Dev update 3 Aug. 2025

Sorry for the silence this past few weeks. I have been doing a lot of thinking about the future and have been procrastinating a bit with posting. There a few issues that have come up and I want to be completely open with you about them. This is a long post, so I appreciate anyone who reads the whole thing and leaves a comment to let me know your thoughts.

Note: As of today, I have paused billing for this month. It will remain paused until September 3, so anyone who was already charged for this month will not be charged next month. I may also pause next month

First, a little background about me. I work full-time. I live in a rural area that is about two and a half hours (one-way) from my job. Before the pandemic, I was able to telework about half of my working time.

When the pandemic lock-downs started, I started teleworking full-time. This meant that I also had a lot more spare time, as I no longer had to commute five hours a day. I started In Her Own Hands in the summer of 2020 with a friend: she would write and I would code and we split our time with the media. As some of you know, she stopped working on the game about two or three years ago, putting all of the burden back on me.

Two months ago, my job ended telework. All of it. Putting me in a worse position than I was in before the pandemic, as I now have to commute a total of five hours every day, not just half of the time, in addition to the normal workday. This just exhausts me, physically and mentally, as I am sure you can imagine.

On top of this, I am also nearing the completion of an almost 15-year project that needs more of my attention now than it has in the past. I need to finish this project before the end of the year (sooner rather than later), and that project also takes up some of my time and attention.

Second, creatively, I am burning out on In Her Own Hands. I love Becca and the story that we have written up to now, but I really, really want to finish it and move on. It's been just a little over five years. I am committed to finishing it but I don't want that to take another five years. Frankly, I have other ideas that I would rather work on at this point. But we were ambitious and opened up a lot of paths so finishing the game means bringing all of those paths to an end.

In addition, I am still not very confident that I am doing a good job of writing for "Becca." I want the end product to be consistent quality, but the fast turnaround expected of the monthly schedule forces me to rush. And the writing is always the hardest part, even after I have the plot points planned, the coding finished, and the media identified and processed. This is probably why the IHOH updates always seem to be the ones that cause the development schedule to derail.

Third, I am getting to the end of the first "cycle" of path options for In Their Own Hands and the game just really isn't quite what I want it to be at this point. I feel like I may have rushed some plot paths, trying to get in enough "content" to make fans happy, while completely neglecting many of the original plans as far as world-building.

Looking back on some of the earliest scenes written, I think I would like to do some editing. I don't think I did a good job establishing that the couple loves each other. I don't think I did a good job of making "Jenny" relatable. I still see comments that she is selfish or taking advantage of the MC (who, they say, "works to support them while she just plays with her vanity novel project"). Obviously, as a writer, I can't understand the idea that somehow his job is valid but her work isn't ---- there's nothing I can do to remove people's prejudices ---- but I do think that I have done a very poor job of incorporating the work she does into the gameplay, and I have ideas about how to change that. And probably most importantly I never created anything for the MC to do outside of hanging out in the apartment and going to work.

Fourth, now that I have been alternating development months for about a year, I have realized that this causes a problem. It is quite disruptive, creatively, to completely stop one story and switch to the other. Sometimes I get an idea on the wrong month but can't pursue it. The fast turnaround on updates also means that I don't have enough time to fully explore any longer ideas immediately. It also means that neither game gets anywhere fast.

Fifth, as some of you may be aware, itch.io just delisted all of their adult/nsfw games. They also changed their terms of service and have completely removed any games showing adult content between "real people." Which includes both of my games. This may not have a huge impact on me, but it will have some impact.

I'm not an artist, I'm a writer. One of the reasons that I chose to develop the games in the way that I did is because Twine is heavily text-focused. And a lot of the Twine games that I encountered use combinations of photo images and short snippets of video. I can do that.

But I knew that neither of these games would ever be on Steam or other sites, due to the nature of the product. I'd never be able to "sell" the finished product. Which was and is generally fine. But I am a bit worried that other sites might take their lead and crack down on this type of product. If no one gets any enjoyment out of playing my games, why am I making them?

