Dev Log — October 2025

Hi everyone!

Today is an uncharacteristically bright and warm day for autumn in Denmark, so I thought it'd be a great time to write the latest dev log while sitting in a sunray outside. Abide the light darkens my computer screen significantly, it's nice with some calm while writing a message to all of you ❤️

The PvE overhaul is coming along nicely, and in the past month, I've managed to map out and implement the backend side of it in almost its entirety! What I'm working on now is combining all the different systems in the client and implementing the graphical user interface for all the new parts of the PvE system. I've been testing most parts of the system using debug input, and in the coming month, I will be playing through the game loop from A to B, and hooking up all the different systems along the way, so it can be played properly.

PvE Backend

Security and continuity are always a challenge when working with online games. You want to make sure abrupt disconnects cannot be used to cheat, and sudden server restarts don't result in loss of progress or rewards. In particular, when it comes to the new dice minigame, it's important that rolls are final, and when the player resumes the game after losing connection for any reason, the game should resume from exactly where they left off.

Random Seeds

Random seeds are already used throughout the game in many places, and the concept is that you have a seed that is used for rolling random numbers, and the same seed will always result in the same sequence of rolled numbers. For instance, this is used for speech impediments, where the input text is the seed. This means that the same input text will always result in the same output text, given the same speech impediment and level.

Because scenario progress isn't saved to the database constantly, and assuming progress data could be lost for any and no reason, random seeds help maintain the same random results and progress. A common example in online games is that you receive a reward right before a server crash, and the reward wasn't saved properly, so when you log back in, you either don't receive a reward, or you might receive an inferior reward. With a random seed, we can prevent both these scenarios from happening, because the same roll will have the same result, even if progress is reverted to a former state in the sequence, and random seeds are used for all random elements in the minigame to make it more robust to data and progress loss.

Rewards

Reward chests have been implemented, and each time the player completes a challenge, their reward chest will be upgraded with extra content that will be accessible to the player after the current run ends.

The reward chest works similarly to when you find a single item, but instead, it opens a window similar to a vendor or stash tab that contains the rewards the player has accumulated in their previous run.

I originally planned on making it so players could collect multiple chests before opening them, similar to games like Vermintide, but I ultimately ended up making it so players will receive their rewards immediately after their run is over. This was mostly done to save time and so I wouldn't have to also implement a screen where players could see their pending reward chests and choose between them.

The game can still store more than one reward chest for a player, and if a player doesn't open or empty their reward chest before suffering a disconnect, they will be able to access it when they resume the game. Losing out on a reward feels awful and few things can sour your experience like missing out on a rare or hard-earned reward, which is why making a robust system for rewards has been given a lot of attention.

Room Selection

The room selection has also been implemented in full, with all the necessary logic for rolling rewards, encounters, vendors, classes, seasonal events, bosses, and whatever else!

Room selection allows players to influence how the run progreses between scenes and encounters, and controls how scenes are linked together.

Grovel

Grovel is a new action that has been added to the game that all player's know by default. Grovel allows players to abort a scenario at any time, for any reason. This can be useful for escaping unwanted story content, skipping prologues, or getting your character unstuck if they are somehow stuck in a PvE scenario, as an extra precaution.

When used during a challenge, this will give your character the Recently Grovelled status effect, which hampers your character's stats and abilities to perform in challenges. This can be removed using Cleansing Beads, but you don't need the beads to grovel, and when used to skip a prologue, you won't be penalized.

Ability Checks

All parts of the encounter structure, including ability checks and dice rolls, have also been implemented, and have to be hooked up to a functional user interface in the client.

Charging and using activatable abilities, rerolling and scoring dice, and using a spell during an ability check have all been implemented and tested using debug input.

I'm particularly looking forward to hooking this part of the system up in the client so the minigame can be played properly on the test server!

Map

The first GUI upgrade I've been working on for the PvE overhaul is a new way of moving around campus. The game now features a map where the player can see the different locations and choose where they want to go.

The old check boxes have been replaced by buttons that more accurately allow players to say what they want to do without having to fiddle with settings. Players now specifically say whether they want to move to a location, explore a location, or look for another player in the given location, making it more convenient and easier to understand what happens when you change location. For the longest time, new players have sometimes been confused by player encounters and thought they ran into an NPC in the game, and I hope that this change will make it easier for players to understand when they are engaging in PvE or PvP.

