Hellooooo, happy August! This month's dev log is mostly a continuation of the stuff I mentioned last time. If you missed that one, you can find it here, but the gist is that we're working on both a mid-cycle quality-of-life update (v0.6.5) and Chapter 7 in tandem. This last month was primarily focused on the UI update, and the plan is to get that out in August and then dedicate ourselves fully to Chapter 7!

UI Update:

Last month, I showed some of the re-designed menus and gallery pages (Save/Load, photo gallery, scene replay, biographies, etc.). This month, I want to yap about some smaller, more specific things and then the thing that was, without a doubt, the hardest feature to code. I think it all looks great, but the main purpose of all of this was to make the game feel smoother to play and more accessible for users.

Android is, by far, our biggest playerbase (around 60%), so I try to design the entire game with the mobile version in mind. Sometimes, this means I decide not to implement certain features because of clear hardware limitations, but it's generally worth it because I'm able to reach a much wider audience. I was gathering feedback on things Android players found frustrating, and the thing I saw mentioned the most (and noticed myself) is how awful it feels using default quick menus. Obviously, mobile-users can't just right-click to open the settings/saves, so they have to use the buttons at the bottom of the screen that are generally pretty small, confined, and difficult to press.

New quick menu:

To start off, I added a slider that allows players to change the size of the default quick menu buttons, as well as some options to choose which buttons appear there (does ANYONE use quick load or auto-play?). Obviously, some buttons need to be mandatory to prevent mobile users from accidentally locking themselves out of the menu lol, but there certainly doesn't need to be 9. Quick load and auto-play are hidden by default, but they're easy to turn back on; settings, SaveLoad, and the back button are mandatory. There's also a real-time preview so you can see how big it is while messing with the slider.

As you can see, though, there is also an additional quick menu option now that I'm calling the "Drawer" quick menu. I set out to try to make an especially easy-to-press QM for mobile users, and I think I did an all right job. The general idea is, instead of having up to 9 words on the bottom of the screen the whole game, I consolidated them into a little square on the bottom right that you can press to open a "drawer" of buttons. A lot of people never use these, so I didn't see the point of having so many words on the screen constantly, but those who do use the QM (mobile players) can now easily access these buttons (with one hand!). The drawer QM option is the game's new default and comes with more customization than the classic style.

In addition to still being able to customize the size of the button and which QM options it has, you can also change the transparency. By default, both sliders are fairly low so it's pretty unobtrusive. If you're the type who hates any sort of additional clutter on the screen, there's also an option to make it completely invisible until its area is hovered over or clicked on. These new buttons should not only be easier to press on mobile in general, but the drawer style even allows you to hold the phone with one hand and still access all of the QM buttons with your thumb, which I think is cool. In the grand scheme of things, it does require an extra click to use (opening the drawer), though, but you're obviously free to keep using the classic style if that's annoying to you.

Lastly, the drawer QM (and choice buttons in general) defaults to the right side of the screen, but you can move them to the left side if that's more comfortable for you.

Save Rebuilder:

Next up: I mentioned last time that this update will be breaking everyone's saves, so it was important to me that I implemented a smooth onboarding system or at least a way to make replaying the game worth it. I did both! Not only did I retroactively go back and add around 200 photos to unlock through both normal gameplay and hidden easter eggs, I also built a super cool save rebuilder. Going into the settings and turning this on allows you to quickly get back into the game by either jumping to any chapter with the default harem path or manually recreating a specific save by answering a series of questions.

I created a polaroid snapshot for each question, and each chapter's section ends with them stacking all up and moving off frame. It took a lot of time to get everything working the way I wanted, and I'm really happy with how it all turned out. The above gif shows the Chapter 6 section of the save rebuilder (by far the chapter with the most choices lol).

Misc.:

Those are some of the bigger additions, but it's hard to quantify just how much this update changes. The game also now has a custom cursor that you can see in the gifs, as well as a new click-to-continue indicator icon at the end of dialogue. You can turn them both off, of course, but I think they're cool. There's a cheat in the settings that puts a little icon at the top of the screen when there's a hidden clickable render you haven't found yet. There's a new dialogue box, as well as a font overhaul throughout the game. Choice buttons got an overhaul and are no longer just default black boxes. The history (dialogue) page got a makeover. Every single aspect of this game was rebuilt, and it should look and feel better to use than it ever has.

Re-rendered content:

Alongside the photo gallery, there will also be (I think) 5 fully re-rendered and re-animated scenes from Chapters 1 and 2 to make being forced to replay the game a little more enjoyable.

I know that a lot of you don't like when a developer spends unnecessary time remaking old content, but it's really important to me to be proud of my game, and the simple fact is that I'm not in a few ways. I still find myself feeling embarrassed when someone tells me they're going to give LbtW a try, and I hate that feeling. As many of you know, there is no one who hates this game more than me when it comes to some of its first few chapters. I remade a lot of Chapter 1 last year, but there was (and still is) a lot of Chapter 2 that I'm really unhappy with. There will likely always be some janky renders here and there during the first few chapters as I will not be dedicating an entire update cycle to old content again and will continue to only update one scene here and there as the game progresses, but at the very least... I couldn't live with myself knowing some of those lewd scene animations from Chapter 2 were in there...

