End of Year Review / Dev Update #39

Happy new years eve! And happy new year to those in eastern timezones!

This is my longest dev update ever so be warned. Please don't read this until you've played E3 and answered the survey! Many spoilers!

Contents are as follows:

• 1 - My Week

• 2 - January Priorities

• 3 - E3 Review

• 4 - Review of 2024 & A Thank You

• 5 - Adapting Strategy for 2025

• 6 - Thank you

1 - My Week

I had a lovely week and took a few days off to see some family for xmas. As such, I didn't get much done this week aside from creating the survey and looking at some bugs. But now I'm back refreshed and looking forward to working on the below priorities and then E4 :)

2 - January Priorities

There's quite a lot on my plate for January, specifically:

• 2a - Android Version

• 2b - Character Bios

• 2c - Survey Review

• 2d - Further bug fixing/improvement

• 2e - E4 Planning & Writing

 2a - Android Version

The Android version is my top priority and I'll be working on that probably starting tomorrow and hopefully finishing in early-mid Jan.

2b - Character Bios

The character bios for the girls introduced in E2 are still missing and this is really not good. I wish they were in the game already but the fact that they're not is mostly a consequence of me pushing myself really hard to get E2 and E3 out as quickly as possible. But I don't want to leave these out any longer and so I'm looking to post an updated E3 with all of these in Jan.

2c - Survey Review

As for the survey, if you've played E3 but haven't yet done the survey please do it here: E3 SURVEY. The survey helps me understand what was good and what needs improvement and I'm really looking forward to discussing it with you all. It will close in one week and then I'll be looking to start reviewing certain questions as posts on Patreon shortly after that. Thank you to everyone who's already responded - I've already got a lot of awesome feedback/suggestions.

2d - Further Bug Fixing/ Improvement

Bug fixing... Seems like a never-ending task. This week someone even found a super obvious typo in E1 that everyone else seemed to have missed. Legend has it that the gods gave Sisyphus a choice between pushing the boulder or fixing Elmwood bugs and he chose the boulder :/ But fortunately, I'm not alone. I have the best community there is and so many of you help me enormously with finding bugs. Also a special shout-out to TheNorsePantheon for all the work he's done this week. He's identified tons of bugs, sent me recommended fixes for all of them and even sent me a potentially better way of dealing with the Love/Lust logic in the game using classes and such rather than variables. He's an absolute legend. But also thank you so much to everyone else who's finding bugs. You're all heroes to me because you make my job easier. Thank you.

2e - E4 Planning and Writing

Onto E4. I have a lot of ideas for E4 right now but there are quite a lot of things I need to consider and balance before diving into production. By the end of Jan I'm aiming to have a rough draft of the script.

3 - E3 Review

Time to give some of my thoughts on E3. Please don't read this until you've completed the survey as anything I say might subtlety shift your opinion and change what you say in the survey. Please do the survey first or skip this section.

Ok, with that out of the way... Elmwood is honestly a bit of a mess lol and E3 is no exception. E3 production might have felt like a long wait but the truth is that it should have been a bit longer and it was pretty rushed. As I'm going to talk about later, I don't want to release fewer than 3 updates in a year. And I really wanted the Bronze release to be pre-Christmas so I ended up working extremely hard in November/early Dec to meet this target. But a consequence of this is that I didn't leave myself enough time for testing and safe to say I've learnt my lesson now.

For E2 and E3 I only spent a few hours testing the game. This is really poor practice and really bad for the game and my brand. And what happened with this in E3 just now is that for two weeks after the early access release I was fixing major bugs. Which means that minimising testing time hasn't sped up overall production - because I can't start E4 production right after E3 as I have too many bugs to fix. So instead of having these two weeks where I'm fixing bugs after I release early access... I'm going to have them before! Wow! Genius! Super obvious but this is something I wasn't doing and I now will. Similarly, I'm not going to announce release dates when I still have several hundred images to render... I'm going to announce future release dates when the episode is complete and it enters the (now two week) testing stage. Of course my dev updates will always communicate how things are going but I'm no longer going to say any specific dates until it's actually done. I hope you'll agree with me that this is the right decision. I'm going to give even more reasons for this in the Improving Elmwood Experience section.

But aside from it being a bit rushed and having room for improvement in many areas... E3 was a huge success and I'm really happy with how it was received. We've grown A LOT as a community this month and that makes me really optimistic about the future. I'm really happy with how things are going.

Another random thought about E3 is that I'm really glad I kept the threesome a complete surprise. I could have given hints about it or even mentioned it to increase the hype for E3 but I decide to keep the end of E3 a secret. You might remember ages ago (between E1-2) that I commented that the first threesome would likely come in E3 or E4 but didn't say anything during E3 production and I think it paid off in making the moment when Chelsea kisses Kat to be pretty hot. I think the e3some animations were also some of my finest animations which I'm really happy about.

