A new idea

I'm very transparent with how THM runs as a game dev studio, we talk a lot about it on the Sexy Business Podcast, but also I answer a lot of stuff on our discord too. Recently among which was a really long message chain critique of the things that THM isn't doing great, I won't summarise the whole thing here, but the main takeaway is:

The characters don't get enough development, because it's too focused on delivering porn art.

Which is true, our artists spend their monthly allotted time working on key pieces for delivering the narrative, like expressions, or specifically sex scenes as the goal is to deliver something between the three games that we update monthly, that you can jerk it to.

I'm pretty closely watching the metrics, I see how often people sign up for one month and bail out, and that's a large percentage, but I understand that behaviour, our games update slow and you want more to sink your teeth into, but our artists can only work so fast, and we only have so much money to work with. Most of our unsubscribes come during the one week that there isn't a game update.

Most of our problems are; We don't have enough money to pay more artists, and we don't have enough time to focus on things that aren't directly porny.

And that makes it a little difficult to focus on things beyond narrative and art scenes, making compelling minigames is difficult, making non-linear content is tough (and was slammed when we tried it), and yet we're still constantly criticized for not having enough content, our games are too small, too short. Even though we're running at maximum speed at our current Patronage.

So I want to take a risk, but I can only do that if our Patrons are on board. We can't attempt anything outside our current pacing if we're just going to be hit with "Why aren't you putting this time / money into your existing games", so let me pitch it.

I've been cooking a concept sheet for something that may have become a project in the far future, or something non-porn and then not THM related.

You are a detective, and you've been called out to a small nothing town in a place too regional to have ever heard of it before. You're the only police they have now, as your predecessor has perished. You were called out because of a series of unexplainable monster attacks, which includes officers, remain unsolved. The town was a mining town, but since the mine collapsed, all the miners have left town, and very few residents remain, and those that do are afraid of the monster. You need to solve this mystery, and confront the creature before it's too late.

The main gameplay loop is whilst it's a visual novel, you aren't seeing character expressions and interacting with NPCs for the most part, you have access to the file cabinet, the library and your computer. You will email with experts, and read through police reports already filed, and skim through ancient legends written in the library. All the while trying to ascertain the nature of the creature.

The creature which would be a futa monster girl, and you discover the nature of how she's preyed upon the townsfolk, until ultimately fighting (or submitting) to her power, yourself.

Looking at building up lots of mystery and suspense and storytelling, discovering what happened to her prey after they were discovered, and dealing with kinks such as futadom, monster girl, oviposition, vore, feminization, giant cock and other similar monster related stuff. With a more horror vibe than anything we've done before.

But as I said above, this thing only exists if our Patrons are excited for it, and happy to stick around and wait while it's developed, because it's completely non-linear it can't be released in monthly updates, but I will be able to tease art and such as it comes along. If you are interested in THM taking some risks on longer form projects, and are willing to stick it out please, say so in the poll, or if you prefer that we continue to focus on what we have going on right now, and work hard to keep this pace, also say so.