State of the Game Year 4 Plus Q&A

Hey everybody! I was trying to do one of these every year, but I guess I missed last year? I believe it coincided with the death of my wife’s aunt, which was pretty traumatic and draining, so I guess I just forgot to do it. 

But June 3rd was the four-year anniversary of the first release of Come Home. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. But then, when I go back and read my previous state of the games, it also feels like so long ago. 

If you’re curious to read the first and the second year state of the game, they are available here.

Goals from Two Years Ago

Two years ago, my goals were - steady releases of new content and to learn and improve my skills. There’s also some vague talk about a UI improvement. Let’s talk about that stuff. 

New Content

Releases have slowed down a bit in the last two years. And I think I’m okay with that. When I first started this game, I wanted to do monthly updates (LOL). I thought I’d finish the game in two years. 

But over time, the quality of the renders, the complexity of the coding, and the size of the updates has increased so much that not only can I not get it done in one month, but I’m struggling to get it done in four. I’ve gotten faster at a lot of things, but I’ve gotten slower at others. If I were still making the game at the quality that it was at two years ago, I have no doubt I could pop out an update in a month or two. But now, each image and animation takes much longer than it used to, despite my skills and hardware improving. 

I’m also working a bit less hours than I used to. When I started the game, I was a hungry new developer. This game was sort of my last grasp at making money writing. I needed it, or else I didn’t know what I was going to do. So I spent an unhealthy amount of hours every day working on the game. 

Over the last couple of years, I’ve gotten more comfortable. I’m living in a nice place, I’m able to afford food and healthcare, and I don’t feel like I might be homeless at any moment. It’s allowed me to slow down a little bit and work at a more sustainable pace. 

During those first two years I was making the game, I believe I gained 25 lbs. I also developed a Vitamin D deficiency. Because I spent much of my time sitting at the computer, and didn’t go outside. The last two years, I’ve been reversing that. I’m much healthier than I was then. I’ve lost all those 25 lbs, plus some, and now weigh less than I have in 10 years. And my Vitamin D deficiency is gone. I just feel so much better now. 

So, that’s why the releases have slowed down a bit. This schedule is much more sustainable for me and I’m much happier than I was two years ago.

Improve my Skills

In the older State of the Game, I talked about spending time learning Blender and Unreal. I’ve done that in the last couple of years. I’m not an expert in either of these things, but I feel comfortable enough with both programs that I know what I’m doing. I also feel comfortable enough to know that Blender and Unreal are likely not going to be part of my development pipeline going forward, as long as I remain a solo developer. 

I’ve been learning other software too in the last couple of years. I learned DaVinci Resolve, which I use to make the trailers that I’ve been releasing with every update. And I have been learning Godot, which could definitely be used in future development. 

And I feel like I’ve improved my skills in Daz3D and Photoshop as well. 

UI Improvements

I did this! I switched from the old UI to the new “Polaroid” UI. Some people didn’t like it, but I do. And I think most players do. For me, it was a huge shift to the way the game was played. It made everything a little more simple and streamlined. It reduces the number of unnecessary clicks to get to the scenes you want to see. And I think it looks pretty good. 

It’s not the best. I’m still learning a lot of this stuff. But I think it’s an improvement and I’m happy with the way it turned out. 

I’m still working on UI improvements going forward and the UI will continue to be improved until the final version of the game is released. 

My Personal Life Over the Last Two Years

I released Come Home in June of 2020. The year before that release was a pretty bad year. 

But every year since then has been better and better. 

The last year was probably the best year of my life. It started off pretty rough. My mom became disabled. The place we were living was quickly becoming unlivable. We attempted to buy a house, but all of that fell through. And then, my partner’s aunt suddenly passed away. It was a really hard few months. 

But then, we found a really nice rent house with an amazing landlady. My partner and I got married after being together for 10 years. We went camping in some incredible places. We got more into fitness and have gotten so much more healthy. The Premium Edition DLC has continued to sell very well, allowing us to live much more comfortably than we’ve ever been able to in the past. 

I honestly have no complaints. My life has been great over the last two years. There’s been some difficult moments, but compared to where we were, we are in an incredible place right now. 

If everything stayed the way it is right now forever, I’d be happy. 

The Future

But things can never stay the same. Change is inevitable and it’s been on my mind a lot lately. By this time next year, I expect the final update for Come Home to be out. That’s both awesome and terrifying for me. My life has revolved around this game for some time now, so leaving that behind and starting something new is going to be very difficult for me and I can see the edge approaching, like stepping up to a cliff before diving off. 

So, what are my plans and goals for the next year? 

