Monthly Update - September/October 2024

Hey, everyone!

Welp, I messed up with my monthly update schedule twice in a row. First, I planned to post this with the game update to go into more detail about it back in September, but wasn't able to finish it until the beginning of October. Second, I somehow lost the post I wrote for it. I’ve spent a few days looking for it, or at least waiting for it to show up, but no such luck. So, time to start over!

This post is mostly about the v1.4.6 update, although I'll also talk about the upcoming Episode 15 at the end.

Spoiler warning for the latest update.

If you are looking for information about the update before playing it, I recommend reading the devlog post instead.

This update was something I was somewhat apprehensive about working on, but ended up being a lot more fun than I expected. This was the path I’d originally wanted but didn’t know how to bring together. The end of episode 10 with the multiple paths turned out to be a lot more controversial than I expected in some ways, and it felt good to go back to finish up.

There was some history with it I think I shared in the past, but perhaps not the full story. Originally, I wanted to write a few paths where Laura would “win”. She would get one up on the MC by taking his watch and hypnotizing him with it. I initially designed the update with the intention of the average player running into those paths first, but if they tried other choices they would find the option to avoid her.

The first time would be for Laura’s cruise ending where the MC never regains it or (fully) realizes she has it and has been using it on him. This would be one of her main endings where she gets the MC as she wanted, although my goal was for it to still be mostly enjoyable to both the MC and the player. Sure, she’s unbearable at times, but life with her isn’t all that bad and has its own perks.

Next, the path would be her using the watch on the MC right as he goes to her house to confront her where he, Grace, and Daphne all have to work together to escape. There were several versions of this, where he could call different people to rescue him, and if he didn’t end up escaping, Leah would fly out her twin to pose as her since she hadn’t been hypnotized. 

Then I planned to make the path where the MC would win, but as I wrote it, the next version ended with Laura getting the upper hand once more, leading to the same path above. So, another version. Same result. Laura just kept winning. 

Finally, for the fifth attempt, I made the path where the MC avoids Laura altogether and gets the help of all the girls to steal the watch back. This would have been ideal for most except for the fact Laura tells Leah to bring her the watch before the MC has the chance to stop her.

This wasn’t in my original plan. But as I was writing it, it felt inevitable. No matter what the MC did, she would still pull one over on him.

The other problem with this was that once I completed this last path it was no longer the main path I wanted. There was much more action with Grace and Daphne when Laura was in control. It pushed the story where it needed to go, so I considered it the main path, as it gave the characters the most motivation to act the way they do in the next episodes.

Some people get annoyed at writers when they claim their characters do what they want and can’t be controlled. I get it, it sounds dumb. But that’s how I write my characters. I have a plan for the story by giving the characters all goals and putting them in a room together to figure it out, but sometimes they fight back against my intentions.

For example, the broken watch branch was meant to be one update. But the characters fought back, insisting the ending I wanted to get to was far too far away. They wouldn’t give into their explosive growth without putting up a fight. They needed to be convinced, and there needed to be a lot more story between where the branch began and where it needed to go. I realized too far into it the path was begun too early in the game, leaving me with a lot more to set up than I'd expected for everything to come together.

Back to episode 11, I made my peace with it. Sure, some of the players who had been constantly demanding more mind control from the game were irate. I’d given them what they asked for, but in the opposite way they wanted. They wanted to be the one in control, not to be controlled. How dare a game put a mirror to their fetish and show them how much they hated being on the receiving end?

The Hypnosis forums on different gaming sites doubled in comments overnight. Some players vowed to never play the game again, but the ones who stayed were generally a lot more fun to interact with. And to my surprise, my patron count doubled.

I’d been up front with the game not being about mind control, as I put it in the description from the beginning. Not only was I trying to follow the guidelines of sites like Patreon, Itch, and other sites I wanted to put the game on, I’m also a firm believer that consent is sexy. Sure, games are meant to be played for the opportunity of doing things you can’t do in real life, but I believe fantasies are also important for the fact we are best off fantasizing a better world, not a worse one. I realize some people disagree, but this game was never meant to be all that dark. The MC is a fairly inexperienced dude, and part of the story is him learning how to deal with his power. 

His choices of being a nice guy or an asshole are about how selfish he chooses to be with the girls in his life, not about forcing anyone to do things against their will.

So the game continued. I considered the path where the MC avoids Laura but she steals the watch back through Leah to be the less played route, and decided to make it lead to the broken watch ending. Then, when that was finished and we returned to the main path, I was surprised by how many people took that path and were willing to lose the watch in order to avoid the MC being under Laura’s control. 

In the last few updates I went back to come up with ways where that path could continue without being forced into the broken watch branch, and also came up with a way for what I’d considered the main path to veer into it, making it all still make sense, at least to the best of my ability.

But this also made me think, would it be possible to make the path I originally wanted, where the MC still gets one up on Laura but also gets the scene with Grace and Daphne?

Finally, it occurred to me. The MC would pretend to be hypnotized, giving her the chance to do the right thing. So that’s what I’ve been working on alongside Episode 15. It ended up being a lot more work on the backend, especially in trying to match up all the dialogue and reactions from the next four episodes, but I’m quite happy with how it turned out.

There is about an episode’s worth of content, with about half of the visuals brought over from existing paths and half of it created new. I wanted to make it still worth playing on its own merits, and thought making the majority of it take place with the girls skinny dipping would be fun. The scene I debated whether it was worth completing was the MC’s angry sex scene with Laura as he cooks dinner for everyone. 

This update probably could have been released months ago if I hadn’t included the scene, as it took a while to complete, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. Now that the MC has his agency in the situation, I thought it made sense for him to take out his anger on her a bit, and I really liked how Laura ended up enjoying it in her own twisted way. Throwing in the buttstuff with him egging her on with, “should I grab Grace instead” brought it all together, in my opinion.

So now the game has its recommended path at last, a balance between dealing with Laura and also giving more insight to the version of her we see in Episode 14. 

So I hope you guys enjoyed it. I realize updates to previous episodes are never as much fun to look forward to as new content furthering the story, but I’m really happy with the new features of the game like the walkthrough guide and all the fixes made for this update and the last. 

I was starting to rely on the “click here to jump into the new content” trick a bit too often, and now the game feels cleaner and easier to navigate. I still plan to get some kind of gallery up and running, but that will be another time. Most of the fixes are meant to push the game the right direction for future content, so sometimes its necessary to take a step back in order simplify and save time going forward.

Meanwhile, how is Episode 15?

I’m working to finish up as much as I can before the end of the month. The first half of it includes the Halloween content, so I have even more reason to release it. My current plan is to finish as much as I can and work in sequential order to finish up the visuals and edits. If I get the full update done, great! Although if I only release a half update again, so be it. Either way, I’ll see how far I can get.

I had spent the past few weeks focused on finishing up all the episode 10/11 content, so getting back to Episode 15 with fresh eyes as I edited it and went back to my original outlines all gave me a lot of great ideas, and got my excited for it all over again. I’m once again having a lot of fun with it, which is when I’d like to think I do my best work, as opposed to when I get stuck on a bottleneck for far too long and lose sight of the big picture.

So anyway, that’s where we’re at!

I want to thank you all once again for your patience with everything. I really wish I was still able to crank out monthly updates like in the past, but I’ll have to deal with the fact the game takes a lot more time and effort to develop as it reaches the later stretch with all the multiple paths and variables to track. Plus, no longer being able to work 14 hours a day on it is a change for sure. Still, I typically get around 10, so I can’t complain too much. And it's probably better to avoid burnout in the long run anyway.

Thanks, everyone!