The Game Plan
Judge Heath here,
A lot of you folks have been asking questions of us, and we've been hesitant to answer some of them except in a private manner for some time now, due to not having a clear idea of how much we'll be able to deliver on. That said, I feel that we need to address some of these questions immediately, and at least give you guys an idea of what we WANT to do with all of this. After the July 30th update, the Alpha v1.01 post, a lot of this will be going up on the front page, which is woefully under informing at the moment.
1) We are planning a 2 year development cycle for this. This is a very tenuous decision right now, and it might grow or shrink, but it's a pretty safe bet right now. Everything in our pipeline is designed to get you guys a fully functional game by that time, and then letting us either decide to publish it as is at that point, or to continue development just expanding the options on a fully existing game. It will likely be put up to a $2+ pledge level vote, but again, it's really too early to be making firm plans on that front.
2) We are definitely going to have the following art assets in the game.
-A Male and Female Protagonist.
-10 Sexable NPCs (their scenes will be coming slower, but I'm sure a certain segment of our fanbase will be very happy to know that Yonten is probably the very first NPC to get one).
-5 Sexable Male/Gender Undefined Monsters with their own dungeons
-5 Sexable Female/Gender Undefined Monsters with their own dungeons
-2 animated sex scenes for all of the above, one for the Male Protagonist, one for the female protagonist.
-A sprite-sex animation for each possible pairing of the above monsters.
-We will be opening up a $2 Pledge and Higher vote in that thread to let you guys determine how long you want us to wait before posting it publically.
3) Voting will open up for the $20 Level Pledges on July 30th at the same time as we release the game. In it they will vote on which male monster they want us to work on after the Harpy's designs are finalized.
-Voting will be held entirely on the patreon. We will put up the $20 pledge view only post, then make a comment stating that it is the voting comment. Each option to vote for will get it's own comment attached to that one, and I will be deleting any other comments that are not simply suggestions for a NEW option on the list (Not all votes will permit new options being added). Like a post to vote for it. Yes, you may vote for multiple posts. If two vote options tie, then we'll default to whichever of the two is higher up on the list, as we'll be posting the list in the order of originally planned development. Voting will close on the third day of me opening it up, when I wake up and announce it has closed.
-Each time we begin work on finalizing another design, we will open a vote for the next monster to get into the game. We will do this until there are 3 Male Monsters, and then begin alternating between Male and Female until we have 10 monsters total in the game. Gender Undefined monsters will be added into BOTH votes, and be clearly MARKED as such, so as to avoid confusion.
-Once we have 10 monsters decided on, we will open up voting for where you want us to focus on next. Another 5 monsters (this option will be removed once we hit 20 monsters total) and dungeons? Gender-Swaps? Making a Variant for each monster species included so far? Making Pallet Swaps? Including other types of customization such as boob/butt/hair types? We cannot promise every single one of these things will make it into the game given our 2 year production line, but it will be our $20 level pledge patrons who make the decision on what things get included.
4) Futa is tentatively in, but requires us to get a second animator for it (meaning we need to be making over $15k monthly, consistently, to afford it). Feral and Full Anthro have a massive question mark over them. Neoteny is out. It wasn't S-Purple's decision to include it in the last game, and he was never comfortable doing so before. There's too many legal issues if we continue to stick it in now that his real name is on the top of this product, and further, it was a requirement that it be stripped by pretty much every single team member (myself included) before we would join.
-Please note that Shortstack, however, is very much still in. As a kink if not a monster variant.
5) There will be at least one form of crafting in the game, cooking, but how in depth it is, and how much it's just "combine raw food effects so that you can get maximum bang for your buck when feeding it to your monsters to feed them" is up for debate. Right now if you've played Rune Factory, then that's a fairly safe bet on where we kinda-sorta see ourselves going, but we're not tying ourselves exclusively to that design vision. More details on the crafting Mechanics will come up as we reach Alpha v1.04.
6) The thing I'm sure most of you have been most worried about. Yes, the rumors are true. Yonten will be able to princess carry you, as either the male or female protagonist, around, if he's in your party, if you'd prefer it rather than walking about yourself.