Three More Updates

Come Home has three more updates left. Those are my top priorities right now. Right now, I’m expecting 18 to be released in September, 19 sometime around January, and then 20 around May. It’s a little slower than I was expecting a few months ago. I wanted to get three updates out this year. But Updates 18 and 19 are enormous, and I just don’t see that happening now. 

Update 18 will be sort of the conclusion to the sandbox portion of the game and the beginning of the endgame. 

Update 19 is going to be very different. I plan on keeping that under wraps completely. Don’t expect to see many previews for Update 19 before release. 

Then, Update 20 is going to be the conclusion and will be basically all the different endings of the game (around 17 or so). 

No More Come Home? 

After those three updates, I plan on adding a little more content to Come Home. I plan on doing a cleanup run, with some rewrites and hitting all the minor fixes that I’ve been putting off. I plan on adding a few more things to the game as premium/patron-only content. I’ll likely take some requests on Patreon for more content as well. 

After I get all of that in the game and cleaned up, which will hopefully be by the end of next year, the Premium Edition will become the Complete Edition. After that, I will work on things like translations, or possibly adding more voicework to the game, but at that point the game will be finished. 

At this point, I’m not sure if I’ll ever come back to these characters or not. I have some ideas, but I plan on putting them on the backburner and working on other projects for a while.

Future Games

I’ve been tossing around ideas for future games in my head for a while. I have three or four that I’m very passionate and excited about. A couple of them would be difficult for me to do as a solo developer. Right now, I’m not sure exactly which one I will jump into first. 

Part of me wants to write a more straightforward narrative story next. Focus entirely on the story and the characters and just make a classic adult visual novel. Another part of me wants to make a more game-like game. I have ideas for both that I’ve developed pretty extensively over the last few years, in the background, but I haven’t decided which I’m going to do next quite yet. It will depend on how I feel after Come Home is finished, what the marketplace looks like, and if technology has changed any by then. We’ll see. 

I do have games planned though. I will be making a game after Come Home. Whichever way I go, I think you’ll like it. 

Conclusion

I think that’s all I have to talk about right now. I did a Q&A, where I pulled questions from Discord, Patreon, Subscribestar, and Steam. I’ve included the answers to some of those questions below, so feel free to read more of me rambling there. 

As always, thank you all so much for all the support you’ve given to me and my silly porn game. It’s turned my life around completely. I know that your support is the reason why I’ve been able to achieve all these goals and enjoy my life so much more than I used to. Thank you so much.

I love you all. <3 

Q&A

You might be interested in checking out last year's Q&A as well: https://www.patreon.com/posts/76039606

Come Home Questions

Will you add (the thing that I like) to the game?

Okay, first of all, there were a lot of questions that were really just requests. “Can you add a four-way with my favorite characters?” “Can I take this character to this location?” “Can I buy a house and move all the girls in?” “Can I marry one (or more) characters?” “Can I get characters pregnant?” “Will you add anal with this character?” “Will you add my particular favorite kink to the game?”

None of these are really questions, they are just features that you’d like to see in the game. I didn’t answer all of these, because there were just too many, but I did respond to some of them. For most of these questions, the answer is likely going to be no, because the game is nearly finished and I have nearly all the scenes planned out already. Or the answer is, wait and find out, I’m not going to tell you what happens at the end of the game. Why would you want that spoiled for you?

Are you going to finish the main story?

Absolutely. The main story is going to finish with Update 20, as was the plan from the very beginning. Update 20 will almost definitely be released next year (2025).

Are you going to add more characters?

No, the game is nearing the end. There will be no more main characters added. 

Will you add more content with (my favorite character)? 

Yes, there are three more updates left for the game. There is going to be more content in those.

Lesbian orgies when ?

Probably never? Since the MC is a male, and we see the story from his perspective, it’d be hard to include a lesbian orgy.

Will there be more lesbian connectivity in the future?

There’s not really any lesbians in the game. Some of the girls are bi though, and will definitely be interacting more, yes. But, there’s already a lot of this content in the game. 

My only question is ...why was Winnipeg mentioned at one point in the game? Other than a 20 year old simpsons joke cos matt groening has family here...nobody knows about us lol.

It took me a while to figure out what this is referring to, but apparently I mentioned Winnipeg in one of my Brandi chats. I think that Maruad was talking about the place. Maruad is a person in my actual Discord chat who’s main characteristics are that he’s old, fat, bald, and boring (and Canadian). And he’s a great sport and I love him. Some of the people in Brandi’s chat are based off real people and sometimes I use actual lines that they say in my Discord. 

What are a few examples of scenes (NSFW/SFW) that you'd love to have implemented in Come Home, but didn't because they were too difficult or the audience for that would be too niche?

