Krasue Games

Sin Spire - One Week Later...

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve all had an interesting week. I know I have.

Sin Spire released a little over a week ago, and the reception has been… good. Surprisingly good. I expected more pushback around difficulty, and while that feedback definitely showed up in reviews and discussions, the game also seems to have clicked with a much larger audience than anticipated.

Before getting into anything else, I want to share one important announcement:

Sin Spire has sold over 40,000 copies on Steam!

I won’t share revenue numbers, but just to clarify: due to refunds and regional pricing differences, it might not be as high as you’d expect. That said, it’s not low either.

To say the game broke containment would be an understatement. I was fully prepared to open this post with “We did it, 1,000 sales!” but despite fierce competition (which I wasn’t fully aware of at the time) and the game’s obtuse nature, it found an audience.

Whatever games I make next probably won’t be as difficult as Sin Spire. Despite some speculation, the difficulty here was a deliberate decision, though it looks like some people bounced off quite early. The one choice I genuinely regret, though, is setting the orb count to 4 for most dungeons. I’ll address that shortly, but first, let’s get the obvious out of the way.

Sin Spire Updates

I think it’s fair to call the game successful, relatively speaking. So, what does that mean going forward? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure yet.

I've already started planning for future projects and I had hoped that after release, Sin Spire wouldn’t demand too much attention. But I did say that if the game did well, I’d continue supporting it. 30,000 players later, here we are.

In the short term, updates will mostly focus on bug fixes and minor improvements, like yesterday’s patch. After that, I still plan to put the game to rest and shift focus to something new. I need both a general and creative break from Sin Spire, and the best way I've found to mentally reset is by working on something completely different.

That said, because of the overwhelming support, I do plan to add something more substantial in the future. So, to make a long story short, Sin Spire’s content update status has gone from “no” to “eventually.”

As a side note, one topic that keeps coming up is the orb count. As mentioned earlier, I actually agree that it’s too high and I don’t think there’s much reason to keep the requirement at 4 beyond not wanting to devalue existing playthroughs. Reducing it to 2 would still allow optional runs for players who want to get stronger, and make sure that players who don't want to deal with all that can move on at their own pace.

I’d genuinely like to hear what you think about this. It’d be a fairly big change and it's something I’ve been debating since the game’s alpha. In practice, it wouldn’t drastically alter the game beyond allowing some players to reach certain encounters a bit under-levelled.

Non-Steam Versions and Steam Keys

This has come up several times since release, so I want to address it clearly.

First, an important clarification: The Supporter tier has always provided early development builds. It has never included Steam keys for the final release. I understand that this may be disappointing to some, but that was never promised.

The original plan was simple:

• Release the game on Steam

• Offer a non-Steam version via Itch.io

However, in mid-2025, Itch.io de-indexed paid adult games. Free adult games were later re-indexed, but paid releases were not. On top of that, Itch’s payout system has reportedly been inconsistent, which I’m currently testing to see if it’s reliable again.

If payouts do in fact work, I plan to use Itch.io as the non-Steam option for Sin Spire. It likely won’t be discoverable through the site's search, but I can directly link it via Patreon, Discord, and other channels for people who can’t purchase the game on Steam.

That said, I strongly prefer Steam due to its automated updates. A non-Steam version requires manual updates, which makes releasing things like hotfixes difficult. Because of that, I plan to wait until Sin Spire is mostly stable and past major updates before releasing an Itch version.

I’ve also seen suggestions like “just hand out keys” or “give keys to anyone who paid more than the game costs.” Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple:

• Patreon support was not a purchase of the final game

• Steam key requests are reviewed by Valve

• Large external key distribution can affect future key requests

If I hand out keys to a few people, many more would understandably ask. From Valve’s perspective, widespread key distribution can look like bypassing the storefront entirely, and I don’t want to risk complications there. I’d rather explore a proper non-Steam option for people who are region-locked.

For now, I’ll continue testing Itch.io’s payout system. If it ends up working, I’ll prepare a build as soon as possible. Apologies for the delay. In the future, I’ll try to plan better for situations like this ahead of time.

A Week Concluded

This week wasn’t the rest I hoped it would be. Instead of Sin Spire slowly exiting my life, it’s consumed it. Reading reviews, watching videos, responding on Discord, handling partnerships, and dealing with endless key requests. Balancing friendly and firm responses is exhausting. My brain is fried.

I can’t promise a regular posting or update schedule for a bit. You’ll probably see less of me once I finally take a break. I still have a lot of non-game-dev admin to deal with before I can get back to doing what I actually love.

Thank you all, genuinely. This has been life-changing in ways that are both good and complicated.

See you later.

Sin Spire Has Officially Released!

Get it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3221770/Sin_Spire/

Hello everyone! Back in 2024, I was fresh out of a job, and all I really knew was that I wanted to make games. I tried a few different ideas, but nothing truly materialized until Halls of the Pale Widow. That game ended up setting the tone and direction for what came next.

After what I’d consider the success of HotPW, I moved on to Sin Spire as a direct continuation and expansion of those ideas.

Sin Spire was no small undertaking. It’s a much larger game, with multiple characters, voiced dialogue, weapons, combat, a variety of enemies (even if the roster is still fairly small), branching dialogue, cutscenes, and plenty of other systems I’m probably forgetting to list. It was a huge step up. It was difficult, and I definitely drifted at points, but I’m glad I stuck with it. Despite the rough edges, I’m proud of what I managed to achieve.

Thanks to your support, encouragement, and feedback, I was able to push through and actually finish something of this scale. I’m genuinely thankful to every one of you, including those who offered more criticism than praise. Having an audience I could engage and make the game with, made a huge difference. Even something as small as a comment or a reaction might seem insignificant, but to me it really matters. Thank you.

Before this gets too sentimental, I do want to acknowledge a few things. There are still issues in the current build, with the dungeon generation bug being the most notable. The Twisted animation set was also never fully finished, mostly due to running out of time and ideas. If I do add any small content updates in the future, that’s likely where I’d start.

That said, I need a break.

More information on known issues and future plans can be found in previous dev logs and in the Steam release announcement here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3221770/view/505099815104809693

That’s all for now. Outside of small additions and updates, the Sin Spire chapter of my game development career is now closed. I hope you enjoy the game. I’m going to go have a drink and take a walk.

See you all later.

Sin Spire - Dev Log 42

Hello everyone! I hope the new year has treated you all well so far. I’ve been… not-so-busy. At least not with game development. Mostly getting over a bit of the seasonal blues and the post-new year hangover. That said, I feel like I can afford the luxury, as the game doesn’t have much left to do (famous last words).

I’ve now been given all the translation files for Chinese and Russian, and I’ll be getting those implemented this coming week. There are still some other bits and pieces to touch up, but that kind of thing is endless. Generally speaking, the game is more-or-less in the state it will ship in.

Which brings me to my big announcement.

I said in my last post that the game would release in January of this year. Well, now I have an exact date: January 23rd, 2026. That’s right – a little under two weeks away. For good or ill, the game will release on that date regardless of its state. Undoubtedly there will be things that need fixing or adjusting post-launch, but I’ll most likely be taking a break from Sin Spire once it releases.

Alongside this, I’m planning to release a demo over on Itch.io, and I’ll also be looking into potential ways of getting the game to people who can’t access it through Steam. That’s a trickier conversation overall, as I’m not entirely sure who does or doesn’t have access – I know that Germany is restricted, but beyond that things get a bit murky. People have mentioned GOG as a good option, though I haven’t pursued it yet. There are also newer storefronts that cater to adult games, though I don’t yet know how reliable they are.

I’ve also briefly touched on whether the game will receive post-launch content beyond fixes. To reiterate what I wrote in the New Year’s post: if Sin Spire is successful, then absolutely – just not straight away. There are other things I want to work on, some big and some small, and I’ll probably get started on those as soon as I have the energy to do so. As nice as it’d be to make promises or provide a roadmap, none of my ideas are concrete yet – some are just more developed than others.

What I do want to work on in the immediate future is something either very cheap or completely free – a short experimental project, acting as an in-between for my bigger ones. There are a couple of ideas I have in mind already; I just need to decide which one to tackle first.

Finally, as this will likely be my last Dev Log before Sin Spire’s release, I’ll soon be updating my socials with new images and information, as well as revisiting my subscriber tiers. I don’t plan on overhauling the existing tiers beyond giving more concrete descriptions of what they are – just adding new ones with additional benefits. I’m also likely going to put together an updated Q&A / FAQ to address some of the more common and important questions I see pop up. If there’s anything you’d like answered now, feel free to ask – anything I think is important enough will be added to the FAQ.

Anyway, that’s about it. There isn’t much left to discuss as we’re really in the final week of actual development, followed by another week of preparation and extras. Thank you all, as always, for the continued support – and I’ll see you all when Sin Spire releases!

Merry Newyear! (2025)

Hello everyone! Merry Christmas/Happy New Year! As promised, this is the Christmas post that doubles as a bit of a yearly retrospective. This post marks my first full year working under the Krasue name, making games. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get to it.

Cutscenes, Animations, and “Finishing Up”

Ophelia from the intro cutscene

I started the year fairly strong by tackling the game’s introductory sequence. At the time, I didn’t have much experience with Unreal’s Sequencer, especially when it came to stitching together multiple scenes across different locations. Because of that, I ended up pre-rendering the entire intro. This came with some pretty clear upsides and downsides.

The biggest downside was file size. To avoid heavy gradient banding at 1920×1080 with dark lighting, I needed a very high bitrate, and even then, I wasn’t able to eliminate all the artifacts. The other issue was flexibility: because the cutscene was pre-rendered, going back to fix or tweak things later became extremely difficult. You’ll probably still notice some visual glitches, artifacts, and audio issues even now.

All that said, for a first real attempt at something like this, I don’t think it turned out that badly. I went through several iterations before I was comfortable bundling it into the release builds.

Angy Savina

Around the same time, I started breathing more life into Savina and Ophelia by giving them unique reactions to being hit, etc. I’ve always loved it in games when NPCs react to the player doing weird or unexpected things, and I really felt that adding this helped capture some additional personality from the characters.

By April, I had finished most of the bosses and dungeons and felt confident enough to start work on the game’s finale. My original target release was October, and at the time it felt achievable.

What I wasn’t fully aware of yet was how burned out I was slowly becoming.

Burnout, and the Oblivion Detour

The Female Locomotion Replacer mod for Oblivion Remastered

I got a lot done in the first half of the year, but I wasn’t firing on all cylinders like I was back in 2024. Some of the later enemy designs suffered, and for a long time many of the newer enemies were still using placeholder purification animations borrowed from the Witness.

The Girlfriend boss fight in particular didn’t suffer from a lack of ideas – it suffered from a lack of energy. I was simply burned out on Sin Spire at that point.

Then something completely unrelated happened: Oblivion Remastered released.

I’ve always loved Bethesda’s earlier open-world games, so I picked it up instantly. What I didn’t expect was a strange, unfriendly Frankenstein’s monster of Gamebryo and Unreal that was actively hostile to traditional modding (and my eyes). That, naturally, made me want to try my hand at fixing it.

I started by fixing what I personally found most egregious: the hunchback walk cycle – at least for female NPCs. From there I moved on to bodies, because the MetaHuman-based bodies, frankly, needed an overhaul. Having a body mod would also help with designing outfits and lay the foundation for certain kinds of future mods.

NBO female body mod with realtime body morphing

That became the NBO body mod, which ended up being surprisingly fun to work on. I met new people – such as the creator of Baking for Mara – and got to be creative without being responsible for every system in a game. I very much enjoyed the lower-pressure environment. NBO, to this day, is still on the front page of the most downloaded / endorsed mods on the Oblivion Remastered Nexus.

Unfortunately, updates to Oblivion Remastered repeatedly broke my mods – again and again. Female Locomotion broke with no easy fix. NBO’s real-time body morphing broke, was fixed, and then broke again. At a certain point it just wasn’t sustainable, and I took a step back (sorry NBO users).

I never accepted donations for those mods – they were done for fun – but Sin Spire is something people are supporting financially, and I needed to refocus. As enjoyable as the detour was, it had to end.

Posts after I stopped updating NBO

Computer Problems

Somewhat overlapping with all of this, I started experiencing full system crashes when playing intensive games – not regular game crashes, but total PC lockups. Eventually this escalated into a full blue screen and a machine that simply refused to boot.

