still be a few minor things missing (like the new Maids not appearing in the love shack invite screen because they don't have any content yet), but before I get to the cult segment, I want to be sure all the follow-up content - like the new Maids actually being in the Estate after completing the new segment - is done ahead of time. It's nothing that will take a ton of time by itself, but these things tend to stack up.

Then I think it'll be time to put a little work into Precious Kouhai. I still need to make a few more assets and get some things set up for the itch page so I can make the preview build properly public. If I can figure it out, I might even keep the preview build as a web version teaser if I can figure out how to do a web version. I do want to focus on v0.15 once v0.14 has gone out, but with the Winter Games Bundle having ended, keeping PK behind the walls it's currently behind doesn't make a ton of sense to me. I haven't even made a proper announcement post for it yet, I just keep tacking it on to posts about MnM. It probably deserves a little attention of its own. Look forward to that before news about v0.15 starts to roll in.

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.

Another Grain Through The Hourglass - 2023 Year In Review

Happy New Year!

If you're new here and have no idea what this post is, at the turn of the new year I like to take a moment to look back at the past year and celebrate all the good things that happened over the course of the year. Despite my development cycle slowing down, there's been a lot that happened in 2023, most of it good things. 

Starting with my Patrons. From those of you that just dropped a dollar or three and left to the V.I.P.s that form the backbone of my funding, I am well and truly humbled by your generosity. The year started with over a year of barely making enough money to pay for a meal or two, and support has grown all the way to the point of being able to pay a bill or two. I still have a long way to go before I can be considered to be making a living off of the work I do full time, but all of this support still makes a huge difference. All of you have my utmost gratitude.

Speaking of making a huge difference, Maids & Masters joined a number of bundles this year, all of which I am quite comfortable in saying were very successful. I continue to be blown away by the generosity of people. While I only saw a small percentage of the money the bundles made, the one I want to call out is one that I didn't see a single cent of and happens to be the very first bundle I've ever joined - a bundle for the Turkey/Syria earthquake that raised nearly $2000, all of which went to charity. As exciting as it is to see the other bundles I've participated in reach even higher heights, it was really fantastic to see me and my little game make a tangible difference somewhere in the world.

On top of all those warm and fuzzy feelings, I feel I've done a lot of growing as a developer. At the start of the year, Redemption Harem's demo went public, which was a project that I felt was highly ambitious in terms of creating crafting and management systems almost entirely without the assistance of plugins. It's a little buggier than I'd like it to be, but I learned a lot in building it and have the knowledge to iron out those bugs given some time. More than that, it laid the groundwork for me to build the demo for Saccharine Soil. Saccharine Soil by itself is easily the most mechanically complex game I've ever made, using a plugin set that doesn't have a lot of documentation about how to use or modify it to turn RPG Maker into a real-time action game. Having that demo out in the world feels like a huge accomplishment, because it represents a lot of ideas that I'd been wondering if I had the skill to implement for a long time.

If that wasn't enough, there's also Precious Kouhai. That isn't quite fully public yet - only Patrons have access to the preview right now (though it will be available through the Winter Games Bundle soon) - but I've been meaning to learn Ren'Py for a long time. Now I've got a project in that engine, too, which opens up a whole new set of options and opportunities. I'm not totally committed to the idea yet, but I may start developing Precious Kouhai as a second project alongside Maids & Masters just for the sake of diversifying my work, but that's a topic for another day.

Back on the topic of opportunities, I had the immense pleasure of working with Bear in the Night (if you're not familiar, look up Lust Academy) on Lust Element as a member of the Night Icons team, and now I can say that I have work published on Steam. It still trips me out a little that I saw something that I worked on featured on the pages of Steam's VN Fest. If that wasn't enough, I've also joined Burst Out Games as a writer, and worked with Berkili to remaster the first chapter of his AVN, Companion of Darkness. And that's just the paying work - the number of other developers, writers, and artists I've gotten to known over the last year approaches triple digits, and it's been great getting to know them all.

I still have a long way to go to reach the point I'm trying to reach, but 2023 felt like a couple big steps in the right direction, and I can't wait to see what 2024 has in store.

Maids & Masters (& The Rest of 2023)

Let's start with a little bit of a progress report. There has unfortunately not been a lot of progress made on v0.14 - largely due to this cold - but as I recover from the last dregs of sickness, I should get back into the swing of things pretty quickly. I've managed to get the introduction done, as well as a bit of side content that lets me test out the drunkenness mechanic, and a couple of new scenes for the new girls. 

 

It's not nearly as much progress as I'd like, but there's only so much working through I can do when I get sick. I did have some of the next bit done, but my cold-addled brain had a hard time linking things together so it was... well, boring. Thankfully I'm more or less over the cold at this point, so development should be more or less back to normal. I don't have an ETA on the update yet, but I should have a release date by the next time I post about MnM.

