Update Preview for Succubus Stories v0.10 - Anniversary

Succubus Stories v0.10, Anniversary, will be released to patrons on October 29. It will be followed by an update to the free edition on November 5. Unlike most previous updates, some content in this update will remain exclusive to the patron edition indefinitely (but not permanently). In particular, mod support and the new art pack will remain patron-exclusive for the foreseeable future.

This update features new story content, a special anniversary storyline, a couple of new requests, a new encounter type, a variety of new and expanded activities, and more! In addition, a new art pack has been added to the patron edition of the game, and mod support is entering beta testing for patrons as well!

This update took a long time and faced multiple delays, and I'm sorry for that. I appreciate your patience and understanding, and I hope it ends up being worth the wait.

New Story and Side Content

A small amount of chapter 4 has been added here. It will set up the optional anniversary storyline, which is somewhere between a part of the story and a request in terms of length and importance to the game plot, and will see the player character returning to a location important to her past in search of answers. Note that once you head to said location, you must complete the plot of this story segment before returning to the sandbox. You will be warned about this in-game.

In addition, a few new requests have been added. I didn't add as many as I wanted, but some things that were going to be request rewards were just straight up added to the game instead, including a new consumable and an expansion to the gloryhole activity.

New Encounter Type

A brand new encounter type has been added to the game. This is the game's fifth, and probably final, encounter type. I don't want to spoil what it is, but I hope players will like it!

Obviously, having a new encounter type means new actions and encounter scene components, so this is a pretty large-scale addition. I will continue to add additional content to it in the future, however.

New and Expanded Activities

Some older activities have been updated with additional events in their playlists. This includes a few location playlists, maid work, and the gloryhole activity. I wanted to expand group sex activities, but there's three of them and I really need to just get this update out. Expect those activities to be next in line for expansion.

In addition to playlist additions, the gloryhole has a new sub-activity. There's a small chance of this event occurring instead of the normal gloryhole event, and that chance can be increased via a new trait line (requires access to the gloryhole and a few levels of Oral Expertise to unlock the trait line).

Finally, a new consumable item in a few variations has been added to the inventory. They are similar to potions but cannot be made, only found. Using them increases the player's lust dramatically, and can have other effects with certain traits. If you have certain perks, you will be able to do other things with them after using them. I don't want to spoil too much, but try them out!

Both of these latter additions were initially intended to be request rewards, so some lingering references to that may yet exist in the game. If you see anything like that, let me know. The requests that were intended to unlock these activities will be reworked to unlock traits related to the activities instead in a future update.

New Progression and Advancement

Both anal and vaginal sexual encounters have a brand new action, which can be unlocked through anal sex experience.

One new potion was added. It is available very early on in the game, but its full use is unlocked over time. It is a bit of a gross addition, so feel free to ignore it if you don't like the idea.

In addition to the new potion, a new consumable you cannot craft has also been added, as mentioned above.

A few new trait lines have been added. One line is related to the new consumable item, another line is related to the new gloryhole sub-activity.

Two sets of special traits were also added. These sets of "end game" traits require you to complete several other trait lines to unlock, and focus on providing you with various bonuses and interesting new mechanics when dirty or horny. I plan to add a few more of these advanced trait sets to the game in future updates. The changelog's hints section will provide detailed info on how to unlock these new traits if you need help figuring out the conditions.

Other Additions and Enhancements

Women can now appear as customers in prostitution. The default chance of a female customer appearing is 20%, but you can adjust this in the game's settings, even removing them completely or making all customers female! I was initially going to make the rate of female customers related to a trait, but I think giving players the control makes the most sense here. So if you don't want any female customers to appear, just pop into the settings to turn it off.

How criticals are handled in sexual encounters has also been overhauled and adjusted. Every action the player can perform now has additional flags for the type of action it is, with certain kinds of actions being more likely to trigger criticals on the partner or on the player. This will be the building blocks for me being able to add preferences of some kind to individual partners in the future. Balance of the new criticals is ongoing; in general it's easier to make partners orgasm, but not always easier to get high ratings. It needs more work to get back to the relative state of balance we had before this change.

New Hand-drawn Art Pack

The new art pack will be exclusive to the patron edition indefinitely, but not permanently. I expect this art to come to the free edition early next year at the latest.

A new hand-drawn art pack created by the talented Oni-san has been added to the patron edition of the game. It is optional, and you can change the art pack from the settings menu at any time. You can also now shut off art entirely, if you want.

Mod Support

Mod support will be exclusive to the patron edition indefinitely, but not permanently. It will probably be a long time before it comes to the free edition.

Mod support is now implemented in the Windows executable version of the game. Mod tools and documentation do not yet exist, but I will be releasing "official" mods to patrons over the next few weeks to test mod support and collect feedback. I hope to make these test mods fun and interesting, even though they'll be fairly small in scope.

If you're interested in helping me test mods in a more direct and interactive manner, please head over to the discord and let me know!

Test Mods Coming Soon

Test mods will be downloadable from here on patron or as optional files on the Itch.io page for the patron edition of the game. The first test mod should come out a few days after the update. These test mods will be small scale stuff, the first one will just add a single action to oral sex encounters. The next one after that will add a small activity.

Larger mods will be possible, but for the purpose of testing, I want to focus on mods targeting specific game systems. A larger mod to stress test the system will come in the future.

This Update Was a Struggle…

It's probably no secret that this update was a struggle for me to put together and get out. My family needs me now more than before, maybe more than ever before. I already started putting fewer hours into development, as many of you will probably remember, stepping down from monthly updates to updates every 6-8 weeks.

For right now, I want to try to keep to that 6-8 week turnaround, but I'm not sure what the future, even the near future, is gonna look like. I can only promise to be upfront with you guys. I appreciate your understanding.

I don't want to make any changes in haste, but I am considering changing from monthly payments to per-release payments. There's a few reasons I don't want to do this, but the benefits to you guys are very clear. Still, it's something I want to solicit direct feedback on, so expect a poll in the future.

And speaking of the future, I want to focus on getting mod support finished by the end of the year, with mod tools available, and hopefully finishing chapter 4 by then as well. The divergent nature of the story from this point on does probably mean smaller overall updates through the remainder of the project, so please keep that in mind. The updates will actually be about the same size as they've ever been (~20k - 25k words), but divided between several different story paths, making their playtime shorter.

Working on mod support also eats into my time to work on other stuff, but if I am able to get mod support to a mostly finished state, I can drop small updates and fun little things while I'm working on bigger updates, and I think that will help relieve any content droughts along the way.

As ever, thank you all for your continued support and I can't wait for you to play the update.

Any Walkthrough/Guide Authors Out There?

One other quick thing. If any of you would be interested in making a guide or walkthrough for Succubus Stories, it is a semi-common request, and I just don't have the time. If someone is interested in making one, I can provide you with any information you might need and answer any questions. The game is fairly complicated, and a guide for how to unlock requests and activities would probably be massively helpful for new players.

This is not a job offer, just to be clear, it will still be your guide, but I am willing to help out if someone else wants to take the initiative on it!

Anyway, thanks for reading, sorry it was so long!

See you soon!

Note: This post will be patron-only very briefly. The reason is because I believe only patron-only posts generate an alert for patrons or appear in their feeds.