Long story short: I ended up replacing several components before everything was stable again. The silver lining is that I removed a major performance bottleneck in the process, and my system has been solid ever since. Another silver lining is that this happened before the recent RAM shortage that hit the market and sent prices through the roof.

Still – not ideal timing. I even saw one person who was sceptical that my PC had broken down at all and suggested I was using it as an excuse to avoid working. Other than rolling my eyes, I don’t really have a response to that. That said, me dragging my feet and not working to the same standard would be a valid criticism – if that was actually what they were saying instead.

Dev logs started to slow down, and I did miss some self-imposed deadlines. Anyway, after fixing my PC, it was time to get back to business.

Approaching the End (and Missing It)

One of Savina's relationship animations

The second half of the year was meant to be focused almost entirely on finishing the game. October was still the intended release window and, on paper at least, I was more or less on track – or so I thought.

After finishing Savina’s relationship animations, I jumped straight into working on the pre-finale and finale sections of the game. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have done that considering Ophelia’s relationship animations still weren’t finished, but at the time I was very much in “just get to the end” mode.

The pre-finale came together without too much trouble. The actual finale, however, was a different story.

Sin Spire’s script – including its endings – was written back in 2024. When I started properly implementing the first ending and saw it come together as an actual cutscene, I realized how much I liked it. The more work I did on it, the more excited I got, and for a while it felt like everything was finally clicking.

Then I started working on the “good ending”… and things fell apart.

Darkened Starting Hall from later in the game

Savina is voiced by my good friend XeraphinaVA, who I have a very easy time working with. Ophelia, on the other hand, is voiced by someone I don’t know particularly well. She’s good as Ophelia, but communication was slower, and recordings usually came as a single take.

When I finally sat down and listened to the full recordings for the good ending, a few problems became immediately obvious:

1. The good ending itself was badly written.
   It assumes you’ve already seen the neutral ending and leaves out a lot of crucial context.

2. The recordings didn’t really work.
   Ophelia’s delivery was bizarre in places, and Xeraphina’s lines were noticeably flatter than usual.

3. I wanted people to see the neutral ending.
   I didn’t like the idea of spending so much time animating, compositing, and scripting it, only for a large portion of players to potentially never see it – not the most flattering of reasons, but it did play a factor.

I could have asked Xeraphina to re-record her lines quite easily, but there was still the issue of Ophelia’s VA and the fact that I didn’t like the actual script for the good ending. Rewriting it would have meant:

• new recordings

• new animations

• a reworked boss fight

• and all of that discovered in late September

At that point, regardless of the state of the good ending, it became pretty obvious that an October release wasn’t happening. I set my sights on November and made the call to cut the good ending entirely so I could focus on polishing and actually finishing the rest of the game.

Beta Release

The Raven revealed

On October 1st, I released the beta build that allowed players to play Sin Spire from start to finish.

That was a massive milestone for me. After years of trying (and failing), I had finally completed a game with a full narrative, cutscenes, and endings – even if one of them had been cut.

With November as the new target, I shifted into bug fixing, finishing Ophelia’s animations, improving Steam integration, and generally trying to tighten everything up. That said, there was still a lot of missing content that needed my attention – content that I’m still actively adding to the game.

I polished a build for Steam review so that, if approved, I could finalize the release date, make a trailer, and wrap things up properly.

Once I felt the build was stable enough, I submitted the Steam review build in early November.

And then… I waited.

About Difficulty

The Wraith

A small diversion, but let’s talk about difficulty. Difficulty has been one of the most stressful topics throughout Sin Spire’s development.

The game was always meant to be challenging. I wanted players to experiment, to find strange solutions, to slowly unravel systems and make the game easier through understanding. Some of my favourite gaming memories (especially H-games) come from exactly that kind of experience.

Sin Spire was designed to drip-feed enemies, mechanics, and animations in a way that encouraged that mindset. That approach… hasn’t landed for everyone.

Some players have outright dropped the game because of the difficulty, and honestly, I don’t blame them. When I added difficulty settings, I hoped that would somewhat alleviate the issue – but in practice it kind of made things worse. “Easy” wasn’t easy enough for what some people wanted.

What many players were asking for seemingly wasn’t an easier version of Sin Spire – it was a version without struggle at all. And while I completely understand the appeal of that, it’s not the kind of game I set out to make.

The Mangler boss fight

At this point, I’m likely to leave the difficulty mostly as-is, with some tweaks to reduce grind (such as higher purification payouts). Whenever I consider bigger changes, I think about the players who have enjoyed the game as intended – the ones who found the challenge engaging and rewarding.

Sin Spire, for better or worse, committed to a specific design philosophy very early on.

That said, I’ve learned from this – and when I work on my next game, I’ll ease up on the bullshit a bit.

Steam Review Anxiety

Sin Spire in Steam Library

Back to the Steam Review: in early November, I submitted the Steam review build and waited… and waited.

This happened during a pretty chaotic period where Steam was delisting adult games, Itch.io was removing huge portions of its catalogue, and misinformation about what was or wasn’t allowed was everywhere. The idea of submitting the game was nerve-wracking enough when I first put the page up in 2024 – now it was genuinely terrifying.

Sin Spire’s success matters a lot for my ability to move forward, and while alternative platforms exist, Steam is the PC platform, whether we like it or not.

Eventually, Steam got back to me – and the build was denied.

Headlines regarding the delisting of games

Not for the reasons I was expecting, thankfully. The main issues were controller navigation (specifically social links on the menu) and some missing content warnings. Once those were fixed and resubmitted, the build was approved, which was a massive relief.

The waiting period was extremely anxiety-inducing, and to distract myself from said anxiety, I did what I apparently always do. I got distracted.

These distractions persisted even past the build approval – I was laying the foundation for my next project (good) and also got roped back in to an old project I used to work on with no financial incentive (bad).

But I’ve since managed to pull myself back on track. Most bugs are fixed, performance is mostly optimized, and there are only a handful of animations left to implement. I think the game is in a good state now and I’m happy to say that Sin Spire will release in late January 2026.

Steam page for Sin Spire

What I’ve Learned

Working solo is hard.

I tend to work in intense bursts, burn out, and then drift toward other creative projects before returning. I’ve known this about myself for years but this was the first time I really felt how much it affects long-term development.

Going forward, I want to work within that tendency rather than fight it: one long-term project, alongside smaller side projects.

Scrappy unrelated doodle

After release, I’ll be taking a short break before starting the next big thing. I’ll try to keep up general communication up, but I won’t be posting many progress reports while I’m still in the “tinkering” pre-production phase of my next project.

As for post-launch content for Sin Spire, that’s a definite maybe. If the game does well and some time is allowed to pass, I’d love to expand it. If not, I’ll need to reassess and move forward differently.

Obviously, a lot more happened this year, but this post is long enough already and this is the sixth draft I’ve written, with plenty cut out along the way.

Thank you, genuinely, for sticking with me through the year. Your support is what has made it possible to even attempt something like this in the first place. I know I’ve said it a few times now, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Here’s to finally crossing the finish line. I hope you’ve all had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year. See you all in January!

Sin Spire - New Animation Previews

Hello everyone! As we approach Christmas, I'll become busier with things external to the game's development. As I want to spend what free time I have to work on the game and write up the Christmas post, I won't be writing any Dev Logs probably for the remainder of the year. To try and make up for this, I've decided to post some previews of the animations to go into the game before the 1.0 release.

The Butcherette and Wraith now have front animations where before they only had back. The Girlfriend and Mangler have their "Lust Drain" grab animations complete. The Banshee enemy now has her full set of purification animations and all that's left in that department are the Twisted enemies who are still using the base Witness anims.

By popular demand, I've begun work on the Creeper (Cave Stalker) animations. These will be made available in Free Mode after the game's completion. While it might be nice to implement the previewed animation more organically into the game, that'd take more time and I'd need to make it work with the uneven terrain of the forest.

After the last handful of animations are complete and implemented into the game, my key focus will be polish and marketing materials.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone! I shall see you all in the Christmas post which should (hopefully) be posted next Sunday.

Sin Spire – Dev Log 41

Hello everyone! Today’s post will be light on developments regarding the game as there’s not much to discuss, but I do have some big news to kick things off:

Sin Spire has officially been approved for release on Steam!

This is a huge deal and a massive milestone not just for Sin Spire but my game dev career in general. With this, I can now release the game at any time. It’s a huge relief – waiting to find out whether I’d be allowed to sell the game on Steam was extremely stressful. However, while this is fantastic news, there is an issue. The timing of everything has created a complication and that leads us to today’s main topic.

Delayed Release Date

My original goal was to release Sin Spire in December, so I could hit the 2025 release window. The game is in a good enough state to launch but I made a pretty big mistake on Steam’s backend.

I was able to change it before so had assumed I could keep doing so until the game came out, but I set the release date to October this year. As you can tell, it’s a bit past October. To change this now, I need to go through Valve. The problem is that the earliest date I can choose would be mid-December – not early December like I had hoped.

This would put the release of Sin Spire right in the middle of the Steam Winter Sale. Releasing during that window is something I absolutely want to avoid, as the game would get buried under the flood of discounted titles. The sale lasts quite a while, so instead of rushing to squeeze a release in beforehand, I’ve decided it’d be better to wait until after it’s over.

This also gives me extra time for marketing, showcasing and possibility preparing a demo for Itch or other platforms.

As for the new release window:

Sin Spire will be launching in early 2026 – either late January or early February.

I won’t announce the exact date here as I’m still determining which day works best. Once that’s decided, I will make a proper announcement.

What’s Next?

There are still things to polish before release. I’m planning on adjusting the game’s economy which is an area that hasn’t received much love. I’m not reducing the required number of dungeon runs (a lot of scripting depends on that), but I can certainly try to make the experience less painful, especially on Easy difficulty.

There are also additional animations and bits of other content to finish, though none of those should take too long. Outside of that, I’m planning to slow things down a little and avoid crunching if I can. With the holiday season approaching, it makes sense to take things at a slower pace as there will be numerous distractions.

I will still write up a Christmas post like I did last year. I feel that it was a good way of capping the year off and it’d give me the chance to reflect on this year’s developments.

What’s Been Cooking?

While waiting for Steam’s approval, I spent a lot of time experimenting with what comes next. I actually have two potential future projects lined up:

• A larger, long-term project with no concrete end point (at least not yet).

• A smaller, experimental game that will act a bit like a tech demo – similar in the vein of HotPW, meant to test new systems.

I don’t have many details to give for now as I’m still making key decisions. A lot of the prep involved has been foundational – making engine-level changes and so on. I’ll talk more about these projects once Sin Spire has been released.

Anyway, that’s all for today. Like I said, not a lot to talk about in regards to the game itself but Steam’s approval allows me to finally move forward without worrying. I do still need to think about the people who obviously can’t get the game through Steam and will be exploring options soon. I’m open to ideas.

Anyway, See you all next time.

Sin Spire – Beta Build 0.5

Hello everyone! This is release 0.5. Quite the jump from 0.1, but a lot has been done. A large number of bugs have been fixed, and there have been quite a few general improvements. A lot of the bugs were long-standing issues that never got addressed, but thanks to you guys sending me reproduction steps, I was able to squash most of them. There are only a handful of bugs left, though a few of these I’ve already accepted will end up in the final release.

On the topic of release, the game is still in Steam Build Review. The initial review failed due to some rather minor issues. I’ve sent off another review build; I’m just hoping that goes smoothly. It took almost two weeks to get minor feedback, so I’m hoping the next review is quicker. If it ends up taking just as long, I’ll have to consider delaying the full release further than I had planned.

Anyway, this isn’t a dev log – it’s a release post. Don’t expect any new content; as mentioned, that hasn’t been my priority. Right now, the only new pieces of content are Ophelia’s sex scene, and some of Savina’s lines that were missing voice recordings are now voiced.

Audio levels are still a bit messy, and you can easily tell which recordings are the newer ones. I have also replaced the recording of the “leave” ending at the request of Xeraphina, who wanted to give it another try. So, there’s that to check out as well.

The game now has full controller support; there shouldn’t be anything that doesn’t work with a gamepad. While I did mention performance improvements in the last dev log, the Steam Deck still struggles in the forest area, dropping below 30 FPS most of the time. I’ll have to give it another look, but Steam Deck support is more of a bonus than a requirement. If push comes to shove, I just won’t officially support it. Outside of the forest, everywhere else seems fine.

