Development Blog 2

Current State of Development

We released the Lovense Toy Support Beta feature for the pre alpha build.

Plans for the next build

We are working on Alpha 0.0.1.

This Alpha will use Unreal Engine 5.

After Alpha 0.0.1 we will focus on creating the Prologue and Chapter 1 section of the game.

Helltakers Dev Adventures

More or less a short rant about working on ANBW for the past years.

It's been around 3.5 months of full development since we went public with ANBW. Since then we released a sexplay pre Alpha, the arcade runner anniversary edition and recently added the Lovense Toy Support Beta feature to the sexplay pre alpha.

ANBW Alpha 0.0.1 is going to be created inside UE5 and will feature a higher quality section of the “dream” sequence we initially showcased in the pre alpha phase. We cut down on most of the sandbox features for Alpha 0.0.1 in order to focus on more immersive, well directed and properly designed sexplay.

After looking back at the past 3.5 months we are refocusing the development towards the story mode, while - for now - putting aside the effort to also create a sandbox mode. We hope that, with a growing budget, we eventually can bring the sandbox mode back into focus. For now it just is not reasonable to spend our current budget on something that isn't building towards the finished game.

Following Alpha 0.0.1, we will immediately start working on the Prologue and Chapter 1 sections of the game.

I started working on ANBW together with Shallteir & Melody around June 2020. You can see a small environment progression starting 2020 in this posts title image. Initially the game was build and envisioned in Unity, purely as a sandbox game, with a small rooftop garden hub, that allowed players to port into different realities and enjoy s*xplay with Melody & other cute waifu´s.

Over the first half a year and into 2021 the vision of the game evolved, development transitioned over to Unreal Engine 4, while looking at other games out there and through trying to figure out what would be the best fit for our future audience.

With the mix of Melody´s own and other communities behind games like “monster girl island”, we decided to go for a “story driven (w)holesome isekai adventure”.

The hub quickly started growing from rooftop garden to mega tower top level area and eventually has now in 2022 turned into a large number of sections that exist within Virtual Little Tokyo.

While the world kept evolving in size, the story evolved alongside it. We spent around 1 year of research and gathering knowledge, while also talking to well known game writing professionals about our vision.

I reached out to Giles Armstrong, since I really enjoyed playing Horizon Zero Dawn in the past.

While getting his feedback on the main plot and getting a better understanding on how to work with writers, he introduced me to Michelle Clough from Talespinner. To me personally she is the most public and outspoken writer in the industry about s*xuality and romance in games. We took her consultation, including a workshop on how to build our characters into fully fledged beings and also further evolved the main plot with her help.

So what is the story all about? Well apart from obviously throwing the player into an unknown and lewdly wild universe, it's all about connecting to others in both body and mind.

I am also cringing a bit when I remember how many AAA games try to make their games about human connection and fail at making you feel connected. I can promise you no towers to climb and no map-markers that point to meaningless collectables. 

While creating fully fleshed out characters, we ended up taking a closer look at Melware, Melody´s alter ego. Melware is going to play a major role in revealing Virtual Little Tokyo's mysterious history, while also acting as a mirror to one of Melody´s biggest wishes of wanting to live in the “real world”.

Melware is the catalyst for the big crisis that arises towards the last third of ANBW´s main storyline.

I'm really looking forward to the later chapter releases in order to bring these parts of the story alive for you. It's gonna be massive!

While we are building an adventure for you to play, my very own adventure is seeing how the game keeps adapting, changing and evolving to the limitations and chances it faces throughout its development. 

It's exhilarating, fantastic and sometimes mind numbingly exhausting.

But it's worth every ounce I put into it!