-Just realized, I should clarify. This is something that will definitely be in the final build, but it's not necessarily going to be in our very first development cycle. It depends on the overall workload, but we'll try to squeeze it in.
Please keep in mind that all of these decisions are very tentative right now. They should not be considered set in stone. We don't want to promise something, then not be able to deliver on it if new information comes to light, or circumstances change for our team. I will be making a patrons only post at a later date on what we would LIKE to deliver in an totally ideal world.
Comments (53)
I'm kinda confused on what you offer that BS didn't. I mean sprite animation is a big ouch. Combat yeah sorta. It's like you looked at BS and said wow we can't do that it's unreasonable, we can only do this many animations, and we can't do futa until a 15k mark is hit? It's hard not to compare this to BS but futa was in all the way there before it hit 15k. Granted I'm still interested in the game it just doesn't make me want to throw money at it. I mean it's great to set realistic goals but because of breeding seasons lack there of it felt like the sky was the limit, now I feel I've been brought back down to earth.
I get what you mean, but I just wanted to say: Don't forget that BS was not even 5% complete by the time it died. And that is in big part because of the unrealistic expectations and goals, which really appeased to people, but were never going to be fulfilled. Futa is not "out" of the game. The thing with futa is that they need another animator to make it into the game, because the current animator (who, by the way, is not even yet hired full-time, until the goal is reached) already has more than enough work on his hands, with all the breeding animations between monsters and main character, then the NPC animations, and then there are also the background animations, fighting animations etc. It's a lot. And I know that sprite animations might be a little bit of a disappointment, but look at it this way. The game is aiming to have at least 10 monsters, up to 20. Then perhaps we might get a genderbent version of those monsters, so 40 already. Then there are 10 NPCs, and maybe even later on, once the base is finished, there will be events and such. Each of those will have a scene with the main character (who is going to be male and female, up to choice), and each scene is hand-drawn, with both the sex scene and climax scene. I think that is a satisfying amount, wouldn't you say? :D Also, in this case the Breeder/Main Character has much more value. In BS everyone complained that the breeder was useless in later game. In here only the main character will have proper sex scenes, so it is natural to use him/her more often. I think that is well planned in this case.
I know you don't want anything more to do with breeding season but plss bring back female breeder/protagonist :"( and i'm gonna say that this looks a promising project
I'm curious just what exactly will be available at release. Will the animated scenes and the sprites animation be available at release? Or is that a 6-12 months down the road thing? I'm a little skeptical about funding this because I funded BS for almost two years and it went bust...
I believe at the moment we get 2 scenes, one with a catgirl (f*ck + climax) and one with cowgirl (same). So already at the start we are getting some animations, and right now the project is aiming to hire Fuzzamorous (the animator) full-time. That's the next goal. So if they reach it, the animations will be regularly added to the game. I don't know how much will we get regarding the gameplay, but at least some basics for sure ;) For the record, I'm talking about the upcoming demo (on 30th), not the fully released game 2 years from now.
I probably will support this game but just a thought if we dont want the princess carry can we get a horse maybe. But I understand because that would be a lot more work for the animators and artists, but its just a thought.
Sorry, only just saw this post. The Princess carry is more a silly thing because of Yonten's belovedness by our core community so far. (I'm legitimately terrified of them hyperventilating in some streams). We might include other options, but the princess carry is literally cosmetic, it doesn't change movement speed or anything.
sadly cant support this yet... till its made some massive progress... and not chipping away like BS..
While I think this whole BS/CM thing is kind of shitty and I think both parties are in the wrong, I feel like the way H has dealt with this (One post then disappearing) is really a slap in the face to all of the fans, while S is at least still trying to make a game. While I have no intent on supporting this I wish you the best of luck for not giving up on your ideas.
Hey. I gave you nearly $200 for a game you never ended up making. I deserve a vote in whatever garbage you're about to not end up making now too for that price
Do you have any information on the supported operating systems? Will it be Windows only, or will Mac and Linux be supported too?
Its in unity so both of those will be supported.
Are there plans to make colour variants, or will it be put to vote ? I believe it doesn't ask for too much work and would be a great addition. I want a blonde female farmer.