Anyway, if you’re just looking for new content, feel free to skip this build. Unless a major bug appears, this will likely be the last build before release. Then again, considering how often new issues crop up, I’m not holding my breath. Regardless, hope you enjoy.

Known Issues:

• The player sometimes snaps back to their previous position at the end of a sex scene

• Dungeon Generation Bug that requires a reset

• Audio levels for voices are inconsistent

• Some animations are unfinished or require polish

• Missing animations for Twisted, Banshee, Mangler and Girlfriend

• Sex scenes with either Savina or Ophelia can randomly stop

Sin Spire - Dev Log 40

In the library

Hello everyone! Sorry for not posting anything last week. I had intended to get either a new Dev Log or even a new build out, but I ended up spending most of my time crunching to get the Steam Build Review version of the game ready.

As of writing this, the build is still under review. I submitted it on Monday, but I’m not sure when the process will be complete. I’ve heard mixed things – some developers say reviews can be quick, whilst others have reported waiting around a month. So right now, I’m kind of in limbo. I can’t say for sure when or even if the game will be approved for sale on Steam, so as you can imagine, this period is filled with trepidation.

Steam Review Build

To meet Steam’s requirements, I had to rush through and do a few things such as preparing a trailer and setting up Steam Achievements – essentially, anything listed on the Steam page as a feature had to be at least mostly functional.

That also included controller support. While controllers have technically worked since the first or second build, some menus like the extras menu or the in-game map screen never functioned properly. Those issues, however, are now fixed! There are still a few things that could be polished, but with controller implementation finally complete, that’s a very long-standing task I can finally tick off.

Now that everything is submitted, there’s not much left I can really do except wait. I was hoping to maybe release the game or start the marketing push fairly soon, but with the review ongoing, my hands are mostly tied.

Performance and Optimization

Light Complexity - Hurts my eyes

While waiting, I decided to try and address something I’ve been neglecting for a while: performance.

On my main PC that I use to develop the game, Sin Spire runs buttery smooth – but that’s to be expected, as I’m running it on a 4090. Obviously, not everyone has that kind of hardware, and for a game with a retro style, it feels odd to have to recommend high-end PCs just to run it. So, I got to work on optimization.

I have an older laptop from about six years ago that runs a GTX 1650. I figured that’d be a good system to test with, as I imagine most people on mid-range systems are running hardware roughly in that range or higher (at least if statistics are anything to go by). I also ran the game on a Steam Deck, which is another good point of comparison for performance.

Prior to this, a community member had done some testing and shared their insights on lower-end systems. Essentially, the game ran pretty well on the equivalent to a 1050, but I wanted to deep-dive into a few commonly flagged areas when it came to performance issues.

Surprisingly, during testing, I noticed that the Tutorial Cave and Starting Hall dropped below 60 FPS. That was odd given how simple those areas are. After some digging, however, I realized that I was relying way too much on non-baked lighting.

The game mostly uses dynamic lights since the dungeons are procedural – as they’re built at runtime, I can’t really bake lighting information to improve performance. The dungeons themselves haven’t been too bad because I already did quite a lot of optimization on them early on. But I never optimized areas that were purely static and didn’t need dynamic lighting.

So, I baked the lighting for those few areas and made additional optimizations. The results were great – smoother performance across the board with similar, if not better, visuals. I did have to re-learn a lot about Unreal’s baked lighting systems as it’s been a long time, but it was definitely worth it.

The Forest

The Forest - Where performance goes to die

The biggest culprit for optimization by far, however, has been The Forest.

The Forest is one of the few areas I’ve commonly seen complaints about regarding performance. I had naively assumed that because I was using World Partition (introduced in UE5) and foliage instancing, any performance hit would be negligible. I was wrong.

There were multiple issues, including but no limited to:

• The moon casting shadows for every single object.

• Trees using overly complicated materials with advanced shading models.

• HLODs doing the opposite of their intended function by actually hurting performance.

I spent two full days optimizing the Forest alone – adding fixes, rebuilding binaries, and testing on my laptop. Thankfully, it was worth it, as the whole Forest has seen about a 40% increase in performance with almost no noticeable visual degradation (thanks to the fog and dark lighting).

Does that mean the area now hits 60 FPS on the 1650? No – it averages around 50 FPS now, which is much better than the 30 FPS I was getting before. I haven’t tested it on the Steam Deck yet, but that was also noticeably rough in previous builds.

Unreal 5’s landscape system combined with World Partition wasn’t quite the magic bullet I had hoped for. In some ways, UE4’s older system was simpler to understand and optimize. The upshot to all of this, though, is that for future projects I’ll be going in aware of these issues and their solutions, resulting in better-optimized games from the get-go (hopefully).

File Size and Next Build

Because of the new baked lighting, the game’s size has increased – still under 2GB, but well above the 1GB target I was initially aiming for. Realistically, though, 2GB isn’t bad at all for a 2025 release.

As for a new build, there will probably be at least one more build before release. It’ll include bug fixes and the performance improvements mentioned above. However, I won’t be adding in any new content beyond Ophelia’s sex scene. The remaining purification animations and anything else that could be considered “new content” will be saved for the final release as well as general polish.

Steam Pricing

Current Steam Page - Subject to Change

Since this ties into the release, I figured I’d mention it. I’ve done my best to match the game’s price to similar indie titles, which is tricky considering there really aren’t really any games like Sin Spire. It’s both a blessing and a curse.

While there are first-person, multi-layered dungeon crawlers out there (some even procedural), Sin Spire’s adult content makes it a unique case – a niche within a niche. I think the price I’ve chosen is fair, but I understand that not everyone will agree.

Credits and Translations

A quick note on credits – I’ve now locked them in as of the beginning of the month. Anyone who has reached out regarding that, I’m afraid the window is closed. Apologies to everyone who messaged me in the past week or so, and thank you to everyone who responded.

Also, the translation documents that I’ve mentioned a few times have been completed! If you’d like to help translate Sin Spire into your language, feel free to reach out. At the moment, I have Chinese and Russian translators, but I’d love to expand further.

I can’t thank you all enough for the support you’ve given me – both financially and through your kind words. Sin Spire exists because of you, and as we near release, I’m able to comfortably and excitedly think about what project comes next.

But we’ll leave that for another time.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all next time.

Sin Spire - Dev Log 39

Hello everyone! I’ll open today’s Dev Log with an admission: I’ve been distracted.
Not completely – it’s not like I’ve spent the whole month goofing off – but things that should be simple have been taking longer than they need to.

A few logs ago I mentioned that as we got closer to the finish line, things became strangely harder to work on. Now that the game is closer than ever to completion, I’ve found myself slowing down a bit again – unintentionally, but noticeably.

That said, plenty has still been done, and I’d like to share what’s been accomplished, what’s coming next, and what’s been distracting me (it’s still development-related, don’t worry).

What’s Been Done

I’ve been mostly working on bug fixes, content additions, and general polish.
But there has been one pretty major change to the end of the game:

When the credits finish rolling, you’ll now return to the Starting Hall with Savina instead of the Main Menu. I still need to write a note explaining this “post-game,” but essentially, you’ll be able to re-run every dungeon you’ve cleared so far – including the final one – and continue upgrading your character and talking to Savina.

You can also technically complete Ophelia’s quest if you missed it, though she’ll still act as if the final boss hasn’t been beaten. On that note, Boss fights are disabled as you’ve already basically beaten them but there is still the Boss Rush available from the Main Menu.

A few players have also reported a nasty crash at the end of dungeons, right before the Boss fight. Thankfully, that issue has been fixed — the solution was staring me in the face for a while. There was a similar crash months ago that I fixed, but didn’t realize the fix also needed to be applied to the Boss Door.

On top of that:

• I’ve fixed (as best as I can) all major cloth clipping.

• Projectiles are now automatically removed when cutscenes start, preventing them from interrupting or damaging the player.

• Ophelia’s quest now has its end sex sequence implemented – no more placeholder text. You’ll be able to see that scene in the next build.

Upcoming Builds

With the game nearing completion, there will likely only be a couple more builds before release. If the Steam review process goes smoothly, I’ll spend some time implementing API features like achievements, but otherwise, the public release build won’t be drastically different from the Patreon builds.

If things don’t go as planned and I have to release through other means, I’ll have to rethink a lot more than just the release of Sin Spire. But for now, the next test build will mainly focus on small bug fixes and micro tasks rather than new content.

Distractions

I mentioned being distracted earlier, but if it’s any consolation, those distractions have been productive ones.

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with ideas for my next project. It’s far too early to start pre-production, but I’ve been researching and doing some early in-engine tests for visual style and rendering workflows. The next game won’t share Sin Spire’s aesthetic, so I’m trying to make sure Unreal can manage what I want to do.

That said, I know it’s the wrong time to get side-tracked. I still have Sin Spire to finish, so I apologize for the delay – especially to the translators who’ve been waiting for updates. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Credits

As many of you know, I’ve been collecting names from my Supporter-tier – both past and present – for inclusion in the credits. I’ll be closing that window soon so I can format and time everything properly.

Thank you to everyone who responded! If you’ve supported me in the past few weeks, I’ll try and message you about your credit as soon as possible. Anyone joining today or tomorrow will also be included in that, but soon after, I’ll be finalizing the credits with the names I’ve collected up to that point.

What’s Next

I’ll likely prepare another small build soon. Not much has changed content-wise, but I’d like to keep testing updates until I’m ready to send the review build out.

It’s a bit of a shame that I missed the October release window, but in hindsight, it might be for the best – Steam Next Fest pushed a lot of games that would’ve drowned out visibility for Sin Spire since I don’t have a demo.

There are still plenty of bugs to squash and purification animations to finish, but progress is progress. See you all next time.

Sin Spire – Dev Log 38

Hello everyone! At the beginning of the month, I released Sin Spire’s first beta test build – hopefully the first of only a few. After that, I took a longer-than-intended break from development.

While some issues were found with the released build, feedback overall has been generally positive. In this Dev Log, I’ll be going over what’s left to do for the game and how long things might take.

Missing Content

So, now that the game is playable from beginning to end, what’s actually left to work on? Well, outside of bug fixes, missing content is obviously the biggest thing I’m paying attention to.

I mentioned this before but Ophelia’s scene after you complete her quest still isn’t in the game and is my current priority. There are a few headaches involved with her scene but nothing too bad.

The rest of the missing content includes mostly purification scenes:

• Front animation for Butcherette

• Front animation for Wraith

• Animation for Creeper (Intro Boss)

• Animation scenes for Twisted

• Animation scene for Banshee

• Drain animation for Girlfriend

• Drain animation for Mangler

Lastly, some of Savina’s voice lines are still missing. The recordings are done – I just haven’t finished editing and assigning them yet.

Bugs

Of course, a big part of what’s left is fixing bugs. I even found a few new ones during my most recent playthrough that somehow slipped through earlier testing.

Here’s the current list:

• The Creeper (intro boss) sometimes doesn’t move in the tutorial

• You can parry the Girlfriend’s bullets, staggering her from a distance

• Boss voice lines no longer play during purification

• Opening the boss door in the 4th or 5th dungeon can cause a crash

• Raven’s body disappears after loading a save following his final dialogue

• Projectiles remain active during Vanessa’s death

• Crouching while purifying puts the player into the floor

• Stalker grabs can make the player fall through the floor on respawn

• Reload animations can get mixed up, causing infinite reloading

• (Free Mode) Enemies may freeze after certain animations

• Savina’s relationship scenes can be interrupted

• Various cloth clipping issues

• Voice audio levels are inconsistent

• Controllers are not supported in the Map or Extras menus

• The player may T-pose after a purification scene (animation issue)

• Typos in tutorial notes and dialogue

I’m leaving out the dungeon generation bug since, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s not easily fixable without a full system overhaul. It happens very rarely (maybe once every 20 runs, and usually in the last two dungeons for me).

That’s one of the few bugs that will likely remain at launch, though I’ll continue trying to debug it post-release. While I can't fix the bug itself yet, I'll do my best to make sure that the progress lost from both that and the crashes are minimal.

If you find any other issues not listed here, feel free to report them in the Discord server.

