There was no April 2023 review as I was travelling and also dealing with a personal issue. May 2023 has been ‘all change’, so please read on…
Last month (May 2023)
Stories: Forced to Cum is taking a back seat while I work on the games.
Games: I decided to change things up by starting a new game and putting the others on hold. Escape from Enderon is on hold; I intend to finish it but have no motivation to work on it at the moment. Whodini’s Escape Room Challenge is on hold; it’s mechanically complex and requires a lot of writing to complete, and I get the impression that there’s less interest in it versus my other games.
Instead, I used May to complete the first version of a Twine 2 game release template based on The Oxford Piranhas. This is now being used to create a brand new game in Twine 2 called The Zhonghua ZeroDay. In this game, you play as a spy on a mission that is set on a villain’s luxury yacht. It’s a gauntlet-style game, a bit like the recent prison escape sequence from Escape from Enderon (which was inspired by an iOS game called Sigma Theory), but uses a tile-based map which you move around and have enemy encounters in.
The development aims of this project, broadly, are: (1) to recreate the feel of a game that I once made for myself but have lost the source code to; (2) to test the Twine game template I made; (3) to get a smaller, more achievable game out for you guys since you’ve been waiting a while for updates. I envisage the scope of this game ending up similar to Santa’s Sweatshop.
Next month (June 2023)
Stories: Forced to Cum will be ongoing at CHYOA.com if I get bored of working on the new game.
Games: Work continues on The Zhonghua ZeroDay. The map navigation mechanics are mostly complete and next up is the enemy encounter system. I’m working hard to get a dev build ready and once it’s available I will post it to the Homotextual Gaming Guild Discord server. I’m hoping to release something later this week!
Something else I should mention is that I’ve been thinking hard about where to source the art assets for my games (e.g. player and NPC portraits). I used an AI tool called Artbreeder for The Oxford Piranhas, but I’m not sure I want to do that for future games, for various reasons. I’d like to be able to draw my own character portraits, so I’ll be teaching myself the skills needed to do it over the next few months. Watch this space. Any advice on this is appreciated! Commissions are potentially an option as well, and I’d definitely consider it if there was a big influx of new subscriptions here.
I’m around on the Homotextual Gaming Guild Discord server, where you can message me, discuss my creative projects, and grab dev builds of my current games. If you’re a fan of gay-focused interactive fiction, come and say hello!
As always, many thanks to all my patrons for your support!