Using the new map, players can select a location, which will show details about the location and what players can find while exploring. This will tell the player about named NPCs they can encounter, classes they can attend, and what rewards can be found.

Some rewards aren't always available in a given location, and will change over time. The location details will let players know what rewards and events are available if they choose to explore the location right now, including seasonal events that are currently active.

Steam

Players continue to ask about the game's Steam release and how the recent actions against adult games on the platform and beyond might affect the game, and I wanted to take a moment to address this issue and let backers in on what I know and how I think it will affect the game.

Steam and the Western societies in general are currently cracking down on adult content. The ploy is that this is done to protect kids (wE hAvE tO tHiNk oF tHe kIdS!), but I think it's a thinly-veiled excuse to remove porn because some conservatives and/or puritans don't like the idea of people enjoying porn or indeed having sex for fun, and would much prefer that people instead have kids who can work in their factories. It seems to be grounded in feudalism, and while I don't necessarily think it's effective, the intention seems to be to control people by limiting their access to pornography, so they will have to have sex instead.

There is also a subgroup of women's rights activists, who claim all porn is inherently misogynistic, and tradwife subcultures, who are against porn that is female-empowering. It's difficult to say who benefits the most and who is simply a useful idiot for the others, but suffice it to say, porn and adult content creators are under attack from all sides at the moment.

For a long time and until recently, the pendulum has swung in our favor, with freedom of sexual expression, enjoyment, and exploration being on the rise, but now the pendulum is swinging back around, but I doubt we'll regress back to before the last time Steam removed adult games from their platform, least they risk losing customers to platforms that are willing to feature adult games and create ground for their competition to grow.

Nutaku became rich from Valve's refusal to allow adult games on their platform, and I'm certain Nutaku's success was at least partially responsible for Steam opening up their platform to adult games, fearing they would start losing substantial market share to Nutaku, should the platform continue to grow. Virtually everyone consumes adult content, and that meant virtually anyone using Steam could begin spending money on Nutaku instead, if they didn't open up their platform to more adult content.

Steam, Mastercard, and Visa don't care about morals or some arbitrary definition of family values; they are billion-dollar companies optimized for profit. They walk a fine line between allowing adult content that can earn them money, without allowing adult content that could create a public uprising that could cost them more money. This makes them susceptible to zeitgeist, and means taboo adult content that "erodes family values" is more vulnerable.

Unfortunately, the attack on adult content also becomes an attack on the LGBTQ+ community and women, as games with romance and gender topics (pornographic or not) are purposefully conflated with porn and affected by the crackdown on adult games. We saw this when all romance games were removed from itch.io as a result of Collective Shout threatening the site.

Shoot people in the head?

PEGI 13.

Realistic depictions of blowing people's brains out?

PEGI 16.

Illegal drugs and gross violence against minors or minority groups?

PEGI 18.

Romance, porn, or gender topics of a non-sexual nature?

BANNED

How does this affect the game?

Hopefully, this won't affect Battle Mages in a meaningful way, but it depends on how far back the pendulum will swing. The game doesn't feature explicit pornographic illustrations, or taboo topics like incest, so it's perfectly likely the game will fall under their radar. The biggest unknown remains how Steam will react to the concept of an adult MMO, despite many MMORPGs having adult roleplay subcultures.

Recently, it has also surfaced that Steam no longer allows adult games to launch in Early Access or update their content, except through DLC. Since Battle Mages has already been approved for Early Access, and has a live EA page, it's likely we won't be affected by this change either, and because the client is a glorified standalone browser for launching the game through the website, it's unlikely we'd need to update Steam client after launch.

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That's it for this month's dev log!

In the coming weeks, I will continue to work on the run structure for PvE and work on a GUI for the room selection and ability checks. Before long, I should have a fully functional game loop and will start working on new, exciting adult story content for the game!

Thank you so much for all your support! Your support is the lifeblood of the game and I count my blessings that we've gone mostly unaffected by any of the crackdowns on adult games and creators until now, and hopefully, we'll continue to do so in the future! ❤️

XOXO,

Tinon