Steam Update

Hello everyone,

I want to make three announcements.

1. Patreon Changes

I've unpublished all tiers aside from $2 and $5. There are no benefits to pledging on Patreon, it's just a tip jar. I'll continue pausing billing until the next update is released. Please take this time to adjust your subscriptions or unsubscribe. Instead of tipping me, I recommend donating any amount to any charity. Send me the receipt for the "Philanthropist" Discord role

The next update will be the last time I release a game or game update on Patreon. It will be available to everyone, including free members. To everyone that has supported me from the time of this post, to 2-3 years ago, I'll send a Steam key for IaS Part 1. I have yet to decide on the exact time frame and pledge amount.

All future posts will be available to everyone, including free members.

I'll post the reasoning behind these changes at a future date.

2. Steam

In a Scent - Steam Page

In a Scent Steam review is currently ongoing. I'm feeling optimistic that it will ultimately pass the review process. You can go to the store page now and add it to your wishlist. The store page is rather unpolished. I put it together quickly mainly for the Steam review process.

IaS is broken into two parts consisting of 5 chapters each. Assuming that Part 1 is approved, Part 2 will be released in full on Steam upon completion. There will not be any periodic chapter releases on Steam or Patreon. The sales from Part 1 should (hopefully) keep me afloat for the entirety of development of Part 2.

After that, I'll be looking into developing smaller games with a planned development cycle of under 1 year. I would really prefer releasing completed projects going forward, rather than the episodic update model.
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Additional Context:
I wanted to wait on this announcement until I completely passed the review process but feel confident enough to share now. The Steam review process can be really slow. The process dictates that reviewers stop and reject the build at the very first issue they find rather than auditing the whole game in one go. Every fix and resubmission takes 1-2 weeks. IaS's sensitive content is revealed early on and hasn't been identified as an issue, so I'm feeling pretty confident that it will eventually pass the review and be accepted on Steam.

Preparation for Steam resulted in rewriting parts of the story. IaS is a parody of two prohibited genres and is presented as such. MC's ignorance was intentional, he drove the false impression that prohibited content exists. Although other characters offered some exposition that contradicted MC's beliefs, the narrative was not made crystal clear until much later into the story. There was still some wiggle room for interpretation that would explain why MC believes one thing, but other characters believe another. My goal was to provide a bit more information with each chapter that further helps the player realize that MC is a false representation of these two genres, and his ignorance was intentional to sell it. I didn't think I was being very subtle about it, yet I still saw some players try to guess potential story twists that would prove the prohibited content was there all along. Like some Inception levels of misdirecting the misdirection and subverting expectations. Unfortunately, I'm not clever enough of a writer for that.

This still created a panic that maybe I didn't communicate my intention clearly enough by trying to avoid full on exposition. What if the Steam reviewer missed it? Despite no prohibited content actually existing in the story, I didn't want to risk the game being permanently rejected by Steam. It's challenging to convince a reviewer with a "Hey, I know it looks like there's prohibited content but chapter 9 in a future update will make it absolutely clear that there isn't." So I rewrote it to be less ambiguous and make it clear early on that no prohibited content exists.

Rewriting those sections of the game resulted in a tonal mismatch with existing and planned content. I ended up rewriting other scenes so that they work better together. Since I was restricted by existing renders, the rewrites did not change events or their content, it just shifted the tone and context. The biggest changes were on planned events in later chapters. Some of them were discarded and replaced entirely. Just to be clear, the "I'm your long lost son" bit is still a core premise driving the story. It's just not as... porn-game logic-ey anymore? There's still some role play and flirting with these concepts, but they're rooted in a more serious and darker context. You'll see what I mean.

Overall, I'm really happy with this refined version. It's not as cringey and has less frequent "pull my finger" MC interactions. I'm genuinely much more excited working in this direction. If anything, I think the humor has actually improved as a result.

3. Bro, what the fuck?
I'm sorry for being extremely quiet these past 6 months, but I'll have to continue doing so. There are a lot of reasons and explanations, but there's no point writing them now. I'll provide a full on explanation behind some of my decisions and a deep dive on my personal situation for anyone interested, but only once chapter 5 is released. IaS hasn't received an update in 3 years, so words are worthless until that changes.

Regarding chapter 5, I'll release the non-steam version for free on Patreon. The Steam release will require a lot of polish and additional work and will come at a later date.


I'm sorry for not doing better,

Dom