4 - Review of 2024 & A Thank You

In terms of this year as whole, it's probably been the most important year of my life. When I say this I'm also kinda talking about 2023 because that's when I quit my previous job to do this but this is the year everything really happened. I'm really glad I chose to do this. It's the best decision I ever made. But you might not realise how close Elmwood was to failing.

I remember when I first released E1 and went on holiday the day after with my gf at the time to celebrate. I told her the thing I was most scared of was for Elmwood to be a minor success. I was very unsure about whether I could actually commit to doing this so I wanted it to either completely fail - so that I knew this line of work wasn't for me and I could go back to a traditional job... or I wanted it to be a big success (obviously my preference) so that I could have good reason to follow my dream. And I remember seeing the first ever ratings for Elmwood on the website I submitted it to (it quickly circulated to others too).

But these ratings were not good. Really not good. I remember checking this website and seeing that a couple of hours after it was published I had 3 reviews averaging 1.67 stars... yikes. That's equivalent to a 3 star review and two 1 stars. Or two 2s and a 1. That was a really sad moment for me and I thought my dream was over. I thought I had wasted a lot of time in doing this but it's kinda what I said I wanted - I wanted it to be a massive failure or a massive success and it was a massive failure. At least I knew now not to continue.

But then you guys complicated things. 2 people subscribed on the 15th of March, the very day I published E1. 16 more people subscribed the day after. 15 more subscribed on the 17th. Three days in and I had 35 Patreon subs, with lots of free members too. This really complicated things for me because I was ready to give up. I had planned to give up. But now there were people who believed in me even though I didn't. And this was really weird. Totally ruined my holiday because I couldn't think of anything else. I need to thank my ex gf here for being so supportive and putting up with me while I was constantly checking my Patreon and reviews of E1 while ignoring her... (sorry). She helped me a lot.

But those of you that subscribed to me super early on (and those of you who gave slightly more generous reviews than Elmwood's first 3 reviewers) put me in the exact position I was terrified of - Elmwood E1 was now a small success. So now I had the extremely difficult choice to either be financially stable and have free time with weekends and evenings by having a real job... or I could become WickedWare, sacrificing so much in life and choosing to be extremely unstable financially for the short/medium term in pursuit of a dream. I took a risk in 2023 to quit my job, but I took an even bigger risk in March, 2024 to commit to making E2, and 19 more episodes after that. And this decision was only made because of the extremely generous people who subscribed in March to an unknown developer with only 1 episode of a game. But here we are, 9 months later finishing 2024 with 3 episodes released and 461 subscribers and I am so so grateful for every single one of you.

When I say that Elmwood only exists because of my subscribers, this isn't something I just say to try and get more money - it's just the truth. I'd love to give a shout-out to those people who supported me extremely early on but I haven't checked with these people if they want this as some people like to remain anonymous and some have unsubbed etc. But those of you who have supported me since E1 have a very special place in my heart. You know who you are. You supported me when no one else believed in me (not even myself) and gave me reason to continue. You're a founder of Elmwood and I'll never forget you.

And even those of you who have just started supporting me - thank you! After reading this you might feel like you're late to the party but you're actually also very early - Elmwood will have 21 episodes so if you're with me now then you're still in the first 15% of Elmwood's development cycle. I really appreciate your support. My finances are (almost) stable thanks to you.

But I'm kinda just oversharing here and getting off track (I evidently spent too much time with Chelsea making E3 and she rubbed off on me). But the other thing I just wanted to say about 2024 is that it was a year of growth and learning, and that's exactly how I want 2025 to be. I always rant about how I want to continuously improve as a developer and continuously improve Elmwood so that every episode is better than the last, but this is something I take very seriously. There's a lot of things I want to improve in 2025 because I am ambitious. And that's your fault. You guys give me the confidence to try and make Elmwood one of the best AVN's out there so in my next block of incoherent rambling I'll talk through some of my plans for improvement.

5 - Adapting Strategy for 2025

• 5a - Improving the gameplay

• 5b - Improving my development strategy

• 5c - Hardware

• 5d - Personal improvement

• 5e - Goals for 2025

5a - Improving the gameplay

At it's heart, Elmwood is designed to be fun. You'll notice that I like to keep it to the point (unlike my dev updates) and free from any sort of filler content. There's no open world mechanics, no grinding, no repetition and no forced minigames, just an optional card game. Oh and lots of lewd scenes. I really like the recipe I've cooked and I have no plans to change this. But within this recipe there are a lot of things to improve, such as the choices. Elmwood has a ton of choices every episode, with some being very important and some being very minor. This will not change, I think this works well. But among these important choices, I want more of something that other good games do really well...