I put it that way because it's going to be a while before I post about MnM specifically. Next Tuesday I won't be posting since it's the day after Christmas, and I'll be busy with family. The Tuesday after that is when I'll be making my year in review post, where I look back and take the time to appreciate and celebrate my successes over the past year. Despite some of the lows, 2023 came with plenty of highs, too, so I'm looking forward to that. 

My Patreon posting schedule should go unaffected. I've got more Christmas to post about on Friday, a little bit of a late Christmas present for everyone the week after, and hopefully I can find the time and energy to get an extra something put together for Patrons on one of those two weeks. Of all the holiday related things I wanted to do this year, the Patron-only thing is the only one I haven't been able to get done yet, and the last thing I want to do is neglect my Patrons.

There may also be another extra little surprise coming, but that depends on whether the Winter Games Bundle hits that 5k stretch goal. 

That's all for now. See you next year.

Winter Games Bundle

After four years of not getting sick once, I've gotten very sick for a second time this winter (hence this post going up a day late - I was basically dead yesterday). So, to take it as an excuse to bundle up and play some games, I've been going through the Winter Games Bundle. You should, too - it's over 30 games from over 30 devs, entirely for free. Someone even made a trailer for it.

Want to know what you'll be getting in the bundle before you click on the link? There's a graphic for that, too!

Now go play some games while I try to get less sick. https://itch.io/b/2188/winter-games-bundle-18

Maids & Masters (& Starting on v0.14)

With the demo for Saccharine Soil out to Patrons (if you want to play it, that post is here), I have escaped my nefarious captor and my brain is now free to start working on the next Estate segment for Maids & Masters.

To that end, the maps are already done and mostly populated with interactions, most of the NPCs have been made and placed, and the introduction is already done. I'm still a little unsure of how to utilize this "drunkenness" mechanic that I've started implementing, but it is partially implemented, so that's a start. It will almost assuredly take a little tweaking to get it right, but getting it in there in the first place is the hard part, and that's already done.

After the Read Estate, I'm a little hesitant to make two or more versions of each negotiation segment, especially with the drunkenness mechanic. That really wants to be on more of a sliding scale, but I also don't really want to need to write out three or more different versions of each conversation. I have a few ideas of how to handle this, but it'll mostly come down to testing and reworking it until I'm happy with it.

That leaves the actual story.

If you're good at connecting dots, you might have already drawn some conclusions about where the story is going to go here. I've been avoiding being too open about that aside from it going into Phoebe's past, but suffice to say there's more than just the inner workings of trade economics and the business of running a winery at play here.

I've likened this section to being similar to dealing with Griselda before, and aside from it being less gloomy, that's the general vibe you can expect. However, the stakes are a little different this time around, and not just because you stand to gain a new pair of Maids.

Saccharine Soil - Setting and Story

Remember how I wasn't sure I liked the logo? I changed it. Here's the new title screen.

This still isn't exactly how I want it to look, but this thing is going to be stuffed full of placeholder assets anyway. I got them working as intended, but don't have the assets for things like readying weapons or aiming, so to stop this project from taking another three weeks, I'm just accepting that a lot of things won't look the way I want them to. Some things don't work quite how I want them to, either. It does all work, though. That alone is a huge step compared to all the struggling I've been doing until now. But enough of that - the demo has very few things left to do before it enters final testing. Onto the good stuff.

I mentioned in last week's post that this is heavily inspired by Sweet Home. If you're familiar with that, a lot of what I'm about to say might sound familiar. The setting for the game is vaguely contemporary and in a haunted mansion deep in the countryside. There's not much more to say about the setting than that - it's pretty standard horror genre fare. So, let's talk about the story.

The mansion was built by a wealthy businessman who had recently married for himself and his wife. While they did throw a few lavish parties - they certainly had the space for it - the two slowly became more and more withdrawn. Over a couple decades, it became normal that no one would see either the husband or the wife for months at a time. There wasn't much to think about it - his wife was beautiful, and they had more than enough money and space to spend the rest of their lives together without either of them working a single day.

Then, the husband started to reappear. Not at work - he was effectively retired - but he was seen in the city again. Usually with new women. He never said why, but when he was asked, he'd say his wife was in good health and waiting for him back at home. Was he bored? Had the marriage become stale? Was it something else? Maybe he was bringing them home for his wife. No one knew, but he'd keep finding new women to take home.

Until that suddenly stopped, too. A few weeks went by, and a jealous boyfriend found out his girlfriend was one of the women the husband had brought home. They fought for a week before she went silent. He thought she went back to him. He wasn't having it. The husband was once a high-profile man, so the house wasn't hard to find. When he got there, the door was already open. Walking in, there was no one to be found. Determined to confront the man who destroyed his relationship, he kept looking until he stumbled into the couple's marital bedroom, finding the wife laying seemingly peacefully with her throat slit, the sheets dyed red.