I love this question. 

So, there are a few NSFW scenes that I wanted to happen in the game, but didn’t do for one reason or another. One reason is Patreon rules, which unfortunately make some scenes impossible for me to do right now. If something there changes, I might still put those scenes into the game in the future though. 

But the big one that comes to mind was one that I didn’t do, not because of Patreon, but because of the difficulty of the scene and the way that the character changed from what I originally intended. Originally, I was planning on going a little more into Mari’s furry side, concluding with the MC and her going to a furry convention and being involved in a massive orgy in fursuits. However, somehow Mari became the wholesome one and the players who gravitated to her did so because of her attitude and her caring nature and for the most part weren’t super interested in the furry content. I didn’t think that these fans would enjoy a massive furry orgy. Plus that scene would have been extremely difficult to make - finding fursuits for people was practically impossible, and then rendering all those characters. The scene would have taken me a long time to make and I don’t think a high percentage of players would have enjoyed it. Plus, Mari had enough content with her dealing with driving, Reba, her family, and her farm. I didn’t really have a space for the convention scene in the story anyway. So I cut it. 

Were the characters that are instrumental for the looking for dad narrative - Jez and Whitney - always intended to be LI's as well?

Yes, these characters were always intended to be love interests. 

Is Dad's car going to reappear?

So, when I changed the UI in the game, adding the polaroid menus, I unintentionally actually removed Dad’s car from the game. It’s barely even mentioned now, and I can’t remember if it’s even shown anymore. I need to go back in and add a scene where the MC sees the car, attempts to start it, and figures out that he needs the key. Basically, I need to redo this plotline a bit.

Originally, I wanted to have it so that the player could unlock and drive Dad’s car at some point in the game. And maybe have a character (like Reba) who would be interested in the MC only after he was driving Dad’s car. But, I realized that to implement something like that, I would basically have to have two renders of every scene where the car appeared, since there are now two different possible cars the MC could be driving. So, that was a lot of work and I decided it wasn’t worth it. 

Anyways, the car was not intended to be a major story point, but people have become sort of obsessed with it, so I need to flesh it out a bit. I do have a conclusion planned for the car saga though. 

Is Adrian going to stay pre-op?

Yes. At least through the end of the game. Who knows what she’ll decide after the game ends. 

Besides the Brandi chats, have you ever considered implementing some of your friends from your player base in the game as a cameo or more?

Not really. My friends aren’t that interesting. 

Will we ever meet the people in Brandi’s chat? 

Most of them, no. Just like you likely wouldn’t ever meet anybody that you chat with in Twitch chat. You probably wouldn’t want to. There is one particular highly-requested chatter that will be making an appearance in Update 18 though, as a premium edition bonus scene.

Are you going to translate into (insert language here)? 

Yes, but I”m not doing any translations until the game is finished. I plan on doing a massive rewrite of the game when I’m done - going through line by line and just doing a cleanup, like I would if I was writing a book. There is absolutely no point in translations until after that is done, since the text is going to change anyway.

Can you add the option to change the main character’s appearance?

No. Because of the game engine, this is just not possible. Any option I added to the character would require re-rendering every single image that the character appears in, doubling the work for any minor change. So nothing on the MC is going to ever be optional - you’re not going to ever be able to choose skin color, gender, clothing, or dick size. 

Is the "5 month" timeline going to be a strict "you have this many days to complete as much as you can" thing or is it going to be more of a "this all happens within 5 months" with progression dictating where in the period we are?

Originally, when I first started the game, I planned on there being a strict time limit, where certain events would happen at a set time frame and the game would end at the end of the semester. And you had to do as much as you could within that time limit. However, as development went on, the game became much more chill and the time frame became much looser. Now my thoughts have changed to where I want the player to be able to do everything they want to do, and not have to worry about squeezing everything in. So now time is sort of an amorphous thing that doesn’t really matter a lot. It’s not realistic, but I think it makes the game more relaxed, which is what I want. 

So, like nobody ever gets older in The Simpsons, this whole game takes place over the course of the semester, no matter how many days you actually play. 

Will the game just end after the last story scene(s), or will players get to continue after the story is completed?

I don’t really like talking about what’s going to happen at the end of the game, but I’ll answer this one. There’s going to be a point in the game, and the game will warn you that this is the point of no return. From that moment on, there will be the end-game content and there will be no going back to do other side content after that. 

That point is going to happen in the next update (Update 18). 

Is there going to be a "platonic" path through the game, where we still get to interact with the LIs but aren't knockin' boots with em, or is that pretty much out of the realm of possibility at this point.