Ending

I wanted to briefly address the ending, since it’s been the subject of a lot of discussion – both positive and negative. Some players are still hoping for a “good ending,” but as mentioned already, that was cut. Just to reiterate: there will be no true good ending.

The reason for it being cut has been addressed a few times already but the decision was made for both practical and creative reasons, and I apologize to anyone who expected it based on earlier posts. For now, I won’t be adding any new story content – at least not before release.

Whether or not I do some post-launch content is something that’s still undecided. Especially as there are numerous concerns and factors that come into play when it comes to actually releasing the game.

Supporter Credits

I’ll soon be reaching out via private messages to everyone who has supported me to confirm whether you’d like your name included in the game’s credits or not. While I did plan for this to be an opt-out, I'm also very aware that people may not want their name (especially their real name in the case of some people) associated with this kind of project.

Since tier descriptions don't mention anything about credits at this stage, I figured it'd be best to just give people ample opportunity.

Translations

Now that the endings are finalized, I need to finish preparing translation documents for translators. I’m admittedly slow at this, but I’ll do my best to get them sorted soon.

I already have a few translators on stand-by for the ending, but if you (or someone you know) might be interested in translating the game into another language, please contact me on Discord or leave a message in the server.

Next Steps

This post is already long enough, so I’ll keep this short: I plan to submit a review build to Steam this month.

That’s a pretty big milestone and it will decide a lot about both the project’s future and my own. While I believe the game is complete enough for Steam’s review process, this step also involves removing Patreon/SubStar links and other non-release elements from the build.

That’s all for today. I’m not sure how many builds I’ll release before launch, but I’ll try to put out at least one or two more to help test and verify fixes.

Thanks again for all the feedback and support – it means a lot. See you all next time.

Sin Spire – Beta Build 0.1

Hello everyone! I’m happy to finally share the first beta release of Sin Spire! This build isn’t as polished as I’d like and there are still a few noticeable omissions, but the game is fully playable all the way through to the credits.

Before you dive in, there are a few things I want to mention:

• Animations & Content
  This is still a beta, so animations and polish are ongoing. Because of time constraints, Ophelia’s sex scene has been cut… again – it’ll be the next thing I work on. Also, one of the endings currently has rough lipsync and some odd motion since I hadn’t finished those animations before assembling this build.

• Bugs & Feedback
  The game has a lot of moving parts now, so there will definitely be issues I’ve missed. During the beta phase I’ll be focusing on bug reports and fixes. Some problems may persist into the final release, but most should be addressed. Please report bugs and feedback on the Discord server as usual — it’s the easiest place for me to keep track of everything.

• Credits
  The credits sequence at the end isn’t finished yet. Translators and other helpers may not see their names listed yet — that’s still in progress.
  Supporter names are also currently redacted; I realized some people might not expect to see their username in the credits as this was only mentioned in a Dev Log. I’ll make a post in a few days to explain how I’ll handle this (opt-out or opt-in) so everyone has a chance to decide.

• Virus Warnings
  This happened with the last release, so just in case it happens again: If you get a virus warning when downloading, it’s almost certainly a false positive. You can double-check on VirusTotal or similar services, but please don’t flood the Discord with “this is a virus” posts.

Thank you so much for your support and patience during development. I’ll do my best to stay communicative while refining and fixing the game. I hope you enjoy the beta version of Sin Spire — and keep an eye out for further updates soon!

Known Issues:

• The player sometimes snaps back to their previous position at the end of a sex scene

• Controller support does not work in the Map or the new Extras menu

• Stalkers may freeze when you start hiding

• Audio levels for voices are inconsistent

• Missing animations for the Twisted and Banshee enemies

• Missing animations when caught by either the Mangler or the Girlfriend

• Some enemies clip with their clothes (especially in certain animations)

• Some animations are unfinished

Sin Spire - Dev Log 37

Hello everyone! Sorry for the late post. I’m quite tired and have a few things to cover, so let’s just dive right in.

Boss Fights & Cutscenes

Last time, I mentioned there was only one boss fight left. I’m happy to say that, that fight is now finished! I’ll keep the details light for now so you can experience it when the time comes, but with that out of the way, all boss fights in the game are now playable!

On the cutscene side of things, I’ve completed everything required except for one major change: I’ve decided to cut the planned “good ending.” Some of you might wonder why I would cut it and not just try and rework it, but at this stage it would simply take way too long. Add to that the fact that I’ve been sitting on the completed recordings for a while and reconnecting with some of the voice talent might be tricky.

But despite that, I’m still happy with everything that’s in the game right now. In fact, I was a bit concerned about creating the good ending as I didn’t want people to miss out on some of the other content. Cutting that one ending still leaves 3 different potential conclusions to the game so there is still some variety.

With that decision made, the game’s full narrative is now complete – a huge milestone that officially marks Sin Spire entering its beta phase.

Missing Content

Of course, there are still some things I want to address before I release the game’s 0.1 beta. Over the course of development, quite a few things have been left unfinished with the intention of revisiting them later. Well, “later” is now and it’s time to address things like the Pendant model being a sphere or the various missing purification animations.

There are also the sex scenes for Ophelia and the final boss that still need to be worked on. I imagine that in the coming week, these two particular things will take priority as they do feed into the game’s endings and story.

Sanity Checks

I’ve started doing more “sanity checks” – essentially replaying areas (and doing it badly) to make sure that things that used to work still do. For example, I found that Boss Rushes had broken recently – if you die during the fight, you’ll get stuck on a black screen. Things like this remind me that when testing, I need to also make sure that fail states work. So, I’m going to have to do some runs of the game where I Intentionally screw up.

Translations

Translations will not be ready for the first beta release. Preparing docs, sending them out and replacing lines one by one in-game is a long and tedious process. I simply won’t have time to even get started on this before the beta release. I apologise to everyone who was hoping to see the ending of the game translated – you’ll have to wait a bit longer when my schedule mostly clears up.

Trailer & Release Plans

With the game essentially in beta, it’s time to start thinking ahead to the future – potentially the near future. During the week, I began working on the game’s trailer – a hard requirement for Steam’s release process. It’s been put on hold for now as I focus on more critical tasks but the first cut of it is essentially done.

As for the release plan: My goal is for the beta period to be relatively short. I’d like to move towards the full release now that the game is almost content complete. This also means that I won’t be adding much beyond what I’ve discussed so far – even things I’ve historically said would be in the game might get cut if I deem them to be not important enough.

I’ll share more concrete details regarding this in October. Ideally, the game would see its release during the spooky month, but I can’t yet say how stable the beta will be once it’s out. So, no promises as of yet.

Beta Release

So, after all this talk about the beta, when will it be available for you guys to play? Well, the plan is to release it at the end of the month. That’s not a promise – unexpected things can happen – but that’s the target. I won’t be around next weekend, so the earliest release day would be the 30th.

That’s everything for now. Big milestones have been met this week which is exciting. I’ll see you all when the beta drops.

Sin Spire - Dev Log 36

Hello everyone! The last couple of weeks have been pretty intensive and there’s plenty that’s been worked on. As usual, I don’t want to outright spoil things, so I’ll keep some details vague regarding content but will allow myself to post some teaser images (like the above). I realized that keeping everything hidden behind spoilers up until the next build isn't fair to you guys. There have been some gameplay changes (with more to come), but today I mostly want to talk about cutscenes.

Cutscene Progress

I’ve finally tackled what I considered a pretty daunting task: cutscenes.

As most of you know, there’s already one cinematic cutscene in the game (made in January) – the intro. But that itself is fairly basic: no dialogue or character interactions and only made up of a few shots. It’s also technically “pre-rendered” (a video file), not something that plays out in real-time.

The cutscenes I’ve been working on now are a whole different story. They feature character interaction, dialogue and happen in real-time – meaning there’s no external editing to help with timing, sound and more. Because I’ve never done this before, I procrastinated for a while, nervous about even starting.

But once I finally pushed through and began – preparing animations, figuring out camera shots and making characters express themselves in interesting ways – I actually got really into it. So much so that, one night, I ended up staying up until 4am working.

Here’s what’s needed cutscene-wise before I wrap up the boss fights:

• A cutscene introducing the final boss

• A story resolution cutscene for the bad/neutral ending

• A cutscene after defeating the final boss (bad/neutral)

• A story resolution cutscene for the good ending

• A different cutscene for the good ending boss defeat

In total, that makes 5 in-game cinematics.

So far, I’ve completed 2: the boss introduction and the bad/neutral ending. The latter was by far the most complex – a full 2 minutes long, made up of about 20 shots with a lot of unique animations. By comparison, every other cutscene is much shorter and simpler.

Honestly, I’m very happy with how the bad/neutral ending has turned out – almost to the point where I don’t even want to make the good ending, since on paper it isn’t quite as strong. Still, I’ll push forward with it and, who knows, maybe it’ll turn out well once it’s fully animated and voiced.

Boss Progress

Good news on this front: the final boss is basically done! Aside from polish and balancing, it has unique mechanics – not placeholder AI from a different boss – and even throws in something new halfway to add variety. Without giving too much away, it’s the only boss fight that really makes heavy use of magic and projectiles (plus very strong attacks).

That leaves just one more fight for the beta: the penultimate boss. Right now, it’s still running on placeholder AI, but does have some unique animations in place already. This one’s more of a physical fight, so it’ll need some proper attack animations with good balancing for parry windows.

Credits

While the final boss defeat cutscenes aren’t done yet (they’re next), the sequencing of the final stretch of the game is in place. I can now play from the end of the current build (the long hallway) all the way through to the credits. Yep – we’ve officially reached the credits.

Because of that, I’ll likely be re-locking Free Mode behind finishing the game, since it was only accessible due to the fact that there was no other way to unlock it.

As for the credits themselves, right now it’s just my name and the voice actresses (as well as few other additional credits). But I’ve been considering adding a Supporters section. Quite simply, without you guys, this game wouldn’t exist. The monetary backing, the feedback and the encouragement – it’s all helped towards getting this game to where it is now.

So, I’d like to include your names in the credits as a small token of respect. If you’d rather not be listed, just let me know. I’ll do my best to pull names from the support history so it’s not limited only to current patrons. There’s no deadline for this just yet, but once we hit beta, I’ll need to start locking things down generally.

Gameplay Modifications

Quick note here, since this post is long enough already: I’ve been tweaking perks after finally playing the game all the way to the end. Some skills are just way too strong – Vampire in particular. With an SMG, it turns you from fragile to immortal, which really kills the tension of the climax. I’ve gone ahead and nerfed all ‘Leech’ type perks, which ended up making the final fights feel a lot more balanced.

Expect more changes of this kind soon, since once we hit beta, fine-tuning will become my main focus. For now, I still have three more cutscenes to animate for the ending, plus more purification animations as well as the second-to-last boss fight to finish.

August, I’ll admit, was a weird month. Not due to health reasons or anything like that – just a lot of distractions both online and offline. Motivation was hard to work up. But I definitely feel back in the swing of things now, even if I’m a bit late.

This coming week, I’ll be focusing on cutscenes and making sure everything plays out nicely in the final arena. Then I’ll be moving onto the penultimate boss fight and will try and finish most of the animation work required for the game. After that, more gameplay adjustments and bug fixing.

That’s it for today’s update – thanks as always for your patience and support. We’re getting closer to beta and I’m excited to show you more when the time comes. Take care and I’ll see you all next time.

Sin Spire - Dev Log 35

Hello everyone! I’ll be keeping today’s Dev Log brief as I don’t have too much to discuss openly. First, though, I’ll address the absence of last week’s Dev Log. As some of you know, I had some non-dev obligations that resulted in me being away from my computer for a while. The length of this period was actually longer than I had anticipated and as such I was gone for a little over a week. Previous to that, I hadn’t made much progress since the last Dev Log.

Since coming back, I have been trying to get back into the groove which is proving more difficult than expected due to distractions appearing quite regularly (again away from my computer) but I’m hoping that’ll clear up soon. I have gotten some work done but considering how much I wanted to get done before the end of August, I’m very far behind.

So, let’s go over what’s actually been worked on:

Final Cutscene(s)

I briefly mentioned my original plans for the game to have way more cutscenes but I cut back on them for a variety of reasons. Well, I’ve decided to cut back even more on cutscenes (where the camera is outside of the player’s view). The reasoning behind this is quite simple: to save time.