Long story short, the updated content here is primarily focused on lewd scenes from Chapter 2. I figured if I can't update everything, I can at least make sure the important stuff (NAKED BODIES) are up to my current standard. No more animations where you can barely tell what's going on because I had to angle the camera a certain way so you wouldn't notice that the dick was completely going through a character's face; no more animations where you can clearly see that a dick is, in fact, completely clipping through someone's hand; no more, just... weird and physically impossible body poses. If any of you have been here since the beginning, you know that this game's initial release actually had zero animations at all, so that means that the animations in Chapter 2 were some of the first that I ever did. God, this feels so good to finally be able to do. Good riddance!

The non-final list of updated scenes:

• Chapter 1: Sasha's shower + outfit try-on scene

• Chapter 2: Cass/Kristina library scene, Mallory solo scene, Sasha's first H-scene with Wake

• And then a smattering of minor things here and there, including one-off render updates, some dialogue changes, maybe even an entirely brand new small scene in Chapter 2 with a certain tall lady idk

• Altogether, it'll probably total to something like 500 new renders and maybe something like 30 new animations.

Recap:

So that's the gist of what's coming with v0.6.5: a lot. I'm really proud of it. I genuinely think it's the best looking UI in the history of AVN, and that's coming from me who historically thinks LbtW is the worst game in the world. No, I'm not biased at all. This is real. In all seriousness, though, there really isn't a clean way to mention all of the stuff done for this update. I've been trying to come up with a changelog, and it's hard. The new main menu alone comes with 35 new character portraits by Pickle that dissolve in and out. The save rebuilder has dozens of polaroid images. The gallery has dozens of character portraits depending on which gallery you're in. There was so much work put into every minute detail, and I really hope you guys like it. It's going to be buggy as hell.

Depending on how feedback goes when I send this build out to some playtesters in the coming weeks, we're hoping to ship v0.6.5 this month!

Chapter 7 and Misc. stuff:

AHHHH to be fully honest: these last few weeks were spent primarily on putting the finishing touches on the UI update. I don't have a lot to report when it comes to Chapter 7 beyond reassuring everyone that we're working on it! We're just two girls on the internet! We're doing our best! We're working hard! We only have so much development time! tank u for caring

Itch page:

The only thing left to mention as far as LbtW-related stuff goes is that Pickle is in the process of helping re-design our Itch page. This page is kind of the game's main point of contact, so it's something we've wanted to do for a while. Right now, it looks fine, but it's a very basic default wall-of-text layout. Pickle is making a bunch of new graphics for it and giving the page some custom CSS updates. Years of editing Tumblr HTML has prepared her for this moment. We hope it'll get more people to download the game :)

Here's a preview of the site's background image (condensed):

While we're talking about it, here's a link to rate the game on Itch if you haven't already! Giving us a 5-star rating there is easily the best thing you can do for the game beyond just throwing a bunch of money at us. Thank you so much to everyone who has already done it! The Itch rating system is kind of frustrating because we can get 15 five-star ratings in a row but then have that increase in our rating completely undone by yet another one-star rating from someone who just can't stand that Frankie's in the game or whatever. So it really helps out a ton!

Oh! Last but not least, on this post's main picture up at the top, you can see a new logo FrostMist made for us! He's the incredibly talented and whimsical goth-loving dev of Goth Gasp. You can tell the second you check out his Itch page, but he also happens to be a super talented graphic designer and he was nice enough to make that for us. We love it and him, and it would mean a lot if you checked out his game!

Frost's patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/FrostMistGG

Goth Gasp's Itch: https://frost-mist.itch.io/goth-gasp

Discord, Patreon, and SubscribeStar:

Here's a link to my new SubscribeStar page if you'd like to give it a follow.

I'm sure some of you remember when Itch randomly de-indexed all of its NSFW games for a few days in response to threats from payment processors last year. It was a scary period for a lot of us who didn't know where we were going to be able to host our games. Luckily, we were (mostly) all re-indexed under the new terms that said we weren't allowed to accept payment or donations for our games on there. Since all of that, more and more websites have been forced to concede: most recently, RenderHub removed all of its adult content from its storefronts which affected pretty much every single Daz dev and the livelihood of lots of 3D modelers and models. It's just going to keep happening, so I figured it would be a good idea to finally start using the SubscribeStar page I set up a few years ago. I love using Patreon, but it's also grown stricter over the years, and I don't want to wake up one day and suddenly not have a site to reach you guys. So, even if you don't really use SubscribeStar, it would mean a lot of if you could shoot me a follow over there, as well. I probably won't do a lot of backlog re-posting (maybe I'll do a photo dump of old stuff once a month or something), but I plan on cross-posting everything on there from now on. There won't be any exclusive content anywhere or anything. I just want to be safe.

