9/20 Status Update

This is going to be a special status update because I'm going to talk about things besides Netoria Tactics 2 for once. It's been a while since we did that. But this weekend is the first anniversary of At the Mountains of Friendship. It came out in late September, and further development was canceled by early March. It didn't even last half a year. It wasn't received badly, it just wasn't very popular. The biggest reaction was more of a "meh", which is basically as bad as it can get. Indifference is a bigger sign of death than hatred for a creative project.

Well, this last week I've been sprucing it up, playing it again to get the game ready for a one-year anniversary update with all the characters unlocked for everybody and... this game is awesome. What is wrong with people? Fun characters, interesting gameplay, cool art, and concept, sure it's not perfect but there's some damn good stuff here. With creative projects, you often need to step back for a while to see the actual quality of something you've been working on for a long time. Well, it's been a while and I think AtMoF is cool.

Does that mean I'm going to start working on it again? No, it's very expensive to make and the main artist for it is working full blast on Netoria 2 now. Usually, when something I make fails, I blame myself. I probably didn't make a good game. This time, I'm changing my mind. AtMoF is a good game, it has some big flaws of course but the core stuff is cool, it's the market that's wrong. Of course, that doesn't change the business reality of the game not working out, but that's not all that matters.

 I mean look at this tableau of the characters. This is the good ending, where the player character kidnaps them all to get tentacle fucked for all eternity because he likes looking at them. That's the good ending! Playing as the eldritch abomination destroying reality is a cool concept dammit! And these are cool character designs with fun personalities.

But what's that I said earlier abnout an anniversary update? That's right! Coming this Sunday, AtMoF 1.4, with all 15 girls available to everyone. Including Turnip! Does anyone care? No idea, but I'm doing it anyway.

Let's talk about another game that "failed", Futa Oasis. Now this one I can't be as indignant about, because it has several glaring flaws and design mistakes. But again, it has cool stuff in there. A fun setting, what I think are interesting and well-written characters. It's just ruined a bit by a cardgame I could never get to be fun and a randomized dialogue structure that was cool in concept but ended up being a disaster in the end. This is another game that I got super discouraged about developing further because of the mediocre reception.

But... there's a lot of good art and writing already in place there that I could repackage into something better. I'm leaning back towards doing that again. I can put it up on Steam, it'll make some amount of money (hopefully), and Jasmin, Zuri, Parisa, Nadiye, and Azra will get the game they deserve.

While we're talking about old games I can take Naked Ambition and... nope, sorry. Still no movement on that one. I know, the game has literally like two weeks of game time left. It's almost done. That's kind of the problem. Whatever I do with it can; 't be half-assed. It's the ending, it needs to wrap all of these threads up in a satisfying way. And so far, nothing I've done has been anywhere close to satisfying.

And now back to our regularly scheduled Netoria 2 update. Things are going well, that second demo should be ready for next week with six levels to play through. Things are going fast enough that I might even beat my anticipated release date of January for Act 1. Maybe. No, promises. This week's preview art is of Zaman in his female form doing a little exploring.

He might be a little unsure about it now, but he'll have to get used to it because Zaman's POV is all about his TF. You play that route, Zaman is going to be a girl whether he likes it or not.

That's all for this week. As always, thank you for your continued support.