The introductory cutscene for the final boss is one of the more complicated sequences due to it being affected by multiple variables that occur through gameplay. An actual cinematic is not really possible due to this cutscene needing a choice system as well as having elements affected by previous player actions.

Instead of a cinematic cutscene, I’ve decided to keep everything confined to the already existing dialogue system with some cutaways for key reveals/moments. It’s not ideal but I think at this point I need to be realistic about what’s achievable.

I will note that I did try to use my previous method but got a headache when it came to having to rework systems or make new systems to introduce the choice based elements. So, I decided to just do without so I don’t spend another few weeks making a bespoke system for it.

Of course, there are still some things to figure out and smoothly transitioning from dialogue to those ‘key reveals’ will be something I need to work on. For now, I’m cutting up the recorded audio and setting up the dialogue that’ll be used for this final sequence before working on the actual animations for the reveals.

Boss Fight(s)

The two boss fights have not gotten a lot of love in light of all this narrative work. As such they are not really in a playable state. They’re both using placeholder boss fights (Mangler) in order to get the surrounding logic to work but obviously I plan for the two bosses to have their own attacks and move sets. Admittedly some of this is tricky to figure out but I do have a good idea of what I want to do, I Just need to figure out how to actually achieve it.

Boss fights have not been my favorite thing to work on for this game, so working up the motivation is tricky to say the least. Animation is tough and the fact that it’s going towards something I don’t really like doing definitely leads to me procrastinating a bit.

Final Goodies

So, there are a few more sex scenes planned for the game. Ophelia’s which will happen at the end of her quest (currently there’s placeholder dialogue for her) and a couple of scenes with the final boss. None of these have been worked on yet but they are planned to come in the future as they tie directly to the story.

Kind of an obvious thing to mention but, as I said, I’m behind on where I should be and I don’t think I’ll be able to reach the August deadline for version 0.1. I apologize to anyone who was hoping to see the story wrapped up by the end of the month. As I’ve said before, the closer you get to the end, the longer everything seems to take.

I am still keeping things vague for now but will try and get some images for my next Dev Log as I’m sure you guys are tired of just seeing walls of text. Anyway, that’s all for today. I’ll see you guys the next time I have something to mention. If not next week, then the week after. Have a good one.

Sin Spire - Dev Log 34

Hello everyone! I was originally planning to return to a bi-weekly schedule for Dev Logs, but with the recent release of build 0.0.5a, I figured it’d be worth posting a quick update to go over the general reception and what’s been worked on since release.

The Build

The build seems to have gone down well overall. I didn’t fix many of the major flagged bugs from the original 0.0.5 release, since most of my focus was implementing the new dialogue -> sex scene -> dialogue system. It’s a setup that only appears a couple of times in-game, but it required a lot of backend work to get right.

All the enemies in the game are derived from a shared base class that handles many things including purification sequences. This shared functionality makes setting up new enemies with animations very simple. However, ‘talker’ NPCs like Savina did not have that setup, so a unique solution was required. So far, it seems to be working smoothly and has opened the door for Free Mode – which is slowly shaping up.

Speaking of Free mode, I’ve gotten some feedback suggesting that it’d be nice to have all animations unlocked for enemies. While this is technically doable, it would come with a lot of visual issues – clipping, incorrect proportions, alignment problems etc. For example, if you assign an animation from The Duchess to The Slacker, the eyes may not line up properly and clip through the eyelids. These things are usually fixed during animation on a per-character basis.

If people are fine with this kind of weirdness then I might consider unlocking more animations. At the moment, Free Mode is mostly a testing tool but it can be expanded down the line.

As for the other bugs – most of the ones I’ve seen brought up since the release are issues that already existed in 0.0.5. I do plan to fix them, but they’re not my focus for the time being.

Since Release

After launch, I took a short break and then jumped straight back into things. My first task was revisiting the penultimate boss fight and its surrounding transitions – specifically looking at saving and loading.

Up until now, loading a save has been simple: you always load into the Starting Hall and have your player data applied from there. This approach, of course, did not support loading into other maps which is something the story now demands. So, I had to build a system that allowed saving/loading in different maps and spawning the player in the correct position depending on the game’s state.

A good example is the long hallway that leads to the floating portal just before the penultimate boss (where the build currently ends). As the Starting Hall won’t be available as a spawn point, every time the player dies in the next fight, they need to be placed back into this map. The problem is players shouldn’t have to walk down that hall again after every death, so I used the world event tracking system to adjust the spawn point depending on what world events are currently active.

Of course, this also extends to saving. So now, you can also save at the altar that’s at the end of the long hall and load from there. I’ve also implemented this into the area just before the final boss fight as well as making sure that the world correctly loads the various states based on what you’ve done up to this point.

After a lot of testing, this system seems to be working well. It’s the kind of thing that, when it’s functioning, players will probably never notice. In hindsight, these save changes would’ve been great to include in the latest build so that people could jump right into the next boss fight without having to repeat the Mangler fight.

Visually, something that people will actually see, I’ve been working on additional animations for the penultimate boss, but more on that later… possibly much later.

What’s next

Most of what’s coming next has been covered in earlier logs: more work on boss fights, new animations, and the final parts of the game.

That said, I wanted to give a quick heads-up that Dev Logs will likely slow down during August. As I focus more on the game’s ending – which I’d rather not spoil – there just won’t be as much I can openly talk about. On top of that, I have some non-dev obligations coming up next week.

That’s not to say I won’t post any updates this month, but unless I’ve got something concrete to share, I’ll be keeping it light.

I’ll admit the ending is a daunting thing to tackle. There are multiple variables to consider and while I have a vision in mind, it may take a few iterations to nail down what actually works in practice.

I’ll check in again when it makes sense. Until then, feel free to hop on Discord if you want to chat or ask questions. It’s not the most active place, but I do try to respond when I can.

Thanks again for the continued support. Hopefully everything works out! See ya.

Sin Spire – Alpha Test Build 0.0.5a

Hello everyone! This is update 0.0.5a – long overdue, I know. It doesn’t have all the content I originally planned, but I didn’t want to delay things any further. I’d rather get this into your hands now and address any issues as they come up.

So, what’s new in this build? Since this isn’t a numbered update, there isn’t a huge amount of new gameplay content:

• Sex scenes with Savina (all of hers up to this point in the story are now in)

• Handjob scene with Ophelia

• A couple of additional monster purification animations (Bound and Witness)

• Extra bits and pieces (Such as Leg Amalgam damage nerf)

• Free Mode (unlocked by default for now)

Unfortunately, I had to cut Ophelia’s end-of-quest scene – I procrastinated and ended up leaving it too long, my bad. The good news is that one of her scenes is included, and Savina’s scenes are pretty much fully implemented. The animations, especially the endings, still need a lot of touch-ups, but they’re functional. Audio probably needs touch-ups too as I rushed getting those in.

A lot of time for this build went into new systems, such as the system that handles transitions between dialogue and sex scenes. There was no clean way to do this before, so I had to overhaul quite a few things. Of course, that also introduced a bunch of new bugs. I’ve been squashing most of them, but there are still some left – check the Known Issues section for details – and I imagine more will be discovered.

What’s next?
More scenes are definitely coming, so don’t worry – this isn’t the end. That said, I’ll be shifting focus to the broader strokes of the game, especially the final boss fight and wrapping up the last chapter, rather than spending too much time on smaller things like enemy purification animations and polish. Though if any major bugs appear in this build, I will of course prioritize them.

About Free Mode
Free Mode is now fully accessible from the Extras menu, unlocked for everyone by default in this build. However, Savina’s and Ophelia’s scenes are not included – you’ll need to experience those naturally in-game first. In the next release, Free Mode will only unlock after completing the game, but I’ll add those scenes to it then.

That’s it for now! I hope you enjoy the build, and as always, please report any bugs in the Discord server.

Known Issues:

• Sometimes notes will be added to the inventory without being read first

• The player sometimes snaps back to their previous position at the end of a sex scene

• Controller support does not work in the Map or the new Extras menu

• Stalkers may freeze when you start hiding

• Audio levels for voices are inconsistent

• Missing animations for the Twisted and Banshee enemies

• Missing animations when caught by either the Mangler or the Girlfriend

• Green Pendant uses a placeholder model

• Some enemies clip with their clothes (especially in certain animations)

Sin Spire - Dev Log 33

Hello everyone! I started writing this quite late today, but there’s not too much to cover. Unfortunately, as you can tell, this isn’t a release post. My goal was to have the new build ready, but this past week didn’t exactly go as planned. I’ll do my best to break down what’s been going on.

Ophelia’s Quest

I began the week focused on finishing Ophelia’s quest, as mentioned in the last Dev Log. If you’ve played the most recent build, you’ll know it ends with a text box basically saying that the content isn’t complete. The first thing I needed to do before implementing any of Ophelia’s animations was finish that up.

The script for her lines was already written, and the voice acting already recorded, but the in-game dialogue hadn’t been formatted yet. So, I spent time cleaning up the text script, setting it up properly in the dialogue system, and cutting Ophelia’s voice lines to work with it.

Once that was done, I could begin working on her scenes properly… but I got side-tracked before I made much progress there.

Penultimate Boss Fight

On a bit of a whim, I switched gears and worked on the first of the last two boss fights in the game. I focused mostly on the sequences surrounding the fight: the dialogue before and after, the transition to the final fight and even a defeat cutscene (cinematic) for the boss. So far, the only boss that has had any kind of cinematic sequence after defeat has been the tutorial boss.

In regards to the dialogue, I had written this boss’s dialogue ages ago – possibly last year – but reading it again, I realized it was… not great. So, I rewrote it. It isn’t voiced yet, but the new version should fit the mood a lot better.

I’ve always wanted more cutscenes and cinematic moments in the game, but over time, it became clear that wasn’t realistic with my timeframe. So, I made the decision a while ago to keep most sequences in the dialogue system rather than full cutscenes. This boss’s dialogue, however, was originally written with dramatic cinematic cues that no longer worked, so it had to be rewritten to fit the new approach.

Overall, I’m happy with how the sequence is shaping up. The boss fight itself still needs work, but the surrounding elements are in a good place.

Of course, this was the moment I remembered: “Wait, this wasn’t what I was supposed to be working on.”

A Stressful Distraction

When I tried to get back to Ophelia’s sequences, something happened that completely derailed my focus for a few days. If you’ve been keeping up with recent news in the game dev scene, you might know what I’m referring to.

I ended up spending some time talking with other devs and joining a few discussions – good for networking, bad for productivity. On top of that, my last payout from Patreon was stuck in limbo, which added extra stress (due to the processor, not Patreon). Thankfully, that specifically has been resolved now.

So, this week was productive just not in the way I had hoped it would be. I’ll be doing my best to get my brain back on track and push out those distractions so I can finally get this build released.

What’s Left To Do?

So, where’s the build at? I still have a few things to finish before meeting my goals from last week. The main tasks are:

• Cutting and setting up voiced sounds for the sex scenes with Savina and Ophelia

• Finishing Ophelia’s animations (I might omit one or two to get the build out sooner)

• Fixing an interaction bug that causes inputs to stop working during selectable scenes

Once that’s done, I can finally send off the build. I know it’s been a while since 0.0.5 (A couple of months), and I really appreciate everyone’s patience. I won’t give a release date yet as I don’t want to say anything I’ll regret. For now, I just need to get back to work and release it when it’s ready.

I’ll see you all next time – hopefully with the release post!

Sin Spire – Dev Log 32

Hello everyone! This week wasn’t as productive as the last, unfortunately, so I’ll keep this log brief on details. I had to take care of some non-dev maintenance – boring stuff I won’t get into – but I still managed to make some progress toward the next version of the game. The goal is still to get the update out soon.

Here’s the bare minimum of what to expect in the next version:

• Animations for Savina

• Animations for Ophelia

• Ophelia’s quest ending (mostly an exposition dump)

• New animations for a few enemies

• First version of Free Mode

Since a lot of people were practically begging to see it, I’ve decided to unlock Free Mode for players who’ve completed the current content (made it up to the Mangler boss). I’ll just strip out what I don’t want to be revealed yet. There are still a few enemies without animations in Free Mode, but that shouldn’t take too long to set up.

I have fallen a bit behind on animation (again), so next week I’ll be focusing hard on Ophelia’s scenes and then going back to purification animations if time permits. Even though her scenes might be harder to access than Savina’s, finishing her content will wrap up all the story content prior to the game’s ending.