On a happier note, there were a few fun posts this month here:

• Two really cute photos of June

• Liam stalking Wake on the internet (commission)

• Risa for dinner!!! (NSFW com)

• July's Cure+Pickle render

As far as Discord goes, there weren't any events or anything, but I did decide that I'm going to make those changes to character roles I mentioned last month. Instead of being able to grab every single one, you'll be forced to pick one character as a favorite and you'll join their "team" and have their designated color and little role icon next to your name. You'll be able to change this as many times as you want. It's hard to pick a favorite from dozens of character, but I think this is a lot more fun than what we have right now! It's not a priority, of course, but I'll try to get this organized around the time the UI update comes out.

Other than that, though, Jeff over in the server has drawn some really cute LbtW art recently that I wanted to showcase here because it's difficult to put into words how happy they've made Pickle and me.

IRL update (sad, irritating, dumb, whiny section):

All right, that's pretty much everything as far as LbtW and its development goes! It simultaneously feels like so much and so little. I wish I could develop this game quicker, but the fact of the matter is we can only spend so much time on it. I would love for this to be my full-time job, but it just isn't realistic unless this game gets weirdly popular out of nowhere real soon. This is why it's so important to me to improve the onboarding of this game and spend time on things like old renders and Itch pages. I've seen too many people quit during the first few chapters, and it's a huge bummer every time. If someone gives up during a janky h-scene, I never get the opportunity to show them how much I've improved anyway. I want people to play the game and enjoy it the entire time they're playing it. I want them to get to know Sasha and Frankie and fall in love with them. I want them to meet Bodhi and fall in love with him. I want them to see how much effort we put into building these characters and making them feel real and unique and fun to be around. More than anything, though, I just want to keep working on this game, man. I've put everything I have into it over the last few years, and I want to keep doing it more than anything. I want to see the ending through, and then work on another project and another one and another one and keep improving and keep improving. I have so much fun doing this, and I'm so passionate about it. Unfortunately, though, I also have to be realistic about how much time I can dedicate to all of this. I'm so insanely grateful to everyone who not only plays this game but actively chooses to spend their hard-earned money on supporting it; it really means the world to me and it's so hard to believe. At the end of the day, though, the amount of money I make on here doesn't even cover half of my monthly rent, and that's not even including the money I put back into it every month paying for access to new mods and plugins. So if I spend an extra month making the game's menus look beautiful, reworking some old scenes, redesigning the Itch pages, please know that it's all in the pursuit of making this game better, getting it into more people's hands, convincing more people to give it a try. If you think I don't want to be releasing constant updates and continuing the story and building to the most crazy psycho raunchy ridiculous weird sex scene you've ever seen, you're just emphatically wrong. If you think I want to spend time working on old content or code stuff, you're so wrong, it hurts! I hate redoing old scenes. I hate coding! This was all so hard! I just want to make freaky clown girl do freaky clown stuff. I just also want to be able to make freaky clown girl do freaky clown stuff without worrying about medical bills or whatever.

Every single free second of my life from the second I get home to the second I fall asleep at my desk is dedicated to this game, hours and hours and hours, every single day, for years. I love doing it. I want to keep doing it. Even if I made something like minimum wage through it, I'd shift to full-time in a heartbeat, but, right now, I think I'm making something like 15% of minimum wage LMAO. And this doesn't even mention Pickle! Poor Pickle down there in the dungeon... Sorry for getting all serious woe is me downer weird sadness, but it's something I've been forced to think about more seriously recently and you all know I'm really not much of a thinker.

I want to make it as clear as possible that I'll never abandon this game or anything like that, but I am over 3 years into it and have to think about how much time I can justify spending on it at some point. Really all this means is that updates might take longer than any of us like and pls don't be mad at me if they do.

Anyway, I'll have lots of time to think about it over the next few days as I'm not going to have access to my PC for a week. I'll keep working on the game in the form of writing and editing the script (on my phone ugh), but this will be the first time that I won't be actively working on renders or code or real game-dev stuff for entire days at a time since I started this project over three years ago. It's gonna be weird. I might even... go outside or... read a book... or something. I have some posts lined up, and I'll still be accessible on Discord. I'm going to try to get Pokemon Reborn working on my Steamdeck, though, and if that works maybe I won't be accessible on Discord. Maybe you'll never hear from me again!!!! mwahahaha. It's a much deserved break but it won't feel like one. I feel like a kid who got their ice cream snatched out of their hands. I'm the baby people metaphorically talk about stealing candy from

Okay for real though this time that's everything i have to say. im autistic and hit my public speaking limit for the month. thank you everyone for reading all of this and thank you so much for the support. Eat your dreams follow your vegetables drink lots of water etc toodles