I think it might eventually be put to vote later on (like, much much later). It's a cool addition, but since the animations are hand-drawn frame-by-frame, it might add more than a little workload to change the colors in every single one.
I'm really liking where this is going. Your communication is good, and the voting system is a very good idea. BS should have done that too. I'm a bit sad there will be no neoteny variant but I think it's a sensible decision to make. Were you a Japanese company you would be able to do it, but you would also probably need to put mosaic on all genitals, so I'm no sure that would be a good deal !
So, 0% change for neoteny? Oh man, and here I already hoped that this game would had a option for futa neoteny, like old BS had. Well, as long as I don't get what I would want, I won't give any money to this project. But I wish you good luck with this game and hope you get it functional someday
Perfectly understandable! The game will still be free though so we welcome you to try it out when we get some builds out.
I'll be honest, as of this post I personally feel as though this game has forfeit all right to calling itself a spiritual successor to BS in any real or meaningful way. I said that I'd watch it, out of fairness to the new team members who have not done anything to smear themselves with S's tarnishing behaviour, but this dev post pretty much takes my list of points of interest and strikes them out systematically until nothing is left. Let me explain: Top of your feature list after male and female PCs is the promise of ten developed NPCs... to which my mind say "Who cares?" Sure they might be interesting characters given time, but if I want to play a romance sex-sim there are many better options. NPC romance was never the reason I played a breeding-sim game like BS, and it's certainly not a draw card in any way for a game claiming to be setting itself up as a 'spiritual successor' to that game. Sprite animations only for the monster on monster pairings... I've got nothing against sprite animations, and I've enjoyed a lot of good games done entirely in sprite form... but they aren't breeding-sim games, and I wouldn't play a breeding-sim game for sprite sex. So likely no Monster-on-Monster animations in a game claiming to be a spiritual successor to a breeding-sim game that was more or less centric to that concept... big strike-out there. Likely no fully bestial creatures/variants at all, let along animations for them; another huge strike-out, given that that was the original draw card for the greater majority of the initial core audience. Not much spiritual succession going on on this score either. Points telling us about crafting and NPC relationships in the main post, while it's expressed in later comments that the *Breeding* mechanics aren't even likely to be in the initial builds and apparently aren't really a priority. Breeding mechanics not a priority - of lower priority than combat systems - in a game that wants to claim to be a spiritual successor to a breeding-sim game. I've avoided calling this game itself a breeding-sim game, because I suspect, judging from the details and focus points shown thus far, that you guys don't even want to call it a breeding-sim game... but you still want to call it the spiritual successor to Breeding Season. A side note about the Neoteny concept; regardless of its technical definition and defining characteristics, it's been used thus far to refer simply to creatures with child-like physical forms, so let's run with that. I take this one a bit personally, because I feel the world in general needs to get the collective sticks out of various places on the matter. I'm 138cm tall, I'm very slightly built and my chest endowments are unremarkable enough that I don't bother with a bra the vast majority of the time. I can still wear some clothes that I wore when I was twelve, comfortably. I'm also almost thirty. There's nothing wrong with me, I'm perfectly healthy... I'm just little. Now... it's not illegal for me to have sex. It's not illegal for people to have sex with me (some people feel uncomfortable thinking about me as a sexual being because of my stature - that's their prerogative; it's also mildly offensive to me, but I've learned not to be hurt by it). It wouldn't be illegal for someone to film it, and it wouldn't be illegal for someone to draw it. It further wouldn't be illegal for someone to draw a fictional character based on me as a reference, and it wouldn't be illegal for someone to draw a fictional person that looks similar with no human references at all. It further wouldn't be illegal for someone to draw mythological and fictitious creatures that looked similar, doing similar things. This is so far removed from being a legal grey area that it's laughable. It's also stupid. It's not child porn, it's not even remotely related to child exploitation in any way, and the people who enjoy such content are not engaging in child exploitation either. Not even close. So what's the problem exactly? Explain it to me. In closing; No monster to monster animations, no bestial pairings or animations, likely no actually petite body types, Breeding not seen as a priority compared to NPC romance and combat systems. In short, nothing seems to remain in this project that is of any real interest to me. This project still wants to call itself a spiritual successor to Breeding Season, and deliver on the spirit of the original game. It looks far more like you have completely stricken the original spirit of the game, in favour of what your lead has decided they think the spirit ought to have been... which looks, to my eyes, to be dull, boring, and yawn-inducingly vanilla in almost every way. Spiritual successor to Breeding Season? Sorry, but... no, you're not. Not at all. -Erica
