0.61 Reflection and 0.62 Preview

Hi, perverts! I hope you're doing well. September has been a wild month for me in my everyday life, so thank you for your patience with this post. It's almost all good, and will possibly lead to better health and better prospects in my day job, but it does mean that my schedule has been super scattered (and Satisfactory coming out did not help)!

Like with last release, there won't be an update in September; I really, really want to get one out before Halloween, though. We'll see how that goes; the next update is a little sprawling, as I'll explain further later, so it might end up being a bit fragmentary.

For a little bit of news: I've really enjoyed being on Cohost over the last year or so, but sadly it's preparing to retire. I've set up a Pillowfort and am still trying to pick a Mastodon instance that's queer-, game-, and porn-friendly. You can always find my stuff on phanes.me, and my Twitter still exists at @phanesdionysos. If you have any suggestions for online communities I should be a part of, let me know!

Reflection on Night Sounds

This was a fun one to work on! I set out with a major goal of making everyday life in the game feel a bit richer, and I think I did pretty well. You can prompt different play scenes with Terry at night, give them smooches, invite them to your room, and even join them on a night out. You can also run into characters visiting other characters. Hopefully this makes the world seem a little less like everyone is standing around waiting for you to show up.

I'm happy to finally add more urethral sounding to the game! It's a weird kink, for sure, but one that matches Ruin Me's vibe. It's also something that, as I've mentioned, I wanted to be careful about. It's one thing to give a standard warning to use plenty of lube for butt sex, but sounding probably has a higher risk of injury or infection if you do it wrong. I think I gave enough safety warnings without reducing too much of the horniness!

Next Update

If all goes according to plan, this will be the update that, when it goes public, will require folks to pay to play it. If you are currently a $2+ patron, or if you donated any amount of money to the main project on Itch, you will not need to pay extra to gain access. If not, players will continue to get access to updates, but will need to pay to progress past a certain point in Act II, shareware-style. I intend to do more communication and polling before this fully releases, but I'm eager to get the game to a point where it's bringing in more sustainable money (and, hopefully, where I can try and get it on Steam).

The big feature in the next update will be one that, ironically, will be included in the demo. I'm adding a new side character, Leo. He's a cisgender, pansexual dominant guy on roughly the same scale as Meg, Cathy, or the other characters in town. His big thing is drugs: he'll sell you stuff that opens up new play options, lets you delay nightmares or experience them early, and give access to a side exploration comparable to the Abandoned Bedroom. You won't be spending Ken to get his wares: instead, you'll have the optional opportunity to submit to him or have Terry (Terrence or Theresa) submit to him. You can still access his wares if you refuse, with only a roleplaying downside, no extra resource cost.

I'm guessing that this release will only have part 1 of Leo's scenes; I'll probably add additional play scenes and options to him in a later release. I'm still working on the endgame in the background, too! I'm currently planning to have that be the next big release after Leo's done.

Thank you all so much for your continuing support. Please send me any questions, feedback, or requests you might have! You can comment here, post on the discussion board on Itch, DM me on Patreon, or email phanes@phanes.me.