A first look at what's coming next 👀

A month ago, I decided to end the Cultist Crush prototype. It was too big and unstable for a solo dev, and Twine didn't work well with what I wanted to do.

Right away, I started working on a new game. Something fun and hot and realistic. I'm excited to share a first look at the next iteration of Cultist Crush (or whatever it ends up being called)!

Keep in mind: all you see here are mockups, so it's nowhere near release-ready. My goal is to release something by the end of summer, though I can't commit to a deadline yet.

What is the game going to be?

• [Built in Ren'py] No more Twine, so expect a more visual UI at the bare minimum.

• [It's lair time, baby!] You're the nepo-baby of an evil overlord of some fame. For one reason or another, he hands you a free starter lair and an artefact that lets you travel between worlds (each one its own themed setting where the characters live). Scour the worlds to recruit people and build up your harem lair.

• [Character interactions + lair management] Every day you're faced with a few situations to take care of, and the rest of the day is up to you.

• [Characters with their own personalized content] To unlock a character, you dive into their world and win them over. Once they're won over, they move into your lair and bring a whole web of (NSFW) scenes with them.

• [Semi-open simulation] It's less "you can do anything with Eugene at any time" and more "you can do that with Eugene but you need to have done that first". This way every scene is customized (and makes sense).

• [Manage your characters] Get to know characters deeply, discover their quirks, unlock steamy interactions, give them roles, change their outfits, send them out on tasks, and more.

• [Hot, but unhinged] Much closer to my own writing style and interests. It's meant to be very much NSFW, but still tongue-in-cheek. It's an intentionally silly premise, not to be taken too seriously.

❌ What is this not going to be? 

• [A pure open-world game] I've learned my lesson from Cultist Crush. Letting you go anywhere and do anything at anytime caused a huge mess, both in game-state and in content creation.

• [A linear visual novel] This isn't a story you follow start to finish. You go at your own pace, in whatever order you can manage, pursuing a single character or all of them.

• [A medieval fantasy game] I know that's what the mockups and the Freddie rework look like. But the idea behind worlds is that I can explore different themes. The first one's medieval-ish because it's the most obvious step up from an evil lair. From there, I want them to range from the mundane (a regular city) to the completely unhinged (monsters?).

• [An intensive management game] The point isn't to run your lair properly, and you won't be able to fail or softlock yourself. The management only exists to unlock new characters and scenes.

⚠️ What is still up in the air?

• CGs or no CGs? Not sure yet. Ideally I'd like some, but drawing a scene takes a huge amount of time, way more than a sprite, and every hour spent drawing is an hour I'm not writing or adding characters. So I'll start without CGs and maybe commission them later, so they don't hold up the rest of the game.

• Fully interactive sex minigames? I couldn't crack this in CC1, it always ended up as too much content or too generic. For now I'll hand-write the scenes, but provide way more of them and label them clearly so you know what you're getting. I'm open to expanding the system later.

Reworked Freddie?

I'm keeping Eugene, Freddie and Todd as the starter characters.

Once I'd decided on a medieval-ish first world, I started sketching Freddie's outfit. He was the very first character I drew for Cultist Crush, and it shows: his proportions were off, his pose was stiff, and he looked like he was balding. I tweaked him so much that I ended up just redrawing him over his old skeleton, in a style a lot closer to how I usually draw. And I renamed him.

Freddie Finn is an amateur warrior with a dream of becoming a royal guard (for the prestige and attention). Turns out being carefree and perpetually horny are bad guard qualities. Maybe you can tame him?

Here's a work-in-progress. I've got the body down, now I just need to color and render him (and draw his outfits and expressions).

Eugene (as an innkeeper) and Todd (a poet) are getting the same treatment after Freddie.

Let me know what you think of the new look!

What does this mean for the Patreon?

I... don't know.

I'm more than happy to keep everyone updated and drop info dumps leading up to the release, but I don't feel right charging for what's basically a stream of updates. And Patreon forces you to have paid tiers.

I'm debating if I should close the Patreon and start fresh closer to launch, or just downgrade everyone to the Free tier and keep posting here.

If you've got thoughts on this, please let me know!

Thanks.

— gloomineer 🖤