When you play a good story game - AVN or otherwise, sometimes you run into really difficult choices. Elmwood does have some choices already that people might find difficult - e.g. how to react to Tasha and Ashley confronting you if you got with them and Paris in the same day and maybe even the perks count as a difficult choice. But I want more of this. I want more choices where you stop and look away from your screen for a minute and think FUCK! What the hell am I supposed to do? I want more of this. And I especially want more of this when we enter the later chapters of the game. So this is something I'm thinking about.

Something else that's very much on my mind is making the Lust metric more meaningful. This is also kinda a consequence of rushing. Sorting out the game's logic - Love, Lust, branching etc (coding) is something I tie together at the end of production. And I haven't really succeeded with this in the way that I want to yet. I think a lot of people don't really care too much but some people (like myself) really do and it's going to be a big focus from now on. For example, some sex scenes don't require 10 Lust, they require a smaller number that makes less sense and doesn't feel as rewarding as working up to 10 and hearing that exhale sound and seeing "X's Lust is at max!". Similarly perks like Nina's Heartbreaker haven't had the attention they need. I want this perk to add to Nina's complexity as a person and so far I've failed in that. So things like this are big targets for me going into 2025.

Another thing which I think is a big weakness currently (but isn't quite a priority right now) is the game's music. This is something else I've been a little rushed with and I'd like to be able to spend more time on it. But this won't actually be a focus for 2025. It might feel like E1,2,3 are finished versions but they're really not. If I continue with my plan of having E1-7 exist as a "season 1" to be published on Steam then this will be the final version of E1-7 and not before then. When I do this I'll be looking back to make all the music as good as it can be and I'll also be polishing up some random bits in E1/2 that are a bit lackluster. Music is always a difficult thing because famous music isn't really possible so I've been working entirely with free music for now. If Elmwood continues to grow I might look at working with some smaller artists to get some great music for Elmwood but as I said this isn't a priority right now.

5b - Improving my development strategy

So I talked about this in the E3 Review but the main change I'm making to my dev strategy is to give myself more testing time and more time to add things that I come up down the line. To give an example, let's talk about Saki's exaggerated, caricature type story we saw in E3. Saki tells us what she's been investigating and then she suddenly waves her hands and immerses us in her story of the party. But in this story, we don't really get a description of the party, we get a description of Saki. It was a way to show you how she perceives the world and the things she finds most interesting. You're fascinating to her because you are a penis - something she knows nothing about. Alcohol is fascinating to her. Female beauty and sexualisation is interesting to her. She has a wonderful imagination and the things she focuses on can dominate her trail of thought. I think this was one of the best ideas I've had to help paint a character's identity and yet here's the thing - it was super last minute!

2-3 weeks before UV release the conversation with Saki was going to be just that - a normal conversation where she would just describe her investigation and you'd be looking at her. But then I had this idea on how to make it more fun and I think it paid off - I had a lot of people tell me that they found it really funny and I loved making it. So I'm really glad that I managed to squeeze that in on time. But this is far from the only time I've added something last minute that ends up being really awesome - in the E3some double cowgirl scene (Kat on your face, Chelsea on your dick) I never considering having a POV cam but I just randomly thought of it and it ended up looking pretty awesome (I hope). So my point with all of this is that in future I don't just want to budget extra time for when I run into bugs and issues, I also want to budget extra time for when I run into cool ideas. When I get really cool ideas I want to be able to think Yes, let's do this rather than No, I'm too pressed for time. So as I said before, I'm not going to announce release dates until I've done everything I want to with each episode and have moved onto the testing stage.

5c - Hardware

You may be aware that Nvidia will be dropping it's next gen graphics cards in January. Thanks to your support I'm no longer in the problematic financial position I was earlier in the year, but I'm still not in a position to afford hardware upgrades. However, I'm hoping to be able to afford a brand new super powerful pc shortly after E4, if things go well and our community grows in subs. This will help me speed up image production and make longer, more detailed animations.

5d - Personal Improvement

This post is getting super long so I'll keep this short but this year my personal targets are to read more books (to improve my writing) and to actually have a sleep cycle (to improve my existence).

5e - Goals for 2025

Putting aside the smaller, ongoing goals like better choices etc, I have two main goals for 2025:

1) Publish 3 episodes - E4, E5, E6

2) Make each episode better than the last

It might not sound like it but both of these goals are actually extremely ambitious and I'll need to work really hard to achieve both of them. Doing one of these goals would be very easy. Doing both will be very difficult. But I'll be giving it everything I've got.

6 - Thank you

Well, if you've read this far then I should really be apologising for the rambling rather than anything but thank you so much for your support. To my subscribers, if I gave you the thanks that you really deserve then this post would be 3x as long as it is. So I'll keep it short and just say thank you. Elmwood wouldn't exist without you and I'm so grateful for your support. I can't explain how much I love our community but it's so amazing and it just keeps getting better.

Thank you for supporting me in my first year as a developer.

I hope you all have a WICKED 2025.

Lots of love,

WickedWare