[Important] A Serious Change Up: Same Art, New Artist, and An Important Rest

Hey there to all the beWildernauts and beyond. We’ve got a serious post for you all today, 1 that’s going to come with a shake up to things, hopefully for the betterment of all involved. This is a joint statement from both of us in the team, Unshi and Spook2099, so buckle in when you’re ready and let us fill you in on some decisions we’ve made between us with the hopes of a better beWilder. There’s a lot to cover, so be ready for a long read or to digest it all in chunks. Here we go then.

The Situation as it Stands

It comes as no surprise that despite all our trying and trying, we’ve been spinning our wheels as a development duo for too long now. We’ve tried redoubling our efforts and redoubling them again, we’ve made trade-offs and concessions in our road mappings along the way, and more on top of it all. No matter what we try it’s not gotten us moving forward at anything near an acceptable clip, and both of us on the team are guilty of making the situation worse instead of better even though we only wanted what’s best for the games, girls and the team. We can’t just keep pushing on as we are with the tools we have and simply expect it to get better. We have to make some big changes, and we are.

We’re now past our 8th birthday for beWilder and parts of our team and work goes beyond even that, past it’s 9th. That’s stupefying when you think about it, for a small indie team in the very niche area of x-rated gaming. It’s an amazing milestone we’d like to keep going, and more importantly, we’d like to keep putting out the content that’s worthy of that level of seniority. However, it’s been clear that our best years thus far are too behind us. Burnout has set in long ago and the moves we’ve made thus far have only made the matter worse, not better, clearly. On the upside, the problem is rooted more on 1 side than the other, so we’ve still got a lot of Oomph and drive within us, we’re just not set up as we need to be right now to harness it.

The long and the short of it, TL;DR if you will, is our engine is still revving but the transmission is worn out, meaning we’re crawling towards our sexy-game destinations instead of chugging along. If this were a real car we were talking about, the solution is obvious: Change out the transmission and off we go again. That’s what we’re doing today.

Change of Personnel

The biggest thing to take away from today is that Unshi will be taking an official Leave of Absence for the foreseeable future, likely for the rest of 2025 and possibly beyond. He’s been pushing far too long through a lot of difficulties, with the best of intentions for beWilder, but it’s obviously become too much to balance along with his mental health. In all honestly, we should likely have done this 1, even 2 years ago, perhaps more, but blind faith kept him roped up in the middle of things. In any case, it’s clear that simple hoping things will get better and pushing on isn’t going to give beWilder what it needs, and so he’s stepping down for now. He’ll be taking some time to deal with his burnout as best he can, with an eye on returning to form and being able to return to beWilder in the future should he best that monkey on his back.

In the meantime, Spook2099 will still be here, taking over the assets and the helm of art department for a time. With a big pile of writing already set down, there’s more than enough fuel to keep the engine going for as much time as Unshi might need, and with nothing but time and stubbornness, then plan is for Spook to be the needed transmission, turning those words to pictures and getting releases back on a steadier footing.

In a few months’ time, we expect we will open up a search for a more permanent artist to take over and fill the void as needed, giving us a steadier base to build on again. Firstly though, a little time for Spook to learn the art side more directly, both for better writing synergy and to know what is needed of any new artist (specific skills, time commitments etc) is a good thing, and a hard opportunity to come by otherwise. It also gives us a chance to gauge what time and help Unshi may need before he’s fit to consider coming back to the scene. All of this we’ll keep the fans in the loop of as we go.

The Games and Girls

What we all are here for and what we care about most at the end of the day, no doubt. It’s not so easy as to just change the seats like a game of musical chairs and expect we’ll be able to everything for everyone right after, so there are going to be some changes here too, and not all will be happy news. Let’s take it game by game.

Agents of Heels – Better we rip this band-aid off. We have to let AoH go and leave it unfinished as is. As much as we’d love to mark this “On Hold”, that would be too optimistic for what needs to be a realistic vision again going forward. From here, we’re going to essentially be a 1-man operation until we can reunite or recruit fresh blood, but even as a duo, keeping on top of 2 games has already gotten out of hand. It’s not going to be possible to split things well enough it’s worth it with just 1 person for as far as we can plan, and we think it’s fair to say the preference between us and the fandom both is to focus in on NTR instead.