I don't want to speak on behalf of the team, since I (just as you) only know as much as their posts say. However, let me comment on your stuff: Spurple's "tarnishing behavior"? Why are you bringing it up? What's the point of mentioning the BS drama, since what you are trying to point out is that Cloud Meadow is not like Breeding Season? There was already lots of negativity towards the members of BS, why bring it here as well? NPCs are like 10 times more important than the monsters. Without NPCs you don't have story progression, lore, or even basic mechanics (did you forget that BS had NPCs BEFORE more monsters were introduced?). Also, who and where was it mentioned that all of the NPCs are going to be romanced? They will have a sex animations with the main character, nobody says anything about dating sim. I understand your complaint about monster-monster pairing, but is that really a valid argument? How well did BS do with their 1500+ animations? Bestial creatures are going to be up to VOTE, once the game progresses. That is, they are not a "yes" or a "no". This project is in such early stage, there is not even a playable demo yet, and you're already assuming that "this will be here, this won't" Breeding mechanics will be added later, because the fighting/rpg mechanics are more interesting, and more complicated. This is a separate project from BS after all, it's not mainly focused on breeding, but the breeding will be there, don't worry. Neoteny was removed, because none of the team members working on Cloud Meadow were okay with it. It might be a "legal grey area", but it doesn't make it any less threatening to the project, in case there is a mishap in writing/design. You're saying you're short etc. but being short, and looking like an 8 year old are two separate things! And if the Cloud Meadow team doesn't want to put, what basically is, child pornography into their project, it's their choice. This project calls itself a spiritual successor of Breeding Season, because: the main artist of BS is working here (90% of BS fans were there for the art), because the breeding mechanics are going to be implemented in the game, because there is going to be hot, kinky human on sexy monster actions, and because it's very similar to BS in that matter (characters, art, breeding, farming). The fact that you cannot see the similarities is not the fault of Cloud Meadow, it's the fault of BS, which after 3 years of "progress" has not changed practically at all! The gameplay was exactly the same, the story was almost exactly the same. Only art and animations were being improved (I'm not counting the silly events). I know that there is a lot of grief over Breeding Season, but please, if you don't want to support this project, at least don't start what BS was struggling with. Don't bring the negativity and toxicity into this one.
I feel a lot more comfortable knowing that neoteny is gone. It's nice knowing that the artists will be working on content that I will actually watch.
Well based on this plan, I am very happy to support the project. It seems you guys have a more-less clear idea of how much you can handle, and how much work to take on in the early stages :D The game has great promise, and I hope it will have nice lore and story to it, for that extra flavor :)
the last game had promise, and look where THAT left us. i wasted money on it
whos to say you wont just run off with the money again?
i supported the game you stole from. JERK! i waited ages for it to be finished, and put my money into it?! why should anyone support YOU
Hmm, let's see. First of all, you can clearly see that they are working on this game (could you say the same about BS?). Second of all, Cloud Meadow clearly has better project management and is realistically setting it's own goals. Also, most probably the contracts are written differently, not like in BS. Finally, why does everyone complain about Spurple for leaving BS? He was one of those, who actually WORKED during both of the projects.
We saw a very promising picture of our hero and party facing off against some giant black demonic monster in an earlier post, please let us know what you can about the combat system when it is convenient. I am very much looking forward to an adult game that does not shirk the "game" aspect for pure smut with no real adventure, story or characterization.
There'll be far more details on this in the future. We talk about this on occasion in the Streams, and a good way to get spoilers on systems, what we'd like to include, and everything else, is to sit in there and listen in.
Well if you're going a Rune Factory game then yes I will be happy to see your progress.
Just make the game all about Yonten and we'd forgive everything! But having him 'princess carry' a male protagonist would be LOVELY.
