Just a heads up in case you're not following over on Itch: I have a dev log up about the general timeline going forward. Take a look.

It's been a long time coming, and there's still plenty of side content to come, but after 13 months, I finally have a game to share with all of you. There will be plenty more to say later, but for now I'm sure you're eager to get into it.

So without further delay, allow me to present Cruel Serenade:


GutterTrash.

Now you are.

6/16/23 7:00 PM CST

The "hard part" is finally over. As of today all the Event CG art (and one last pesky art asset) for the initial release of Cruel Serenade Chapter 2 are finished and in place.

I'll now be moving on to a whole bunch of odds and ends: finishing up stray bits of programming and writing, fleshing out things here and there that only exist in rough form currently, and generally making sure all the connective tissue is in place. And of course, a lot of playtesting and bugtesting. It's always hard to gauge these things, but as of now I don't foresee any issues with completing this by the end-of-June deadline.

To everyone who's supported this project, on SubscribeStar, through buying the first game, or just through comments and help finding bugs and tuning things, thanks. We're nearly there.

If you're not already, be sure to follow me on Itch.io or watch me here so you can be ready when it drops.

I think you're gonna like it.

After a long while, I can finally announce that we've hit the 2/3rds mark on Cruel Serenade Chapter 2: the maps are finished! Take a look here, if you haven't already. Thanks to everyone for your support. Now to get to work on some steamy art.

A bit of a delay, but also a peek at what's done so far. Take a look!

Has been for a while actually, but I waited to post a journal here as I hate spamming people about money stuff, and figured those interested in the game were probably already following the Itch.io page.

If you weren't though, and if you'd like a way to toss a little toward the project each month, check it out.

I'm also posting because I currently have four supporters there. This isn't a complaint: just the opposite! I'm really flattered even four people are willing to support like this, for a project that, while cool (and eventually to become even cooler!), is still pretty early on. However, there's an annoying restriction to SubscribeStar that makes it more difficult to use the service until you hit a minimum of five supporters. Thus, I'm writing this journal in an attempt to get ONE more supporter there. If you've already bought or donated, or just aren't in a position to right now, don't sweat it. But if it is a possibility, consider being that fifth supporter. It'd be a big help. And we're at 5! You guys are amazing, thanks so much.

Aside from that, work continues. After what seems like forever, I'm nearing the end of a particularly hard chunk, so I may have a real progress update to share soon (read "in a month or so"). Probably not much content, as I hate spoiling things, but just a look at where things are etc.

Some day I may program an actual gallery, but in place of that for now, I've put together a scene guide so you can check if you've got everything, or how to get what you're missing. Check it out here.

And I'll hopefully have a scene guide up in the next day or two. In the meantime, if you haven't already seen it, CasstheSquid did some really cool fan art a while back, and you should definitely check it out.

So what's next?

First, other than minor additional bug patches, I'll be retreating to my bunker to work on a few more art assets for the game. Nothing huge, just filling things out a bit more. I expect this to take another month or two.

Beyond that, here's the rough plan for the larger project:

Three missions like this, except a bit larger and more varied. New enemies, new gimmick (still at least vaguely involving mind-fuckery though), new tilesets etc. Each will pass a small amount of data on to the next via a simple text file (should be able to do this with plugins), allowing each to effect the subsequent ones in small ways.

After this, there will be a fifth final mission for the final "boss" that will play differently depending on the outcome of the other four. This is ambitious, but not wildly so: I mostly just have to do what I've already done four more times, just a bit larger and with a few additional moving parts.

However, how far this project goes from here depends on interest. I planned from the start to do this first mission gratis, partially because I wasn't even sure I would even be able to finish it, and partially because I wanted to do something like this at least once, whatever the reception. That said, I had two worries going in:

The first was that nobody would really care; there would be some polite "That's neat I guess" and that would be it. That worry has obviously been proven wrong, and I'm deeply grateful people can see the same spark of something fun in this little project that I do.

The second was that no one would really be interested in paying for it, and this worry remains to be seen. I've already received a few payments/donations, and to those responsible, thank you so much. It's wild seeing this project, that's seemed like phantom for so long, actually bringing in ANY money.

That said, this chapter took seven months to put together. Subsequent ones will probably take about the same, if not a bit more. I intend to always keep payment on this first one optional, and do a hard price on the rest (probably $5), but the hope is that this first one will still bring in enough to justify sinking another seven months or so into dev on the second.