Finally, the number of Patrons has dropped down to about half of what it was a year ago. I was never "doing it for the money" but losing support means that I am not deliverying what Patrons think I should be. Developing two very different games might be part of the reason. Maybe there are a lot of Patrons who are only interested in one of the games and they unsubscribe when I work on the other one. The time line seems to bear this theory out: the decline started in August/September last year, which is about the same time I started the alternating schedule for developing both games.

So I have been thinking about my options.

Option one is to just continue as I have been. Alternate between the two games, try to wrap up In Her Own Hands eventually while slowly pushing In Their Own Hands forward a little bit at a time. All the while hoping that no more major changes to online sites and/or services prevent me from distributing the two games. I see this as the least viable option given all of the various issues.

The other options all involve putting In Her Own Hands back on hold and shifting completely to In Their Own Hands. I would still work on IHOH in the background when I can, with the goal of finishing everything, and do periodic free releases as I make major progress. This would shift the Patreon account almost entirely to supporting In Their Own Hands.

Some options for developing In Their Own Hands include:

Option two: Pick up the monthly schedule that I had before I got back into continuing In Her Own Hands. Short, frequent updates based on polls, while also trying to build up and refine the rest of the content bit by bit.

Option three: Keep billing paused until I have the game how I want it on the QOL end and world-building side to take advantage of the "open world" format. This might take a couple of months. Then start a new polling cycle and continue the monthly schedule of short, frequent updates that I started with, but with the game much better equipped to move forward.

[EDITED TO ADD] Option 2/3B: Devote my time primarily to In Their Own Hands according to the above options, but give myself more time for development of more in-depth progress. Instead of short, frequent updates containing just a couple of scenes/events, I could focus on seeing a particular path forward in a significant way, even if it takes more than a month to publish.

Option four: Consider moving the game to a different format, like RenPy. This would definitely change the game play significantly but might be more suited to the linear nature of some paths. Keep billing paused while I convert the scenes to the new format and release a new version, probably using the same media.

Option five: Do option three but learn how to use different media formats (3D rendering or AI art) so that the use of photo/video media doesn't threaten development. Keep billing paused until I have figured this out and replaced all current media to the new media.

Option six: Do both options three and four --- tell the story using a different format and different media. This would take the longest to accomplish as the entire game would have to be reworked in a couple of way and all media would have to be replaced. But if I were to consider this option, doing it sooner rather than later would be the only way to move forward.

Currently, I am leaning toward option three but I am seriously considering option four. There are pros and cons to both.

On the one hand, continuing the game as it is give me the most freedom to create what I want. It also plays to my strengths as a writer and coder (experienced in the Twine/Sugarcube language that I have been using). But on the other hand, the open world format that I have used might be a bit too much freedom. I will have to carefully balance the linear content with the nonlinear content to prevent the game from becoming as unweildy as IHOH became. I want there to be an easy end to this story, with only a few possible endings.

Renpy is more linear by nature so I could just move from scene/event to scene/event. I could focus on the story that I want to tell and improve the gameplay by removing a lot of the grindiness of going to work and waiting for something to happen, with very little else to do but a lot of time to not do it. On other hand, some of the things I like about this game, like Jenny having (RNG-based) "free will" to move around and do different things and (especially) the "combat-lite" CumPoints sex system, probably won't be able to be transferred over to the new format.

RPGMaker is another possibility that could be the best of both worlds, as the maps would still give some open world options without any real obligation while the Quest system would drive the story forward. But this is also the least compatible with the current media, so it would require the most new creation (and that's not even bringing up the development of maps and the little walking sprites).

Anyway, these are some of the issues that I am currently contending with, and my thoughts about how to move forward. I know it's a lot. Please let me know what you all think. This post will be open to all members, including non-subscriber followers, so please feel free to leave your comments. I may do a poll later this week to gauge the thoughts of Patrons specifically.

Thanks once again for your support. I truly appreciate it!

S&D