It’s a really hard pill to swallow, but it’s a must. Agents of Heels is what first brought us together. It was Unshi’s first published content as an artist, and later Spooks very first published professional words too. We wouldn’t be who we are without AoH, which makes it bitter to leave unfinished, but better that than we overburden ourselves at this critical time and get nothing of it. Between the fact AoH has a limited future ahead of itself for not being OC content, and that the big finishes we planned for all the paths are too advanced to expect Spook to be able take on anytime soon, it’s best we leave it as is and hope maybe 1 day it might rise like a phoenix, but not make any further commitments to it. Our deepest apologies to all AoH fans, including ourselves.

Noemi’s Toscana Rebirth – We’re going all in on Noemi, building up on what’s already there, but that’s not to say NTR’s not without its problems. On the plus side of things, with plenty written to guide us, fans eager to see it, the assets still in play to use as is and an undying passion for the protect that has at times been a harm as much as a positive, it’s out best bet at being able to put out releases in as timely a manner as a 1 man band can, as it only needs art, art, art. We’re hopeful we can still make more of Noemi than it is now even as things are after today, the question we all need the answer to is by how much (and how sexier while we’re at it).

What NTR needs is more artwork made, and what making artworks needs is 2 things: Time and Skill. 1 of which we have abundantly, the other of which we need to build up as best we can, even if we’ve got eyes ahead looking to recruit in that talent eventually as the most likely future. NTR’s going to have to become as much of a practical practice ground to learn on the job for a while and that’s going to have to be kept in mind as we go. The biggest problem of all in NTR, that has weighed on the team a lot up to this point, is that it is huge as a game, and short of splitting it into 2 parts or something drastic along those lines, it’s a long way off from finishing. Even with a skilled artist on the job, it’s got some years left on it. Some very sexy, hot as Hell years, but still, years. With just 1 man on the job we’ve got be realistic. We’ve got to take it week-by-week and release-by-release to avoid getting crushed by it. Back on the positive side, the journey of an artist in active training makes for a lot to talk about and keep transparency open as we go, something that we hope will go a long way to keeping the fans involved and dispelling the funk that’s been hovering over this page.

What Comes Next?

We’ve made mention of a few things coming down the pipeline in the mid future, and a lot of the rest are still open questions waiting to be answered. These are big changes after all, and thinking we can foretell the future better than we can is part of what ended us up here now rather than any time before. However, we can tell you all what we expect the next few steps to be in the nearest days ahead:

- We’ve already begun the process of sharing and updating the assets of the games as needed. We’re talking above the range of 600GBs here, so it’s not a single day’s job. Between that and the admin needed for other behind the scenes stuff to be ironed out, we’re aiming to get ourselves set whilst the May page pause is in effect and kick off again by June, but playing things by ear there.

- Once that’s done, we’ve pretty much got to get right into things. We’ll start in on some warm-up in-game content for NTR. Obviously, these changes are big enough to disrupt our NTR Roadmap, but exactly how much we can’t say until Spook can get in and get some feel for working with Daz and Photoshop again. We’ll get back to you on all that with our Public Teaser post as soon as we can after, covering what’s to come in the first release in front of us.

- After Spook has what he needs to take over as the team caretake, Unshi will be AFK for the foreseeable future, at least when it comes to release work and content. Exactly what he’s going to do with his time is something he’s got to decide for himself (take a read of this 1 page comic by the Oatmeal, it says a lot more than we can, simply too), but keeping an eye on things from a respectful distance will be part of it. He needs to have the space to recharge and reignite his creativity again before any consideration of coming back is appropriate. That said, there will always be a place here for him and as part of the Discord community when/if he’s ready for it again.

Outro

That’s all there is to say right now, as if it wasn’t a lot already. There’s a huge amount to chew on and digest in there, not to mention a lot of land shifting under our feet as we try to stand on it. It’s honestly pretty scary for us, but it’s something we have to do, or simply be washed away. “Theirs is not to reason why, theirs is but to do or die”.

Big changes are coming, for sure, so take some time to mull it as needed. Another way of looking at it is it’s time to set out on a new adventure, with hopes for a brighter, sexier time ahead for all. The party sets out for Golden Toscana of Rebirth as soon as the ship “Assets” lands, but y’all will have at least until June to decide to come along if you’re still horny for Team Noe!

Until we’re ready to go again…

Be in it for the babes, and beWilder!