Plans for the Future - Early 2026 devlog

Hi folks! Me again :)

As we start 2026, I want to talk about where my project is currently and where we're going together, including plans for the future and so on.

In Her Service

With the release of 0.90.00, we entered the last part of content in the form of endings. My original prediction was that I would finish IHS by the end of 2025, but in that time, I added a flowchart feature which enabled me to make POVs without disturbing the game's story. Those events naturally take time to do, which caused a significant delay to my original plans.

Right now, I think the end of summer 2026 is when IHS will be content complete. In the sense that all endings will be in the game. After that, there will be a month where I'll be polishing the game, its UI, chapter flows, some animations, some shots, etc. By the end of that polish month, there will be 1.0 of the game, and IHS will be finally complete.

For 1.0, I want to do professional English proofreading/corrections and, if possible, other languages as well. I think 1.0 should come out around October-November 2026 if things go well.

What after In Her Service ?

There are two things here. First of all, I still have plans for IHS, and I'm not quite finished with it. The difference is that the new updates will be more packed but rarer, as I'll make them when I'm designing/doing the next project.

Post-production plans: (2027)

❌ 1.1 - scenes expansion (various scenes after endings, random assortment, spicy)
❌ 1.2 - new mini arc (within existing story but told as different pov)
❌ 2.0 - enchanted edition - voice actresses for all females in the game

The 2.0 update, or "Enchanted Edition," is my hopeful goal. My game has a lot of text, and voice actresses would have to put a lot of work into it. Whether I'll be able to do 2.0 will depend entirely on you guys. With current support from you guys, it is unfortunately not enough, but I hope that with the release of 1.0, that could change. Secondly...

Around summer, I'll be preparing myself to start a new game by the end of the year.

Genre : Erotic Visual Novel
Type : Vanilla
Length : Around 2 hours (half a year project)
Other : Single Path, Low Replayability
Premise : TBA (standalone/prologue to project red)

Pre-production: (2023-2026)

✅ planning (2023)
✅ design (2023-2024)
✅ engines testing (2023)
⏰ rough story (2024-2025)
❌ technology research (mid 2026)
❌ character design (mid 2026)
❌ assets (late 2026)
❌ licensing (late 2026)

Production: (2026)

❌ 0.2 - initial release (2026 february ?)
❌ 0.5 - 1st part (2026 April)
❌ 0.7 - 2nd part (2026 May)
❌ 0.9 - 3rd part (2026 June)
❌ 1.0 - final game (2026 Summer)

Project Orange is just a temporary name until I come up with a good name and art for the project. This project's main purpose is for me to test new technologies and evaluate them in production, building a new workflow that will allow me to up my game when it comes to the quality of my games.

The main goal will be to increase the quality of graphics. As you know, my animations are quite good, but the graphics are at times dated for many reasons. During pre-production of IHS, I had to make some not-so-great choices, like cutting out global illumination (the thing that makes scenes look amazing in daylight), as I could not afford to try to make it work for another 3 months. At the time, I lacked the knowledge I have today, plus I now have the whole experience of finishing a whole game. There will be many things I could improve in my workflow and even lower the amount of time I need to make better scenes, since I won't make some mistakes I made during IHS pre-production. There are also a ton of new technologies since I started working on IHS that could change a lot about how I do stuff. AI is screaming around the corner—video generation, image generation, 3D? 2D? VR? VAM2? Maybe some other engine? There are a ton of things I need to consider in order to improve the pipeline I'm using.

The second goal for Project Orange is to test my ability in content creation—to see if I, with that new pipeline, can make content fast enough to make reasonable progress in the next project, which will be much larger and broader, and I still don't know if I'll be capable of doing it.

The third goal for Project Orange is essentially a prologue to a much larger game. This is why it is "vanilla." Think of it as something like In Her Service's early part, where we had like 20 events before things started to heat up. The difference is that it will be a self-contained story, and we'll see those characters in the third game (assuming everything works out and I'll be capable of making the third game I plan). It is also a short project—just a few months—and giving very minimal choices that don't have an effect on the story overall.

Now, like I said, Project Orange is preparation for a different project...

Genre : Erotic Visual Novel
Game Type : Swinging/Netorare
Length : Around 6 hours (multiple years project)
Other : Dozen of characters, limited gameplay, highly replayable
Premise : TBA

Pre-production: (2023-2029)

✅ planning (2023)
✅ design (2023-2024)
⏰ rough story (2024-2026)
⏰ engines testing (2023-2026)
❌ technology research (2024-2026)
❌ character design (2027)
❌ assets (2027)
❌ licensing (2027)
❌ complete story event/write (2027)

Production: (2026-2029)

❌ 0.1x - prologue (2027)
❌ 0.2x - gathering "Dusk" (2027)
❌ 0.3x - break (2027)
❌ 0.4x - gathering "Midnight" (2027)
❌ 0.5x - break (2027)
❌ 0.6x - gathering "Dawn" (2028)
❌ 0.7x - break (2028)
❌ 0.8x - gathering "New Moon" (2028)
❌ 0.9x - endings (2028)
❌ 0.98 - alternate pov (2029)
❌ 1.0 - final game (2029)

As you can see, this is a 3-year project, even larger than IHS, broader, and even more spicy. In fact, this is the project I started before IHS. I just quickly realized I didn't have the skills, pipeline, tools, knowledge, or experience to make it happen in a reasonable timeframe. When I calculated how long it would take me, doing some rough math, it was like 10+ years for me back then. This is how IHS was born. I started to design other games, and from that, IHS came to be.

As mentioned in Project Orange, Project Orange is preparation for Project Red. At the end of Project Orange, I'll know if I'll be capable of delivering Project Red. If not, I'll have to design another new game and work on that in the meantime. Also, your support might change it a lot. If I got a lot of support from you guys, it would be possible for me to maybe share my work with someone else due to the additional support from you guys.

The game is designed in such a way that only by playing it multiple times will you be able to grasp the whole story, and there will be unlockable pathways. The game will also be a bit gameplay-oriented despite being a VN. So, some thinking will be involved as well—kind of more like a 999/Ace Attorney kind of VN rather than IHS, where you only make A/B/C choices. Alas, that is the design, and it can change at any point to be a more traditional VN.

So, guys and gals, that's all from me at the start of this new year. Hopefully, when I'll be writing such a devlog on the same day next year, IHS will have its 1.0 release, and I'll be in the middle of making Project Orange :D That's my wish for this year!