The man fled the house and informed the authorities. It turns out the wife knew about the husband's affairs, but didn't approve. The husband had died under "mysterious circumstances" which was later ruled to be a murder. The wife had played the grieving widow and quietly built a crypt on the property, burying her husband inside. One by one, she lured in her husband's mistresses, informed them of his death, and kept them in the crypt with him. When she was done, she went to the bed that only she and her husband were meant to share, and ended her own life.

That was roughly 50 years ago.

In the time since, the mansion has become a typical local legend. The occasional homeless person used it to keep a roof over their head, and groups of teenagers dared themselves to spend the night. What made it less typical is that people kept going missing. Of course, it's hard for the authorities to do much about one homeless person saying another disappeared, or some kid going somewhere they weren't supposed to and not coming back. They'd check the house when they were pressured to, but it was always unsettling. Furniture seemed to move after going from one room to the next. Odd noises were heard that weren't just the bones of the old house settling. Loose diary pages from the dead wife showing up with vaguely threatening prose penned onto them. Never any evidence of the missing people.

The game starts with a movie crew arriving with the intention of proving the supernatural really exists. They each have their own reasons for being there, but a handful have already been through an experience of their own that has them committed to proving the truth to the world. With all the rumors, this house seems to be the best place to do it. With a moving company having already brought all their equipment there, all that's left to do is to make their movie, find their evidence, and leave. 

Unfortunately for them, it's that last step that's the hardest.

The demo for Saccharine Soil will be available exclusively to Patrons this Friday, December 1st.

Saccharine Soil

So I don't forget, here's a quick reminder up top that the v0.14 development poll is running until this Friday. Some of my Patrons seem to be a little unsure of themselves, because I've seen the votes go from one winning by one vote, to them being tied, to one winning 7 to 3, and only three new people voted over the course of all those changes. If you want to see for yourself (and maybe cast a vote of your own), you can do that by supporting me on Patreon.

With that done, I think it's time I come clean about something. See, as much as I like working on Maids & Masters, there's still a lot that I want to try to do within the confines of RPG Maker, and some of those ideas just don't fit within Maids & Masters. These ideas tend to just build up, usually as loose "idea" documents that I keep for myself. Sometimes I even go back through those docs and fiddle with the ideas a little more. That's how things like Love/Loss and Redemption Harem happen; eventually an idea crystalizes and I turn it into something. But recently, all these disparate ideas haven't been doing much. Just bouncing around in my skull, making me wish I had the time and resources to be able to do something with them. Then a roommate put an idea in my head, and a new idea crystalized.

Saccharine Soil is a survival horror action RPG that draws heavy inspiration from Sweet Home, the game that inspired Resident Evil. Combat will be in real time, unlike the RPGs I've been making, and the RPG elements will also be very light, really only coming into play for things like weapon and character upgrades.

There's still a lot I'm unsure of with this thing, though. As much as I love the idea, and all of the mechanics I wanted to build for it function, and it is technically playable, this thing is incredibly mechanically complex. If you were around for my post about Love Life!, you might remember that I had to step away from turning that into a full demo because there were artistic representations that I just couldn't get to a point I was happy with. While I still want to make that into a game, I don't think it's something I'll be able to realize without an artist. Saccharine Soil is quickly running into a similar issue, but from a mechanical aspect. Lucky for me, I actually studied programming in the past, so it's less of a stopping block.

 

The demo I currently have is technically playable, but things like item storage, limited inventory, even reloading a gun either doesn't work or is so far from what you'd be used to in a similar game that I can't help but question if I shouldn't look for a new way to realize these mechanics. While I could give up on having a limited inventory (which would then also remove the need for an item storage mechanic), that feels like it removes an integral part of the genre, and would result in an inherently inferior experience. In that same vein, part of me is content requiring you to use the ammo items to reload your gun instead of having a dedicated reload button, but it's so counter-intuitive to literally every other game with a shooting mechanic (indie games and otherwise) that I know it'll result in complaints and little else. At this point, even the title above feels off - too cartoony and scattered - but I'd already spent close to 7 hours on different versions of it and wanted to present this as a project I've been working on while these development polls run.

Now, this might sound a little defeatist, or like I'm complaining about not being able to get something I used to be excited about to work, but that's not entirely the case. I'm absolutely complaining about not being able to get these mechanics to function the way I want them to, but it's only frustrating because I'm so excited about the project. I desperately want to get this working well enough that it's something I want to present. Even just taking the time to do things in new ways is giving me ideas of how to try new things in MnM or other future projects. Even if this does end up being something that's ruled by jank, I'll be doing everything in my power to get Saccharine Soil ready enough to share with my Patrons this Friday, alongside the public announcement of the results of the v0.14 development poll.

And if it doesn't happen by then, maybe I'll just share what I have as-is with VIPs as an alpha gameplay preview anyway. Or maybe keep working on it alongside MnM until I'm happy with it. Saccharine Soil is something I'd really like to hire an artist or two to create the final version of, but getting it working as a game is a challenge I've been enjoying. Maybe a little too much.