0.45 Reflection and 0.46 Preview

Hello, perverts! I've been troubled lately by the war in Ukraine; I generally wish things like war and bombs and nations didn't exist, but I have a personal connection to Ukraine and Russia and my heart is with the people risking their lives to protect their homes. That coming on top of the awful ways the Texas state government is hurting trans children and their families is a lot! It seems a little weird to update and promote a strange porn game in the midst of all that, but hopefully it's a good escape.

There's a new poll for Center of Attention patrons where they'll pick the next horror expedition for the game! I've got a few ideas that haven't been fleshed out and I'd love your input on which I should work on next. The previous poll showed folks are fans of more horror expeditions and more training, so I'll be trying to prioritize those things.

I'm sorry about the difficulty in getting the patron version of the game this time around! The integration between Itch and Patreon is broken, and it's probably Patreon's fault. The situation is still a bit murky, but the devs at Itch are looking into it, and it seems like Patreon may have misconfigured their Cloudflare and responding to automated requests with a CAPTCHA. Until that situation's resolved, I'll make direct links to downloads available in the release posts. I'll be sad to miss the tracking and other features of Itch, but I want y'all to have access too.

Reflecting on the Second Anniversary

I am very glad to take care of some things that had been nagging at me about the game for a while. The branding, interface art, and title screen all seem superficial in comparison to the writing that forms the bulk of the game, but I want new and prospective players to have a more tempting first impression that gives a better idea of the game's feel.

So far, things seem to be paying off, at least for the redesigned cover art and game page. In my Itch statistics, it looks like this release has double the normal traffic, despite not having any tempting new features in the changelog. It might just be the novelty of the animated GIF that represents the game in search results, but we'll see if there's lasting benefit.

I was also pleased to put in the "sophisticated tastes" feature. Part of my philosophy with Ruin Me is to give content warnings for players but generally not treat kinks as something bad or extreme. However, there have been times where I've thought putting something freaky in would be hot, but wouldn't be substantial enough for an entire branch with a CW, and would squick out certain players who weren't into that thing.

The locked suitcase in your room is a half-in-character way for me to include those options for folks who are interested without having whole separate scenes or routes that only some people would see. Hopefully it feels simple enough in play and there's enough interest to make it worth continuing to work on!

Lastly, it turns out that my procedural text generation code didn't work with the engine's self-voicing feature. I don't know how many folks use Ren'Py's built-in TTS system, but accessibility is important to me. I fixed it, a bit sloppily, on my end, but I've already gotten a bugfix into Ren'Py and will probably submit another issue once that releases to help make self-voicing even more reliable.

Next Release

First, I'll note that I'll be occupied for the next week or so, so the release may take a bit longer. I'll be checking messages and doing some drawing, but won't be doing much writing or coding.

When the Center of Attention patrons voted on themes they liked, one unexpected standout was sexual information and education. When thinking about good candidates, I realized there was an opportunity to expand on something I haven't touched in a while: Meg's toys. I've started work on a sounding (urethral play) scene for her! It's something I have experience with but I bet most people would be curious about.

Since she's getting a new scene, I figure it's time to give Meg's art an overhaul. She was one of the first NPCs to get a redraw, and she now stands out as out-of-place compared to the characters who have gotten updates. With her redrawn, I'll feel even better about the introductory sequence and the game's first impressions.

Beyond that, I'll probably be doing whichever horror expedition ends up winning the poll. As far as the general game structure goes, there are enough horror expeditions to unlock all of Theresa's training, but more expeditions means more options for folks who might prefer a different one.

I've also got a few fixes and enhancements in store: there'll be a fix for a rare issue where Theresa grows a third arm during breakfast, an option to highlight "sophisticated" additions and modifications, and some more improvements to the way the journal displays tasks.

As always, please let me know if you have any issues, suggestions, or comments! You can reply here, DM me on Patreon, or email me at: phanes@phanes.me