Waifu Wonderland After 5 Months of Dev

This week was 5 months of developing Waifu Wonderland, so I wanted to reflect a bit on what's been done so far, and do the monthly update a little bit early.

The thing I never really see talked about, and something I always try to warn people about, is how much work adult game dev is. Especially before release. After 5 months of work, there still isn't an initial build of Waifu Wonderland out, and it's still going to be a while. That also doesn't count the months of work I did before I decided to actually make it a real game. Making something for this long and still having it so far from completion and not getting any support can be really disheartening. Even more so when you actually do have a game build out, work for even longer, and still have no support. Which happens a lot in adult game dev.

Burning Out -

I'm really hitting a low point with dev right now, and getting really burnt out in general. I've been making at least one piece of artwork for Waifu Wonderland every week for 5 months now. Each of these take anywhere from 6-12 hours to do the actual artwork, plus another 2-3 hours exporting and making posts like this across various sites each week to try and promote. Plus I have to spend time researching and designing new characters which generally takes 2-3 hours. On average, I generally spend at least 12 hours a week working on the project, but when I do things like create extra artwork and put things in the game, it's even more. On top of that, I'm in my final semester for my art degree. I technically met all of the requirements for my degree last semester, except a language credit. So I only had to take the one class, but I needed the financial aid money, so I took a full course load of 4 classes. 3 of those are art classes, and then the one language class. At my school, art classes are 3 hours long, twice a week. So I'm spending 18 hours a week in class for those, and then I spend another roughly 10 hours a week working on projects outside of class for each. So that's 48 hours a week for my art classes, on top of the 12 for this project. Plus I have my normal class, which I generally spend about 6 hours a week on. That's 56 hours working on projects and classes each week. On top of all of that, I've also been looking for a job. I try to apply to at least 3 jobs a week, and those generally take a lot of time too. When you apply for a job dealing with art, they generally send you some kind of test to make sure you know what you're doing. Then of course most ask for cover letters, and depending on the job, I have to adjust my resume. Some even ask for essays on why I want to work at that company. So these applications take a long time. Generally a little less than 2 hours. Then on top of all of that, I also have to make SFW material for my portfolio, which is another ~8 hours each week. So we're up to about 70 hours of working each week. And it's exhausting.

This is why I always say that support means a lot. Not just monetary support, but things like likes and comments. When you're working this much, and a project is getting met with silence, it's easy to decide that it's not worth the time and to cut back on the amount that it gets worked on. Since projects like this can't be included in a portfolio and can't really make money unless they're supported, they're by far the easiest thing to cut out. It's not like SFW art where you can post it on multiple shops as stuff like T-shirts or keychains and do art videos on tiktok or youtube and post around to all your friends and family to help share and stuff like that to try and get support. It's basically either people support you on patreon, or nothing.

That Being Said -

Despite how it sounds, I'm not dropping Waifu Wonderland or anything like that. However I have officially decided to gut the content for the initial release to the absolute minimum to get something out. I was hoping to get a little bit of attention for the game by putting the artwork on various sites, but that isn't really working. Probably because I didn't really think it through. I don't want to post completed artwork in full quality everywhere, because it doesn't give as much of a benefit to patrons, but the censored versions aren't getting much attention because I can't really post them anywhere except pixiv. Once the initial version is out though, I can start posting the uncensored versions on basically every site, as well as advertising the game itself across multiple sites. From there I'll probably do a monthly or bi-monthly update for the game (depends how much time it takes and how much support the game has). That way patrons still get the artwork and game builds early, but I'm also able to advertise relatively frequently.

On top of all of that, I'm also kind of tired of having to stick to being inspired by specific designs and having to build characters based on content that was put in the game when it was a completely different project. Just getting rid of it all and rebuilding will make the project a bit more fulfilling for me as an artist. Which will help keep me motivated. On top of that, having to stick to what was in the game made doing polls way harder. I couldn't really do, "which character do you want to see," since I was doing characters based on the ones already in the game. The best I could do is which one to see first, which is pretty low stakes. But now I'll be able to do things like share different designs for the same character and do polls on which one makes it in, or what area should be more fleshed out, and storylines people want to see more of, etc.

Anyway, here are the newest totals.

Character CG - 14/15 - 93%

Scenes - 13/24 - 54%

Sprites - 14/15 - 93%

Total - 41/54 - 76%

And here's those totals broken down by character. Bold is what's left to make.

