Cradle Dev Log #10

Where We Are and What Comes Next

Hello, friends!

It has been quite a while since the last dev log, so this one is going to be a fairly substantial update. I’ll try to cover the most important things first, while also talking not only about the future of Cradle, but about where we currently stand as a studio.

We spent quite a long time working on the previous update. Not necessarily because of the sheer amount of work involved, but because both of us have to find time for development alongside our main jobs and other responsibilities.

There is also another factor that affects the pace of development: the level of enthusiasm we had at the very beginning is harder to maintain.

And this is where I want to sincerely thank every single person who has supported us — for every dollar you have contributed, for every positive review, comment, and message.

It genuinely helps us keep that enthusiasm alive.

One of the things that makes it difficult is the reality of promoting an 18+ game.

Platforms continue introducing more and more restrictions on adult content. Advertising through social media requires quite a lot of knowledge and careful targeting to work around those limitations. Itch, in particular, has recently made organic discovery of adult games significantly harder.

That leaves us with a handful of forums, Discord communities - something I personally haven’t interacted with nearly enough... and Steam.

Steam, however, is a separate issue of its own.

Selling an unfinished story is not necessarily the direction I want to take, while at the same time, the actual conclusion of Cradle is still very far away.

So, what next?

I still love this project. I continue thinking about the story, the characters, the world, and where all of it is going.

But writing and planning the story is only one part of making the game.

My partner, who handles the art and animation, is somewhat more skeptical about the project’s current position - and I think that skepticism is justified.

The latest update, for example, did not result in any meaningful spike in new players or attention around the game.

Because of that, my main priority right now is to find a promotion strategy that actually works. Continuing development needs to make sense not only creatively, but also in terms of whether the game can realistically reach a larger audience.

There is also another subject that both fascinates and concerns me: the speed at which AI models are improving, especially when it comes to content creation - including adult content.

Whatever anyone’s opinion on AI and the rights of human creators may be, the technological shift itself is clearly not going away.

I can already see how dramatically and how quickly development processes are changing in the game industry through my main job. New tools can accelerate certain parts of production by an enormous amount, while the average end user often cares far more about the final result than about exactly how the content was produced.

In our case, this is especially relevant to the visual side of development.

At the moment, I don’t yet know exactly how we will adapt to this change while still maintaining the level of quality and identity that comes from work created by human hands.

So, considering everything above, I can only hope that humanity’s downfall at the hands of a “superior intelligence” is still a little further away than it sometimes seems.

And that we’ll still get to see humanity defeat the machine... at least in Cradle.

Stay tuned.

— First Wish