No, I don’t plan on making any other platonic paths through the game. I mean, the game is about romance and fucking, so if you’re not interested in doing that with a character, there’s not a lot of story to tell with them. 

Will you be adding more voicework?

For sure. I’ll likely add a little every update. And I’ll probably end up adding more to the game after it’s completed, just to fill it out a little more. 

I’ve struggled to find voice actresses I like for some roles (Izzy, Jez, and Reba in particular), but hopefully I’ll eventually find them and each character will have a voice. They will likely never be FULLY voiced, but I’ll continue to try to hit the bigger scenes and give them moans and stuff. 

Can anal be added as a toggle? In much the same way as avoidable characters?

No, I don’t plan on doing this. But most of the scenes do have a way to turn down the anal, and I’ll continue to do that. 

Will there be more exhibionist scenes with Jamie? 

Probably. I haven’t done any in a while, just because there has been so much other content to do, but I’ll probably end up adding another scene or two. 

Why no BBW women? 

This is mostly software limitations. It’s hard to make big women look good with the 3d software I’m using, especially in animations. There’s no way, using my software, to make them look soft and to add jiggle to certain areas. Every time I’ve attempted something like this, it just doesn’t look right. With Whitney and Lisa, I was going for a bigger, thicker look, but I realize that’s not really BBW. Maybe in the future, the software or my skills will get better, and I’ll be able to implement something like that in a future game. 

Can you please take Bai out of the game. Not everyone is into having sex with another boy.

First of all, fuck off. You don’t have to have sex with Bai to play the game. That’s kind of the whole point. It’s all optional. If you can’t deal with the option existing for other people, that’s your problem and I feel bad for you. 

Will you have a work around to opening all the potential dating places, if you don't like a particular character? 

For some things, yeah there will be another option. I’ve done this with The Grotto, where you can unlock it with Whitney or with Suzy/Tammy. I’ll do it with other date places as well. Some of them might not get multiple options though (like the lake, which unlocks with Reba). 

All of these dating locations are optional though. You don’t have to unlock them. You don’t have to take the character that you like to the arcade to finish their story. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have some options locked behind particular characters. 

Do you plan on making his dad (if we ever encounter him that is we don't know) voiced?

No, I don’t. 

Do you plan on giving each character roughly the same amount of content? 

No, probably not. I’ve tried to be somewhat even with things, but there are going to be characters with more story than others, either because they were introduced earlier in the game, or because I just have more story that I want to tell with them, or because they are generally more well-liked than other characters. Jamie has a lot of content because she was one of my first characters. Mari has a lot of content because everybody loves her. Izzy has a lot of content because she’s my favorite character to write.

On the flip-side, Mrs. McGee doesn’t have a lot of content because her story doesn’t really require it. Juliana doesn’t have as much content, because she ended up being the most disliked character in the game (even though I love her). And Mi-Cha doesn’t have as much content because she was the last character to be introduced into the game, putting her a little behind. 

I’ll try to even them up a little, but there will still be some characters with more and some with less. 

Will you bring Adrian’s cousin in for a sex scene?

No, Adrian’s cousin Athena is a character from another game - Bare Witness (Which is now finished and coming soon to Steam). We arranged for Adrian and Athena to appear in each other’s games, but there won’t be any sex scenes with her. If you want to have a sex scene with Athena, go play Bare Witness. There’s a bunch of them. 

Making of… Questions

How did you learn to animate and create the scenes?

Youtube and a lot of practice. I watch a lot of Youtube tutorials though. Not only on Daz (the 3D software I use), but also on animation in general, on movie making, on game making, on special effects. There’s a lot of good content there to use for inspiration and direction. Then it’s just a lot of practice and pushing myself to learn new things and to try to do things that I’m not sure I can actually do. And try to make it look as good as possible with the amount of time that I have. 

I've noticed that the animations have gotten a lot better over time. Is that an improvement with your hardware, your software, or just a learning curve?

First of all, thank you! The improvement is mostly with learning curve. I’ve been doing this for four years now, so it’s only natural that I’d get a little better at it. But, I have improved my hardware as well. I’ve upgraded my computer twice in that time (from the gtx1050 that I started with, to a rtx3070, and now to an rtx3090). That definitely helped with the animation, and all the other visuals as well. Software-side, there hasn’t been many changes, but there have been a couple of tools that I’ve found along the way that have improved the animations. Things like limb-stick, which lets me make sure that their hands aren’t wiggling all over the place like they are in some of the earlier animations. And spring dynamics, which lets me easily add some jiggle. 

So, Come Home is soon coming to a close.  It's been a lot of work, and brought a lot of people together. What's going through your mind as you look at the conclusion of the project?