1 - Ayako (done)
BJ Scene (done)
Sex Scene

2 - Kaori (done)
Sex Scene (done)

3 - Shiori (done)
Sex Scene (done)

4 - Madison (done)
BJ Scene (done)

5 - Sakura (done)
Sex Scene (done)

6 - Real Estate Agent Mirai
Foreplay Scene

7 - Sandy
HJ Scene
BJ Scene
Basic Scene (done)

8 - Ivy
HJ Scene
BJ Scene
Basic Scene (done)

9 - Valentine
HJ Scene
BJ Scene
Basic Scene (done)

10 - Seika (done)
TJ Scene (done)

11 - Alicia (done)
Sex Scene (done)

12 - Ms. Hartley (done)
BJ Scene (done)

13 - Angela (done)
HJ Scene (done)

14 - Main Character (done)

As you can see, it's been stripped to just what's done, and then what's absolutely necessary. I've taken out all of the extra scenes I could. Even stripping out the deluxe and special packages for the working girls. I had thought about leaving them in, but decided to cut them out for both balancing reasons and because it'll be more fun to add more scenes in gradually. I couldn't cut the HJ and BJ scenes though. It wouldn't make much sense and would make it so that the only option is pretty expensive for the initial version. It's meant to help level, so having the lower options in the initial version just makes more sense to me. I also wanted to think of a way to include Almiranda, since she's already done, but the Lab NPC is just too broken. I need to delete it and start over, and that would also require at least one more character CG anyway. So it was easier to just cut it entirely. Almiranda will just be included in the next version.

The only other established character with an extra scene that needs to be made is Ayako. Since she's a starter, she needs a scene where you actually have sex. Since your starter takes your virginity, there couldn't just be a BJ scene.

From there, the only new character is the real estate agent.

So we have 5 more weeks of artwork until everything will be ready for the initial release. Probably what I'll do is make all of the artwork on the same schedule I've been doing of one piece a week. Then once it's all done, just work on the game until the build is ready for release. Hopefully that will only take a week, but we'll see. In 5 weeks it's also the end of the semester, so I may be busy and wont be able to work as much on the game until after I'm done with all of my final projects and have officially graduated. If the project gets some support, I'll be able to make it more of a priority, but as of now, it's the least important project I have. So if I need more time for other things, time working on this will have to be cut first. Knowing that a release is getting close, I'm excited to keep working on it and get something out there though!

One More Thing -

After years of trying, I've finally found a plugin that I was able to get to work. I've finally figured out how to loop videos in RPG Maker. Unless the game makes enough to hire someone else to do it, I don't plan on making Waifu Wonderland animated though. I am awful at 2D animation and it takes so much time. But this means that a project I was working on for a while can actually be made now. Ironically, it's one that's currently in the poll right now to be included in Waifu Wonderland. It's called Alien. I don't have time to work on multiple adult projects right now, but once I graduate I will. And if I find a job, I'll have even more time. So I'm planning on making this a secondary project after I graduate. I already have 116 animations that could be used for the game (if I reuse the ones from Holiday and Teach Me). I also already have a base build for the game. Since I didn't initially intend to release Waifu Wonderland, I used it as a base for Alien. Maybe I'll have them set in the same universe, but with Alien taking place in the future or something. That way being in the same city can make sense. I'll worry about that later. For now, my focus is on Waifu Wonderland, but I was pretty excited about this. I thought so much work would go to waste, and I'm glad it's not. Also glad to be able to make an animated game again.

So what about the poll? -

Since I'm effectively taking an option away from the poll to make into it's own game, you may be wondering what to do about the poll. Well, no one had voted on it, so I decided to end it early and implement collectables. It's the easiest thing to put in, and I think it'll be the most interesting and beneficial to the project overall. I'll talk a bit more about it in another post.

Updated -

And that's all for now. Hopefully it didn't seem super whiny at first. That really wasn't my intention. As I've said before, I try to be as transparent as possible, so I wanted to fully explain my situation and where I'm at. I think it's important for people to know what's going on, as well as what adult game dev is really like. Next week should be the last character art for the initial version! After that it'll be entirely scenes until release. Since Ayako was the first, I'll probably save her for last. Just for fun. We'll see what happens though.