2025.05.18: Gang Aft A-gley 

“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.” - Robert Burns, To a Mouse, 1785

Hey, everyone. I apologize for a bit of a late post this time. As always, progress on the game is ongoing, though not without a couple of wrinkles along the way. Mistakes happen. Life intrudes. Computer rigs decide to throw tantrums. The wife steps on broken glass and has to have slivers surgically removed. So, everyone’s been a wee bit busy.

The phrase above, ‘gang aft a-gley’ is a Scots phrase that translates as ‘often goes wrong.’ Burns was expressing the futility of planning in a world where life is unpredictable and plans can go awry. The Yiddish phrase, ‘Man plans and God laughs’ echoes this sentiment, and while I have always understood the meaning of both phrases (being a terribly clumsy man), game development has brought this lesson home time and again.

Before this sounds like a eulogy, I want to emphasize that the game is still chugging forward, and we are nearer than ever to release. You can take a look at some renders from the game to get an idea of some of the things that you will get to see and explore in the first update (as well as a somewhat hilarious rendering mistake that I’ve taken to calling the ‘Hillbilly Ahegao’), but let me explain a bit more about what has changed in the game from the original version.

Let’s start with coding, which is a pretty easy thing to talk about since practically everything has been retooled to make for a better user experience for the player. You won’t see it, but you will experience the skill progression, xp progression, and the use of physical stats (Strength, Intelligence, etc.) to develop and complement skills that get used in the game in a sensible way that doesn’t require the player to overthink their character. 

Do a lot of physical work and you gain Strength and Constitution increases. Work on moving quietly and your Stealth skill increases. Learn about which herbs treat illnesses and your Herbalism skill goes up. Treat your loved ones with care, and you will find that their Love and Intimacy with you rises as well. The term ‘Mana’ has been replaced with ‘Energy’ following the reasoning that if you expend a lot of energy on casting a spell, you’re going to be limited in how much energy you can muster to face off against that ghoul or Orcish warband. 

We have added the framework for a few minigames - not crazy hard ones, but fairly amusing intermissions from the game which will allow you, the player, to take a break from a pretty heavy story and be a bit of a kid again. Of course, all of the minigames are skippable but you’d miss out on extra money and experience points. You won’t, however, miss out on any unique items, quest/story-related items. E.g. skipping the fishing minigame means a reward from the basic fishing loot table for the location, but nothing from the bonus loot table. Unique items and quest/story-related items will always be available, minigame or not.

This will also apply to random encounter battles that you will eventually run into. You can toggle the general difficulty of battles to your liking or change the difficulty later on, if you find the battles to be too hard for your casual play.

As for art, we’ve finished up the renders for one of 5-6 multi-part scenes remaining, to the tune of about 150 renders over the past 1-2 weeks, and that looks to be our regular output until the game is handed over to the playtesters. The work on the animations is ongoing; we are doing animations that are going to be somewhat unique to the AVN community, and that - as anyone who’s ever put together even the simplest of animations will tell you - takes lots of time and focused effort.

I have said before that each of the characters had to be recreated solely from the original game’s images, and often expanded upon. Each and every character is embedded with completely unique and (ahem) intimate details, from head to toe. That goes beyond two female characters having different hair colors or bust sizes.

Far beyond. 

I will have more details for you folks next week, but I wanted to let you know about the delay, as well as how very grateful we all are that you are here, supporting and cheering us on. 

Talk to you in a week,

Jack Oh