All of this is to say, if you like what you see, and you're able, toss some money in the hat. If there's a decent response, I can justify continuing to work at the pace I have been, and we can get the next mission out quickly. If not, it will be a lot longer, and depending on the response to mission 2 there may or may not be anything to follow.

Either way, thank you all for your interest and feedback so far. I look forward to sharing more of this with you as it's made.

Thanks to everyone who's downloaded, played, and gave feedback on the game so far. It's great to finally get to see some reactions to it after working on it for so long. For anyone worried, there won't (probably) be a new journal spammed every couple days like this. This should be the last one for a while, but more on that in a bit. First:

Cruel Serenade is finally up on Itch! 0.2 just went up, and here's what's new:

Changelog:

-Difficulty has been tweaked. The main special attack now requires a secondary to recharge it after a couple swings, preventing players from spamming it too many times in a row. A number of other details have been adjusted slightly in terms of damage, health etc. Still shouldn't be TOO difficult, but a bit more of a challenge now.
-Complimenting the above, it is no longer possible to flee combat. This is balanced somewhat by a slightly reduced detection zone for enemies as well as, as before, the fact that enemy mobs do not respawn.
-A number of sanity counters have been added, especially to the grab. This should alleviate the frustration of being tranced with one enemy left and watching grabs fail again, and again, and again...
-"Slut Mode" (battle after 3 losses) is now more fully fleshed out.
-More sex taunts have been added so it's not the same 3 lines over and over.


If you had issues with the difficulty before, give this one a try for a bit and see how it feels.

This is already long, so check out my next post for future plans.


Edit: this previous referred to the update as 0.1.2, when it was in fact 0.2

You can grab it here, or as the main download link on the gallery page. Minor updates like this will go up as edits on that page, rather than spamming the gallery with a bunch of posts.

A quick changelog:
-Removed the ability to unequip weapon/fight unarmed
-escape and item use is now disabled when hypnod
-Being hypnod while blocking now results in a proper hypno sprite
-Enemies will now attack as they should after winning a fight via sex.
Previously some switches weren't being reset, causing them to stop attacking.
-Boss now breaks guard as intended, making him an actual challenge again.
-Player sprite no longer temporarily goes blank when entering downed state.

Not yet changed:
-Ease of escaping battle. This is more complicated than it should be, and requires
more thought.
-A strange bug (I think pointed out by Sheeplike), where Mezz cumming will result in an
hp decrease (correct) and then an hp INCREASE (incorrect). Having trouble replicating, but
I've seen it at least once myself now, so I'll have to go hunting for it.
-general difficulty tweaks. These will take some time to tune before they're ready.
-additional content. Could turn out many ways, but I'll probably add at least one more
scene, some extra stuff for the fights, and a bit more polish on various things. Yet to
come.


Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to comment, bug report and give feedback. It helps a lot! I'll probably share a more detailed plan for the future in a bit, but I wanted to get the simple bugs patched quickly. In the meantime, spread the word. If you know someone who likes weird kinky hypno furry games, send 'em over. I'll be going a bit more public with this before too long, but I don't and never will use Twitter, so I'm a little limited. Any word of mouth is appreciated.


Oh, and some info for non-windows users:

RPGMaker MV, the engine this is based on, is essentially a webpage, drenched in javascript, run in a ui-less browser. As such, it can theoretically run on anything with a modern web browser. Convincing it to do so is a bit of a hassle, and it will not run smoothly or quickly. No official support beyond this post will be given for this use case. But if you absolutely can't or won't run it as a desktop Windows program, try the following:

1. Follow this guide to force your web browser to allow local files to operate correctly (I was only able to get this to work on Firefox, but YMMV).
2. Go to the www folder of the game release and find index.html
3. Drag it into the prepped browser window.
4. If successful, you should see the game start.

Or just starting, depending on how you look at it. It took so long FA updated their upload interface in the meantime (or maybe I just forgot?).

If you haven't already, take a look.

Hey all, hope you had good holiday season, or at least survived.

Figured I should toss something up as it's been a while. Thanks to everyone, and especially the new watchers: appreciate the interest given my lack of content for a while.

Work on The Project continues. Hard to nail down an end date exactly, but if things go well I'll probably have something I can show within another few months.

Meanwhile, best of luck to everyone. I know it's hard out there (it's hard in here too).