This next update will be version 0.0.5a, not 0.0.6, as I’m treating this as an intermediate build for the finale. I want August to be the month where I wrap everything up in regards to content. Sin Spire has taken a long time to come together and, once I finish that core set of content, the game hits its minimal viable state and could technically be released.

Timeline

My ideal timeline for the rest of the game’s developed is as follows:

• Release the next update before the end of the month, ideally next week

• Work on the two final boss fights and ending cutscenes

• Do a final pass for bug fixes and clean up any leftovers that are no longer used

• Release the game

If any of the extra content I planned isn’t finished in time – such as additional enemy animations – I will probably cut it and save it for a future update. I know that might sound a little disappointing but at some point, I have to draw the line and content-lock the game.

Looking ahead to future projects, I’ll be doing more thorough planning now that I’ve got the experience of working on this and know what my limits are. I feel like I say this every few dev logs, but it’s something that is always in the back of my mind along with the various ideas of what I want to do next.

Anyway, that’s pretty much all I have for this week – anymore and I’ll start rambling about unrelated things. After finishing the boss fights and ending cutscenes, I’ll also need to start thinking about promotional material, such as a trailer and whatever else comes up. I’m not experienced with video editing, so we’ll see how that goes when we get there.

If the next update isn’t ready by next week, I’ll still try and post another dev log. There’s already enough content to make the next update worthwhile, I believe, but I’d really like to get Ophelia’s stuff done to for all the reasons I’ve mentioned.

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you all next week!

Sin Spire - Dev Log 31

Hello everyone! Last week, I had hoped to release a new small build update, and crunched over the weekend to try and make it happen – but in the end, I didn’t have enough time to actually complete what I had set out to do and polish it. Realizing this, I decided to put out a poll for the first time. In it, I asked if I should delay the release or follow through with an unfinished build and with over 200 votes in favor of delaying, I decided to take a very short break and then get straight back to work.

Quite a bit has been done since then, so let’s go over what’s new.

New Scene System

Originally, the update was meant to just include Savina’s sex animations once you reach a certain relationship level (this value is invisible). Currently, when you get to the appropriate level or somehow give her the 100 mil she jokingly asks for, you’ll get a text box with placeholder text. The goal was to replace this text box with a full set of animations complete with a scene selector.

For this, I had to build a brand-new selectable sex scene system, which differs significantly from the standard Purification system. It’s tied directly to dialogue and features an additional set of UI showing the available animation options, letting you click on whatever scene you want to start.

One of the big changes in this system is environmental interaction. As I wanted Savina’s scenes to stand out more, I wanted to make use of environmental assets to allow for different kinds of poses. Thus, I had to build additional functionality tied into the scene selector. Unlike Purification, which just plays animations wherever you are, this new system now uses specific positions and can be paired with furniture in the environment. While not dynamic (maybe in a future project), the scenes with Savina can be paired with chairs, tables etc.

Naturally, adding this system broke a bunch of things, so I spent a lot of time fixing them. I’m still ironing out how to make scene selection work smoothly on both keyboard and gamepad, as right now only the mouse works.

Animations

Before starting work on the selectable scene system, I had finished two of Savina’s sex scenes. After completing the selectable scene system, I then moved back to animation and finished a third. With Savina’s animations now done (for now) I’ve decided to shift focus to expanding purification animations for enemies. So far, I’ve made the following animations:

• Two new Purification animations for the Bound enemy (front and back)

• A new Purification animation when interacting with the Witness enemy from behind

This is part of an effort to address feedback about the overused Witness missionary animation on most new enemies. Some enemies will still share animations due to time constraints, but my aim is to add enough variety to keep things fresh.

Additionally, I will also start working on animation sequences for Ophelia too. Her scenes may require moving both the player and Ophelia to a new map, so I’ll likely need to tweak the current system or create a dialogue-triggered level transition. This might not be done for the next update, but it’d certainly be nice to have both Ophelia and Savina’s sex sequences complete.

Free Mode

I’ve finally begun work on Free Mode using the new selectable scene system. As the new system as a whole is quite developer friendly, I’ve been able to start designing the dedicated level where you can interact with all the characters and enemies in the game. Currently it features the following:

• Non-hostile versions of enemies you can interact with

• Selectable scenes for said enemies that expand beyond what is possible in the main game (basically animations from other enemies are available for some)

• Outfit selection and bonus information via dialogue (so you can switch between the different versions of the enemy seen in other dungeons)

• A shooting range to test out weapons (mostly for fun and not very fleshed out)

Since this mode includes enemies and bosses throughout the game, including those not seen yet, it will be locked behind progression. That means that it likely won’t be available in the next version, though if enough people want to see it, I could try and temporarily make it available for testing purposes.

What’s next?

From here on, it’s mostly animation work until the next update. I still need to complete the two final boss fights, which I’ll shift focus to once the next update goes live. I don’t have a release date in mind for the update, but I want to try and aim for around the middle of the month (about two weeks from now).

To make up for the delay and indecision, I’ll be temporarily returning to weekly dev logs until the next update. Big or small, you’ll hear from me again next week. Once the update is released though, I’ll be knuckling down and focussing on finishing the game.

Anyway, that’s all for today. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you guys next week!

Sin Spire - Next Release Poll

Hello everyone! This is my first poll and kind of a spontaneous one. As mentioned in the last Dev Log, I planned to drop version 0.0.5a tomorrow. The good news: most of my stated goals are done! The bad news: said goals are very rough and buggy.

I also got sidetracked working on a few systems to support Savina's animations and also started working on new purification sequences for enemies that didn't have them. Everything mentioned is in a half-finished state with not a lot of time to polish, bugfix etc.

That said, I did say last week that I would release the new version tomorrow so if that's what you'd prefer, I'll still try and meet that. Anyway, here’s my question:

Would you prefer:

• A rough version tomorrow with unfinished Savina content
  OR

• A more polished build later this month with finished Savina scenes and extra animations?

The 30th deadline definitely helped in getting me motivated again, but I’m not quite where I hoped I'd be. Let me know what you'd prefer!

Sin Spire – Dev Log 30

Hello everyone! Apologies for the lack of images this week – most of what I’ve been working on is either still very early or tied to spoilers that I’d rather hold back on for now. There’s also been a fair bit of non-visual progress that doesn’t make for great screenshots.

That said, I’ll be upfront: development has slowed down, and I’ve fallen behind on the work I had planned.

Final Boss and Arena

Since the last dev log, I’ve been focusing on the final areas of the game – specifically the arena where you fight the final boss. It’s still quite rough around the edges, but functional and definitely usable for now. My current priority is getting everything to a minimum viable product (MVP) state before diving into polish.

The final boss itself has had some finishing touches added. All that’s left now are the animations and AI.

Cutscene System Updates

As mentioned before, I will also begin working on the intro and outro cutscenes for the final boss. These scenes need to account for several player-driven variables, which has led me to rework some of the internal systems for how cutscenes function. That said, this is still a work-in-progress and as these scenes are not yet prepared, I haven’t been able to effectively do much testing.

I also want the player to make a few final choices during these intro and outro scenes, so I’ll also need to build a choice system (not related to the dialogue system) into the cutscenes in a way that integrates cleanly.

Savina & Ophelia Sequences

I’ve started animating the long-awaited sex scenes with Savina and Ophelia. Each of them will have three sequences, with around 3-4 animations per sequence – that’s 6 sequences in total (20+ animations).

Unlike the purification scenes with monsters and bosses, these scenes will not use dynamic positioning. That gives me the freedom to make use of the surrounding geometry which allow these scenes to be more unique and character driven.

If I have time, I’d like to also add an intro animation as well to further flesh out the personalities of both characters. All their lines are recorded and also include sex dialogue, which will play out similarly to how Stalkers speak during their purifications.

Something I have yet to decide on, however, is whether these scenes will play in a linear way the same as the Stalker defeats or if I should create a new sequence selector UI that will let you pick specific sequences to play. This needs to be made anyway for Free Mode, but I am considering it for these animations as well.

Cut Feature – Challenges

Now for the less fun or exciting part: I’ve decided to make some feature cuts.

Specifically, the Challenges mode seen in the Extras submenu. These challenges were basically little experimental gameplay areas that I had planned on including as an additional fun feature. Only one has been worked on and was last touched probably last year or early this year. I doubt anyone will actually miss these as they’ve been unavailable but it’s still a tough call.

Ultimately, I have my hands full already with the main game and the more desirable features (such as Free Mode) so I’m making this cut to prioritize those things. In the future, I may revisit the idea as an update.

Burnout and Next Update Plan

I’ll be honest – I’ve been running out of steam lately. I’ve been taking more breaks, getting more distracted and progress in general has slowed. There were smaller signs of this already but since the last dev log, I haven’t been operating at maximum efficiency. The same kind of slump hit near the end of HotPW’s development too, so maybe this is just part of how it goes near the finish line – that “so close, yet so far” feeling.

To help counter that, I’ve decided to shift my approach to the next update. Originally, I wasn’t planning to release anything at the end of this month. I said I’d probably wait until next month and leave it at that. But I’ve realized that pushing things back like that – giving myself too much room for excuses – could lead to bad habits.

So, in an effort to get motivated again (and hopefully give you something to look forward to), I’ve set a short-term goal: finish the Savina scenes mentioned earlier and release an update at the end of this month. That build will include those scenes and anything else I’ve added or changed since the last update.

Even if it’s a little rough or buggy, I’d rather release something than fall into a cycle of silence or delays. You’ve all been incredibly patient and supportive, and I don’t want to take that for granted. This step-by-step release approach feels more manageable right now than aiming for one big, perfect update.

Quick Translation Note

Any new content in the upcoming update will not have Chinese or Russian translations. I’ll be making localization a late-stage priority. For those who reached out about translations – thank you very much. I appreciate it and will be in touch again after we hit beta.

Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you’re all doing well. See you next time!

Sin Spire - Dev Log 29

Hello everyone! I hope you're all doing well. May was... a bit of a weird month. Not much got done, unfortunately. As some of you know, I took a break at the beginning of the month (which I mentioned in the last dev log), and then managed to squeeze in a couple of tasks before running into some major PC issues.

After a sudden bluescreen, my boot drive stopped booting entirely. And to make a long (and painful) story short, I ended up replacing both my boot SSD and motherboard. The good news? The system is now running much better than before the issues began.

Once my PC was back in working order, I spent some time stress testing everything to make sure it was stable. Admittedly, I got a little distracted by the flurry of recent game releases but I'm back now and truly ready to dive in again.

The Past Week

Mostly, I've been reinstalling software and making sure my development tools are working. To ease back in, I started with something simple: a new outfit the Witness.

As you might remember, the last version of the game introduced alternate outfits for the Witnesses to better reflect the dungeon they're in. The only outlier was the final dungeon, where the Witness still wore her original dress from the Catacombs. This new outfit addresses that and you can see what it looks like at the top of this post.

Originally, I had planned to give her metal hooks in place of hands, but I've held off on that idea for now. The new look is made to sit alongside other enemies like the Bound, with its black plastic/leather look.

Everything Else

Well, I’m at a bit of a strange point in development where I can’t say much without potentially spoiling things. We're nearing the end of the game, and from here on out, just about anything I say could give something away.

I’m not sure how sensitive you all are to spoilers for a game like this, but personally, I’d rather let certain moments and reveals happen in-game rather than in a dev log.

That said, here’s a small checklist of the big remaining tasks I need to complete before reaching beta:

• Finish Boss Fight #6

• Create the final boss arena

• Create the final boss fight

• Create cutscenes for before and after the final boss

• Create alternate cutscenes based on player choices

Okay, that last one might be a small spoiler - but I think most of you saw that one coming. I won’t say what those choices are, but they should be fairly obvious by now.

I’ll also need to sort through a lot of recorded dialogue to make sure it matches the cutscenes. Some of these may end up being presented more like standard dialogue scenes rather than full-blown cinematic ones - we’ll see how things go.

As for the hand-crafted final dungeon I had planned: I’ve decided to put it on hold for now. If I find there’s a pacing issue between Boss 6 and the final boss, I’ll revisit it as a stretch goal. But for the time being, I want to focus entirely on finishing the core game.

What's next?