Just out of curiosity. After this game is finished and you guys have moved to another project, will you allow people to mod it and increase its content? This is really a good game so I really believe that people would want to do it
It's definitely on our list of things we'd like to add, but only if it can be done right and we can offer proper modding tools.
But...but... Futas are a must....no ?
They said tenatively, which might probably be the best positive so far.
OH MY GOD YES!!! YES!!!!!!!
I was always kinda like "Really? This is OK?" about Neotany, so I completely understand that being out. But I have to say I want at least one futa character. It's got a huuuuge... niche. It's not a deal breaker, but I did once light- heartedly post on the Breeding Season page about how it fulfilled my secret desire to have an army of futanari catgirls. Everything else you laid out sounds totally great, so I'm looking forward to it.
An army of futa catgirls?? Oh my, you're my hero \o/ I did one in BS ;)
As long as Kippu didn't passout from the confirmation of the princess carry, this post is all good news lmao.
I'm upset about there not being full monster on monster scenes in the planned game, I hope that with future goals you can perhaps include those animations. I understand the work load and I would never expect it to be there from the get go, but I think it'd be a huge part of the interest for me in order to commit patronage to this project.
If you go further down you'll find the actual numbers on this. Sprite-sex animations are planned, things going on in the game world rather than a full separate popup image animation, but the work load for full animations for every single monster combination is simply too high for us to reasonably or honestly promise at this point. Edit: go look at Brayden Conrad's post further down. Again, I'm sorry that this is disappointing, but it's a simple logistics call. Edit2: What I'm getting at is that even in our most ideal build (which is almost certainly never going to happen), there's no reasonable method for us to include every single one of these animations. They grow into the thousands of different animations, and hundreds of thousands of frames, and many of them would not be possible to simply reskin or alter extisting animations.
PS. to my reply post to your earlier reply. I LOVE this transparency, and talking with the community you are doing, Judge. It makes me feel more and more at ease with pledging to this project.
I always wondered if neoteny was going to cause problems further down the line in BS, and it's easy to see why it's not being included in Cloud Meadow. However, I'd consider Futa pretty essential to any H game worth it's salt and especially a spiritual successor to BS. I don't think it's absolutely necessary to have a futa alternative for every monster but I would think it appropriate for at least a few. I have also always wondered why there wasn't a futa option for the main character in BS and I imagine we won't see one in Cloud Meadow due to the extra work load it would give you all.
Having intersex options for the protagonist is not entirely off the table, but as I stated in the Game Plan, it's not an option at the present time. It'll be included when we can afford a second animator.
Alright that sounds like a plan to me. Now when it comes to #4 I think you would be way better off just making them full Anthro instead of Feral to avoid legal issues.
Placed an edit on #4 clarifying that Shortstack is definitely still very much planned for and in.
Awesome, The shortstacks are making a comeback. :D
#6 Aww yiss. On the rest, I don't mind a lack of variations of monsters etc as it would take a load off the animator's plate and let things get done faster. Breeding Season had so many variations it would have taken an eternity to get it done. Variations could always be done later like... DLC or an expansion pack or something haha.
The funny thing is people in the live stream where talking about add-on content after the game was finished. I'm ok with them doing that after they get the game done.
stream tonight??
Most likely. S-Purple is planning on going back to his old schedule of 8 hour streams, 5 days a week.
To maybe balance out the tirade of disappointments in #4 (basically a lengthy list of visual variety elements that are definitely or at least likely out), you may want to mention some things that you plan to add, or replace them with?
That's the thing. We don't HAVE them planned yet. It will be dependent on votes, and what we can manage over time.
it is a slight, although understandable, frustration that 2$ is the minimum limit when BS was 1$ it may be a good idea to add a 1$ option to be able to see the bloggish posts, even if you restrict the earliest demos to the 2$ limit. i know it has little to do with this specific post, just something iv been thinking when ever i visit this page.
Most of our patron only posts are set to (and going to be set too) "All Patrons". We felt it wasn't necessary to put in a $1.00 limit, you can still pledge just a single dollar to the project, and see almost every single update we post. Unfortunately, votes have to be locked to their respective patronage levels, because in order to prevent the voting location from being leaked and thus skewed by those not contributing, the only way we can manage it is through utilizing the likes feature of comments.