Man what a month. Lot going on, but not much of it art related. Should be picking up before long though, and I've got some stuff in progress I think you guys will like.

The first (attempted) rip off of my art! What should I do to celebrate?

Not enough interest, unfortunately. Thanks to those who did bid though. May try again in a year or two. Meanwhile, YCHs continue.

Intro:
Two years ago, I started uploading here as an experiment. I'd been trying to get my art to a point where it
was worth sharing for a while, and earlier that year a hypnosis piece I saw finally pushed me to make
something I had to upload somewhere. At first it was a few obscure places, then Derpi, and finally here,
with my first few uploads at the end of 2018.

It was pretty intimidating at first. Everything was unknown, everything had a high chance of failure, and
many things did fail as I gradually figured out what I was doing. But the experiment turned out pretty good
in the end. People have been great with comments and feed-back, I've been able to grow both in skill and
technical knowledge, and I have a growing business doing commission work. I don't plan to stop any
of this any time soon. Just the opposite: I'd like to start another experiment.

Up to present, I've basically been doing two kinds of pieces: commission and "personal." Both are great,
but also limited. Commission pieces help me build a business and provide a healthy challenge of working
within limits, but they're also limited, because there's a lot of stories and scenes that just can't be done when
one character has to be essentially a non-character. Personal pieces are great because they allow for the
freedom to prototype new ideas and techniques, and give me a full cast of characters to work with. But they
also don't bring in any money, which can be a problem given the time they take.

Proposal:
I like doing "personal" pieces, and I think a lot of you like them too, possibly more than the commissions.
But gradually I've been doing fewer and fewer, as it's become harder to justify spending time on them.
That's why I'm writing this journal.

Picture commissions and personal pieces as two extreme ends of a spectrum. I'd like to create something
in the middle. That's the new experiment.

How will this work?

I'll pitch three ideas for new pieces. People can bid for the one they like best in the comments. But unlike a
regular auction, the bids will be additive. There will be a preset winning price, and when the total bids on
one of the pitches reaches that price it will be drawn (and written, each will have a short story as usual).

Notes:
Patreon is the first thing in everyone's minds for a situation like this, but I think this is a better solution, as
there's more connection between you and the art being made. This way, if you don't like the ideas one month,
you can hold off for a bit, and when you DO see something you like, you can push it to the front of the line.
Because of scale, this bid system also works much better for a smaller artist like me; Patreon is mostly
a tool for very large artists.

Conclusion:
So I'm posting this journal, to see if there's interest, suggestions, etc. Do you want to see more stuff like
Broken, Following Leads or New Management? Not just once in a blue moon, but regularly? This is how that
can happen. And whatever your feedback, thanks for getting me this far. The watches, favs, and especially
comments mean a lot, and are always appreciated.

I don't usually plug things, but  ichthyoptera is working on a CYOA called Enter the Underdim that has:

-hypnosis/mind control
-drugs
-subs being put in their place
-lots of gay sex (though not exclusively!)

Something tells me that if you like my stuff, you might like his too. Take a look!

Took a bit, but we're up and running again. I think I'll move the sketch break pieces over to scraps too, if anyone is looking for them later. Hopefully that doesn't break favorites or anything.

Later this week I'll finally be going in for a surgery I've been waiting on for a while. Nothing too dangerous, but it'll be good to finally have it done. Unfortunately this means I won't have anything new to post here for a few months while I recover. I do, however, have a pile of various sketches from the past couple years I've been meaning to share for a while now, and this seems like the perfect time. So I've taken the best, organized it a bit, and set it to post automatically while I'm recovering, one piece every Saturday for the next 8 weeks, starting next Saturday.

I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you all on the other end of this.

Just wanted to toss a thanks to Dracoflames382d1 for being the 200th watcher, and to everyone else as well. It's been a rough couple weeks for me, and a rough couple months for people in general, and as silly as it might be it's nice to at least have this as a constant, to know that I can still make stuff and have people enjoy it. Hope you're all hanging in there.

There will be a bit of a delay on art as I expect to be off dealing with some personal things for most of this week. Should resume after that, and already have plans on a couple new pieces.

As 2019 closes out, I just wanted to thank everyone watching for a great year. There've been challenges and rough spots, but being able to finally get on a decent schedule, get my art out for people to see, and get feedback on it has been a bright spot through all of it. Thanks for watching, and here's to a great 2020.