Bug fixes and small additions are taking a backseat until we hit beta. My goal is to have a playable version of the game - from beginning to end - by the end of this month or early next. After that, I’ll focus on polishing, fixing bugs, and preparing for a proper release.

I know it might sound ambitious, but at this point I need to give myself a firmer deadline to stay on track. Burnout has definitely crept in, and without something concrete to work toward, I could easily slip into procrastination mode.

That's all for now. I'll check in again next time with more (probably vague) updates on how the endgame is shaping up. In the meantime, I need to knuckle down and start animating - there's a lot to do on that front, especially with the boss fights and cutscenes. See you all later.

PC Problems

Hello everyone. Brief update today as I'm a bit pre-occupied. As you can tell from the title of this post, I've run into a problem with my PC. Last night, I blue screened (BSOD) and found that my computer would no longer boot. After trying the usual troubleshooting steps, I made a tweet and stepped away for a while. Today, I started running some tests and it does look like that the windows installation on my C Drive got corrupted. I have been able to access the files through an external SSD enclosure connected to my laptop and am currently making backups.

I did, as a knee-jerk reaction, buy a replacement/upgrade for the SSD (I'm currently using an 1tb ssd and bought a much larger one) which will arrive in a few days. That said, the fact I can access my files is a good sign that nothing is broken - it's just the windows installation. After I've backed up my files, I'll be running a system repair from a flash drive and hopefully I'll get back into my PC before the end of the day (unless something really bad has happened).

I had planned to write a dev log for today, but I've been distracted by this. The general gist of the dev log was going to be the following:

• I've started blocking out the final area

• I've made a bunch of notes regarding boss fights

• I've started testing some boss fight ideas with placeholders

That's all for now. I'll make a post on Twitter if everything works out. See you guys later.

Sin Spire - Dev Log 28

Hello everyone! It’s been a while – how have you been? This month has flown by for me. Version 0.0.5 was a major milestone, marking the completion of all planned procedural dungeons. To celebrate (and recover from the crunch) I decided to take a break – play some games, relax and return refreshed… But things didn’t go quite as planned.

Video Games and Modding

As I mentioned, I intended to take a break after 0.0.5. The game I picked was the newly released Oblivion Remastered. I’ve always enjoyed Bethesda games, particularly modding them, so I felt that revisiting Oblivion would be a good time.

Upon jumping in, I was met with... hideousness. The original game didn’t exactly have great-looking characters, but my goodness – these remastered ones were something else. Still, knowing the game is moddable – and built in Unreal Engine – I figured I’d have a bit of fun trying to mod it.

And mod it I did. This quickly spiralled into me releasing two mods for the game. They’ve been surprisingly popular (I now have a lifetime supply of Nexus Premium!), but I realized something: I never really took a break. I just burned myself out on something else.

Modding is a different kind of work, but it’s still work (arguably harder than making a game at times). Between managing comments, Discord messages and Nexus feedback, I completely derailed myself from Sin Spire.

So for that, I truly apologize. This was not the intention and I want to be clear: I am back working on Sin Spire now. I still think tinkering with modding was a worthwhile exercise as I might use this information for a future project.

Bug Hell

When I returned, my main goal was tackling the pesky dungeon generation bug. It had only appeared a couple of times in testing before the 0.0.5 release, but after seeing players report it consistently, I knew it needed attention.

However, since then, I haven’t been able to reproduce it once. I tried lowering my framerate, testing edge cases – nothing. And that’s incredibly frustrating.

The procedural generation system in Sin Spire is heavily modified, but not originally built by me. Going forward, for any future projects involving procedural systems, I’ll build them entirely myself. I’ve learned firsthand how awful it feels not knowing why something breaks – whether it’s due to my own work or inherited code.

That said, I’ll continue trying to resolve this bug when possible, but honestly, it might stick around until release – or even beyond. I hate saying that, but I want to be upfront about the limitations. I could spend the next month and a half hunting it down, or I can focus on finishing the game. I’ve decided the latter is more worthwhile for now, and I’ll revisit the bug later.

Unfortunately, this past week has been a bit of a wash in terms of content – no bug fix, no new features. So, I can’t promise a new build by the end of the month.

The Plan

Now that the rough stuff’s out of the way, let’s talk about what’s next.

The story content is nearing completion. Only two boss fights remain, along with a fully hand-crafted environment for the finale. Dialogue has already been recorded (with a few retakes underway), and the immediate aftermath of 0.0.5 is in place. The main focus now is finishing the ending and reaching beta.

But that’s not all I’ll be working on.

There are a few aspects of 0.0.5 that I’m not entirely satisfied with. While I’d love to revisit and refine the final two dungeons, my immediate priorities are:

• Fixing outstanding bugs

• Working on Purification Animations

The lack of new purification animations was one of the biggest criticisms of 0.0.5. They were unfortunately cut due to time constraints, but if I release anything before the end of June, it’ll likely be a bugfix + animation update.

As for the scenes with Savina and Ophelia, they’re still on the to-do list – but they’ll come after the final boss fights are complete.

Conclusion

This month’s been a bit of a bust but that’s just part of what happens when you’ve been developing something for a year. I’ll do my best to post another dev log next week, even if it’s a short one, so I can keep my promise of two logs per month. What I’ll have finished by then is up in the air – but I’ll keep pushing forward.

Thanks again to everyone who played the latest build and offered feedback or kind words. It really does mean a lot. Until next week – enjoy the weather and I’ll see you soon.

Sin Spire – Alpha Test Build 0.0.5

Hello everyone! We’ve reached the end of April, and as promised, here is version 0.0.5 of Sin Spire! If you’ve been keeping up with the Dev Logs, you’ll know this is a pretty big update. There’s a lot of new content, most of which I’ll leave for you to discover (assuming the bugs don’t get in the way too much).

First off, I want to apologize for any issues with the Chinese and Russian translations. Some of you might already know that after a hiccup over the weekend, I had to rush and get all the translations into the game over the course of just two days. I probably made some mistakes – wrong translations applied here and there – and I’ll do my best to fix them in a future patch.

Now, regarding the boss fights: they’re still a work in progress. I think the Slacker and Mangler fights are close to where I want them to be, but The Girlfriend’s battle is still very undercooked and will likely be completely reworked in a later build. That said, all three Stalkers now have their purification sequences implemented. The only major thing still missing are their lust draining sequences when captured – right now, they're all temporarily using The Slacker’s animation as a placeholder.

Speaking of placeholder animations, the new enemies introduced in this build do not have unique purification sequences – they’re currently using The Witness’ animation as a stand-in. That’s not the intention, but I ran out of time and had to make peace with it for now. I know some of you are probably tired of seeing that same animation, but I appreciate your patience just a little longer.

Despite those rough spots, I hope you enjoy the new build! Be sure to check out Ophelia’s new voice acting – I think her actress did a great job bringing the character to life! Also, make sure to save before fighting the 5th boss.

As always, bug reports should be sent in the Discord server, though do avoid mentioning any known issues if you can. This build hasn’t been extensively tested so there will most likely be bugs new and old.

Anyway, that’s all. I’m very tired and will likely take a break before resuming development. First thing I'm gonna do is go to sleep. Thanks as always and see you all next time!

Known Issues:

• The player sometimes snaps back to their previous position at the end of a sex scene.

• Controller support does not work in the Map or the new Extras menu.

• Stalkers may freeze when you start hiding.

• Audio levels for voices are inconsistent.

• Missing animations for the Bound, Twisted and Banshee enemies

• Missing animations when caught by either the Mangler or the Girlfriend

• Green Pendant uses an orb placeholder model and icon

• One of the blessings does not have an icon

Sin Spire – Dev Log 27

Hello everyone! Today marks a fairly large milestone for the project – though fair warning, this dev log will be pretty word-heavy with not a lot of pictures. I’ll mostly be chatting about various parts of development progress rather than showcasing new art assets. Still, a lot has happened over the past couple of weeks, so let’s dive in.

Next Version Progress

The 0.0.5 update is nearly complete. The main thing left on the checklist are the boss purification sequences. As I’ve mentioned before these can be quite involved: I need to create them for three different bosses, and each boss requires two sequences with six animations each – that’s 36 animations total before the end of the month. Needless to say, I can’t guarantee that all of them will be done to their best quality.

The reason I haven’t worked on these sooner is because I’ve been distracted with a lot of other things – some exciting and some fairly routine. One of those exciting things is:

Translations

One of the most frequently requested features has been multi-language support. Naturally, I want as many people as possible to experience the game. But there were a couple of roadblocks: the story needed to be locked in, and the mechanics finalized – especially for tutorials – before translations could begin.

Now that we’re approaching the final stretch of the game – the final area and ending of the campaign – I decided to announce in the last dev log that I was looking for translators. Soon enough, some incredibly generous community members reached out, and thanks to them, translations into Chinese and Russian have begun!

Setting this up on my end was no small task. I had to transcribe every bit of text in the game up to the current endpoint and organize it into documents so translators wouldn’t have to play through the entire game to translate. That process took a few days, but it made everything smoother going forward.

I’ve already received a good portion of the translations, so version 0.0.5 will include partial support for Chinese and Russian. Implementing the translations is fairly straightforward, but still time-consuming – we’ll see how much I can get in before the end of the month.

Boss Fights

The upcoming 0.0.5 boss fights are in varying degrees of completion right now. They’re all playable and beatable but the actual fights themselves aren’t quite done:

• The Slacker’s fight has been improved a bit, though I may still need to rebalance it later – I went a little too hard on the difficulty, and I’ll be watching to see how players respond.

• The Mangler’s fight is still solid and doesn’t need too much attention.

• The Girlfriend’s fight, however, still needs work. Right now, it’s a little too random and leans heavily on her just shooting at you like a turret. I want to revisit this after the next update and make it more dynamic and interesting.

Voice Acting

This was the large milestone that I hinted at. Translations are also a part of that milestone but this has been something that’s been a long time coming: All major dialogue for the main characters has now been recorded.

That includes the Stalker dialogue which has been complete for some time but, finally, Ophelia has a voice. Until now she’s basically been a text box with a name tag, but now with her voice added in, her personality really comes through.

And as mentioned in the previous dev log, Ophelia’s voice work being done means I can finally implement the Green Pendant and let players progress through her questline (though, as with Savina, some animations will still be missing for now).

Gameplay Tweaks and Bug Fixes

As always, there’s plenty to fix and plenty to tweak. The list is quite exhaustive but I figured I’d mention some key changes:

• Purification Interruptions: Enemies can now knock you out of sex sequences if they see you. This might sound brutal – and it kind of is – but to balance it out, you’re now invincible during the “ragdoll” knockdown phase, so you won’t get stun-locked or killed unfairly. This is technically a bug fix as enemies were always meant to do this but something in their AI was borked.

• Parrying Tweaks: Parrying isn’t changing in normal mode, but for players on easy mode, I’ve extended the parry window slightly to make it more accessible and befitting of the name “easy”.

• You won’t lose money to the abyss or die when grabbed by a Stalker anymore – you're now invincible during that animation.

• Fixed a bug where the Stalker timer kept running even after changing floors.

• Adjusted how TAA interacts with resolution scaling to prevent some visual glitches. Essentially, you can’t modify your resolution scaling if you’re using TAA or TSR.

Art Updates

Art-wise, I haven’t done a lot this month – but I did finally replace the last of the whitebox models in the starting hall. The front door to the Spire is now an actual door, and the statue at the center of the room has been updated to something that ties into the story more directly.

What’s next?

Here’s the short list of priorities leading up to the next update:

• Finish the purification animations for all boss fights

• Continue implementing translations as they come in

• Edit and implement voice lines for Savina and Ophelia (and cut the rest later in May)

I know some of you might be disappointed if your language isn’t represented yet, but this is just the beginning – I fully intend to bring more translators on board for different languages over time.

That’s all for now and as always, thank you for the support. I’ll catch you all next time. Until then, take care!

Sin Spire – Dev Log 26

Hello everyone! I am now back after my brief break and have already gotten back to work. Like I mentioned in the previous dev log, my current priority is focusing on Alpha 0.0.5, which should contain all the dungeons and boss fights leading up to the end sequence of the game. The goal right now is to make sure everything is implemented – even if it’s a bit rough around the edges.

As of right now, I’m happy to report that each dungeon is now fully playable. Each one has its own Stalker, boss fight and visuals. So regardless of how work-in-progress things are, you should be able to play through most of the game come next release. There is still a lot of work to be done, obviously, especially in regards to balance and polish.

Boss Fights

The dungeon boss fights are currently playable and mostly complete. The fifth boss is basically finished, but the two before it still need a fair bit of work in terms of animation, balancing, and overall presentation.

You’ll notice a bit of a shift in design compared to the Witch fight. These newer encounters lean more into raw damage output rather than specific move sets with counters. You’ll be relying on parrying, positioning, and keeping up pressure rather than memorizing patterns.

This wasn’t exactly the direction I originally wanted to take boss fights in, but due to time constraints, something had to give. There are still bosses outside the dungeons that need attention, so maybe those will get a bit more love – though no promises.

Stalkers overall have been something of a headache, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some regrets about including them. That said, they’re a big part of both the gameplay and the story, so they’re here to stay.

Dungeons

As mentioned, the remaining dungeons are mostly done, though they still need balance adjustments. I think the Slacker’s dungeon from the last build turned out well – it encourages players to pay attention to their surroundings thanks to the traps.

In the last two dungeons, however, I dialed back traps quite a bit, but that’s had the unintended side effect of making them a little too easy to rush through. You can essentially sprint past everything with minimal resistance, even with the addition of more dangerous enemies.

Rather than adding a new mechanic like the obsidian keys to gate progress, I’m considering reintroducing the traps I had dialed back on. At this point in the game, players should be familiar enough with them to avoid being caught off guard too easily.

I’m also thinking about adding new enemy types specifically designed to slow the player down, rather than just spicing up combat variety. Something like the Smiler – an enemy that messes with player movement – might work, though I don’t have any solid concepts just yet.

Story

With the game now playable up to the end sequence, the story also needs more attention. A lot of the core narrative is already in, but much of the flavor text is still missing – and that’s something I’ll be focusing on soon.

I’m also working on Ophelia’s Pendant, which will be dynamically spawned into a dungeon once that part of her quest is active. I plan to use a similar system for spawning notes. The challenge will be making sure the system is robust, but not frustrating – so players don’t miss out on key lore, or the pendant itself.

Speaking of Ophelia, her story has been written for a while, but since she hasn’t been voiced yet, I haven’t rushed to finish her quest logic. Hopefully that will change soon, but I’m still waiting on the voice lines. A part of me is tempted to delay her quest until beta, but I don’t want to risk alpha players locking themselves out of it if they keep their saves after clearing all the dungeons.

Translation

This is one of the most frequently asked questions I get. The reason the game doesn’t currently support other languages is simply because I wanted to wait until most of the English text was finalized. Now that we’re getting close to that point, I’m planning to start looking for translators.

The main hurdle now is just finding the right people. I’ve already set up a language switching system in-game, though it currently doesn’t do anything without translations. If you’re interested in helping out, feel free to reach out on Discord!

What’s Next

There’s a lot of polishing and balancing ahead, though most of that will probably come during the beta phase. In the short term, I’m focusing on:

• Animations for boss fights (especially purification scenes)

• Animations for the new enemies (again, specifically purification)

• Visual variants for enemies based on the dungeon they appear in

And of course, if I get Ophelia’s lines, I’ll start implementing the rest of her questline as soon as possible.

That’s all for now. Thanks as always for following along, and I’ll see you in the next update!

Sin Spire – Dev Log 25

Hello everyone! I wanted to get a Dev Log up this week since I won’t be posting anything next week. Despite my original plan to release the next build (0.0.4) this month, I completely forgot that I won’t actually be here at the end of the month. I apologize to anyone who was expecting a major update, but I have plans to make it up to you.

The next big numbered release will be in April, and instead of 0.0.4, I’ll be skipping straight to 0.0.5. Since I’ve been numbering builds based on dungeon additions, you might be able to guess what this means: I plan to include both of the next dungeons—the fourth dungeon, known as the “Hotel,” and the fifth and final dungeon, the “Slaughterhouse.” This will bring the game very close to its Beta version.

For those who aren’t aware, the Alpha version is the work-in-progress phase, whereas the Beta version will be fully playable but may still have missing features and assets. Once we hit Beta, development will primarily focus on smaller additions, bug fixes, and polish.

Now, let’s talk about the two upcoming dungeons and the new enemy featured at the top of this post.

The Hotel

The fourth dungeon is a Love Hotel, complete with neon signs, heart-shaped beds, and a more contemporary feel compared to the others. The pacing here shifts away from running and hiding, instead emphasizing combat.

I’ve started calling the last two dungeons the “Action Dungeons” since they introduce faster, stronger enemies that will challenge everything you’ve learned up to this point.

One of these enemies is The Twisted, the one seen at the top of this post. Originally, I intended for them to be another melee-focused enemy, but after seeing feedback about the game’s gunplay, I decided to make them more unique. The Twisted can use every gun the player can.

That overpowered double-barrel shotgun? now it can be used against you.
That supposedly weak SMG? Try being on the receiving end.

They have some damage dampening (since getting deleted in five seconds isn’t fun), but dodging melee enemies while taking cover from The Twisted’s gunfire has proven to be a compelling challenge that definitely makes the game feel more action oriented. They will first appear in the Hotel to introduce their mechanics before going full throttle in the next dungeon.

Their one plus-side is that once you purify them, you can take their weapon and they do have a noticeable charge-up before they start shooting.

The Slaughterhouse

The Slaughterhouse is a dungeon that I’ve pretty much known what I wanted to do with from the beginning of development. It was always planned as the final dungeon in the game and as I've been juggling both it and the Hotel, this dungeon ended up being completed first, with the exception of its Stalker.

This dungeon solidifies the more combat-centric approach with wide-open spaces and miniature arenas instead of the various corridors seen in earlier dungeons. Hiding spots still exist, but they're mainly for avoiding the Stalker, rather than regular enemies.

By this point in the game, you should be powerful enough to handle most threats, but getting swarmed is still a real danger. To potentially make up for anyone who is behind, this dungeon will also offer more rewards for completing runs in.

The Banshee, an enemy I introduced in a previous post, will also make its debut here. Like the Twisted, the Banshees have a ranged attack though they can also use a melee combo up close. Overall, I’ve had a lot of fun testing this dungeon so far.

What’s Next?

With the Slaughterhouse mostly done, my next step is to go back to the Hotel (Dungeon 4) and bring it up to standard. Right now, it feels too empty, so I’ll be populating it with props and refining the lighting.

Beyond that, I’ll be working on stronger variants for recurring enemies like the Witness, giving them new visuals and increased difficulty. That will likely happen after the Hotel is mostly finished. Boss fights also still need to be done, so they’re on the list as well. As you can guess, at least two boss fights will need to be introduced in the next version so that progressing through the dungeons is possible.

As I mentioned earlier, I won't be here next week. My birthday is also coming up, so I'll be taking a short break and resuming work in April. I'll keep you all posted as always!

That's all for now! See you all again in a couple of weeks.

Sin Spire – Alpha Test Build 0.0.3a

*Sorry for the late release, just as I was about to press the "post" button, I encountered a pretty bad bug regarding statues. It's better now, but the statues are still be a bit buggy.

Hello everyone! I originally planned to release this earlier in the week, but I decided to take some extra time to refine the new features before putting it out into the wild. Version 0.0.3a was primarily meant to be a bugfix build, but since I was in the middle of adding new mechanics, it now includes several new features:

• Difficulty Settings

• Save Slots

• Autosaves

• Subtitles (enabled by default)

The first three were discussed in the last Dev Log, but subtitles are a new addition. These apply to non-dialogue voice lines, meaning hit reactions and miscellaneous vocal cues now have associated text.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where dying in a boss fight would send players back to the main menu.

• Enemies now react to being hit.

• The main quest now progresses correctly after defeating the Duchess (Failsafe added).

Balance Adjustments:
I’ve also buffed melee weapons and made a change to parry mechanics – enemies staggered by a parry will now take double damage until they recover. Both of these changes might make the game too easy, so I may tweak it later.

As always, feedback is welcome and best delivered on the Discord server. Unless any major bugs pop up, the next release will be 0.0.4, which will hopefully introduce the next dungeon.

Until then, enjoy the update!

Known Issues:

• The player sometimes snaps back to their previous position at the end of a sex scene.

• Controller support does not work in the Map or the new Extras menu.

• Enemies may stand around during a sex scene – or sometimes spin for no reason.

• The Stalker Timer sometimes continues after changing floors.

• Stalkers may freeze when you start hiding.

• Audio levels for voices are inconsistent.

• Dying to a Stalker can result in money bag being dropped in the void.

• Statues are buggy.

Sin Spire – Dev Log 24

Hello everyone! At the end of February, I released version 0.0.3 of Sin Spire, and so far, I’ve received a lot of feedback. First off, I want to apologize for a frustrating bug that sends players back to the title screen when dying in a boss fight. That wasn’t intentional, and I’m currently putting together a new version that fixes this issue along with a few others.

I originally planned to release the update today, but instead, I wanted to take a moment to discuss a few things in this dev log. I’m debating whether to release the patch in the next few days or hold off until next week to include more fixes. Either way, since this update will arrive before the next major version, I’m adding a few experimental features I’d like to talk about.

Difficulties

Something of an ongoing discussion for Sin Spire is its difficulty. As the developer, I don’t find the game that hard, but feedback ranges from “too easy” to “rage-inducingly impossible.” While I think both extremes might be a bit of a stretch, I do take these critiques seriously. Some difficulty spikes come from bugs that end a run unfairly or mechanics that aren’t well-explained, but beyond that, the game is simply designed to be challenging.

That said, I understand not everyone wants the same level of difficulty, so I’ve decided to introduce difficulty options in the next update:

• Normal – The intended experience.

• Easy – Reduced damage taken, increased damage dealt.

• Hard – Increased damage taken, reduced damage dealt, and the map is removed.

These settings may need adjustments, and I expect some players will still find Hard too easy or Easy too hard at first. You’ll be able to change difficulty in the settings menu whenever you’re in the Starting Hall.

The game will track if you have changed difficulty mid-run so that you cannot cheese unlockables or achievements in the final game.

Save Slots & Autosaving

Another requested feature is save slots. Originally, Sin Spire only had a single save file, but after a bug forced some players to restart their runs after not unlocking the new dungeon, I decided to add multiple slots. The first save slot remains the primary one for Boss Rush mode and other extra content.

Additionally, I’ve introduced autosaving as a safeguard against crashes. Some players have reported fatal errors (which I haven’t been able to replicate or fix yet), so this should help prevent lost progress for the time being.

Autosaving triggers whenever you use a portal – so each time you enter or exit a dungeon, your progress will be saved automatically.

Debug Menu

Now, before you get too excited – this isn’t a cheat menu. The Debug Menu is meant to help visualize things like quest progress. This relates to the bug where some players couldn’t enter the next dungeon. While I’ve implemented a workaround, the root issue with the main quest not progressing is still lurking somewhere. This menu should help pinpoint what’s going wrong.

I’ve also added a reset button that teleports you back to the starting point of a level in case you fall through the floor. In the future, I might expand the Debug Menu’s functionality, but for now, it’s mainly there for you guys to use, since I can access all of this in the editor.

What’s Next?

That wraps up what’s coming in the next update, alongside various bug fixes. Outside of that, I’ve been working on the next dungeon and finishing up the script. Speaking of which – I’ve actually finished the script! (Well, at least the first draft.) This is a big milestone, as I’ve now sent Savina’s full script to her VA and started casting for Ophelia.

With the script mostly locked in, writing-wise I’m shifting focus to notes that can be found throughout the dungeons. Alongside that, my priority will be gameplay – until I receive the voice lines, at which point I can begin animating more scenes.

In the short term, I’ll continue fixing bugs and working on the next dungeon.

Anyway, this has been quite a wordy dev log. I haven’t even mentioned the Slacker at the top of the post. I put that picture together quickly for this update – if you’re not familiar, the Slacker is the Stalker of the third dungeon. For everyone who isn’t a Supporter and hasn’t played the latest build, I’ve included a short list of key additions that were introduced in 0.0.3.

Changes from 0.0.3

• Voice Acting for Savina

• WIP Introductory Cutscene

• Third Dungeon

• Stalker Lust Draining Sequences

That’s all for now. Until next time, take care!