Ooh, this is a tough question. I’ve been struggling with it a lot, honestly. It’s all kind of scary. I’ve been making the game for four years, and the end is probably going to happen within the next year. So, I worry about how everybody is going to like the ending. I know that some people are not going to like it. I try to keep my expectations low, because I know that I can’t satisfy everybody. It’s going to be hard though, to say goodbye to all these characters, then move on to something new. 

But I am also excited, because I’ve been imagining the end of this game for a long time and it’s fun to finally see it become a reality. And I’m excited for future projects as well. 

Why did you think to make Come Home?

I was writing erotic novels. They weren’t making a lot of money. I saw that porn games were doing pretty well on Patreon and making a significant amount. I had hit a point to where I needed to start making money by writing or else I was going to have to go back to a 9-5 job and I really had no other prospects. So making Come Home was sort of my final chance at making a living by writing. And thank you to everybody who supported it, because it worked out and I didn’t have to go work retail again.

What were some of your inspirations or artists you liked or enjoyed that helped you through your journey into this industry?

Summertime Saga is my biggest influence, by far. It’s the kind of game I wanted to make. I was also influenced by games like Harem Hotel and House on the Rift and Acting Lessons. 

What is some advice you could give upcoming developers, writers or anyone trying to break into this industry?

Start small. Make something that you enjoy. Don’t worry about conforming to expectations and don’t worry about the amount of supporters you have. Keep working though. You have to be DEDICATED if you want to be successful. It took a long time before Come Home started to make money. You have to be able to work and be passionate about the project, even when you’re not getting the feedback you want and you’re not getting the support. So it has to be something you truly care about and love doing. 

And just keep pushing forward, because if you’re dedicated and making a quality product, eventually that audience will find you. 

Do you create characters (looks, behavior...) based on your preferences, real people you know or what the audience probably would want?

There’s a mix of all of this really. I wanted a variety of characters in Come Home. None of them are based on real people, but there were some influences. I had recently watched a couple movies/shows that had latina police officers in them, which made me make Jez. Then there was Final Fantasy XV, which had a big-tittied mechanic in it, kinda influencing Reba. There were probably a few other influences that I can’t think of off the top of my head now. 

But none were really made based on real people or what the audience would want. It was more of just what I wanted and trying to get a variety so that everybody could find somebody they really liked. And they’re all based on myself a little bit. Like different aspects of the same person. 

Do you try to avoid stereotypes (e.g. looks) as much as you can or do you still (have to) implement a few because the audience "demands/wants/needs" them? 

I don’t really try to avoid stereotypes, but I try to be aware of them. I’m sure people will recognize stereotypes in Come Home - the shy Asian girl, the black gangbanger, the country girl - but I’ve recognized these stereotypes when I chose to do them and I’ve tried to do something different with them. Stereotypes are not always bad. Sometimes it’s good to show the audience something they recognize immediately, and then maybe change their perspective on things throughout the story.

Which of the characters (MC included) would you say have changed the most from your original drafts of the story?

Mari has probably changed the most from my original draft. A lot of her family situation was not there in the original draft and developed as I wrote the story. Gertrude has changed quite a bit as well, as I originally didn’t really have much of a story for her and she was just the sexy counselor lady. Everybody else is pretty close to what I originally imagined.

What made you want to go forward with this idea ?

So I had been trying to make it as a writer for a while. I wasn’t really getting anywhere, unfortunately. It’s hard to find an agent and get traditionally published. So I started self-publishing and I self-published four science fiction romance novels. A couple of them did pretty good, but nothing I could live off of. So I needed to rethink things. 

I decided to start writing erotica, but I did so under a pen name, because I didn’t want my family (who are deeply conservative) to read them. That’s where RJ Rhodes (not my real name) came from. As a sort of experiment, I decided I would write 12 novellas in a year. One per month. They’d be short, I wouldn’t spend a ton of time editing them, and I’d just write them and push them out and see how they do. I finished one of them (Claiming Dana) and put it up on Amazon. I wrote the second one as well (Claiming Jamie). But by the time I was working on this second one, I discovered Summertime Saga and porn games, and I was like, “Whoa hold on a second, I could do this.” 

I had two character stories already written. I had already developed more stories for future novellas. So I just needed to come up with a game and put these character stories in it and make it. That’s where the idea for Come Home came from. 

I went with this idea, because I had already written a lot of it in novel form. It also was a good way for me to experiment with a variety of different things, learn the ins and outs of making a game, and tell a bunch of different stories at the same time. I had many ideas in my head and narrowing them down to just one story was practically impossible. So, for my first game, I went with a 20 character sandbox. It wasn’t the smartest idea, but it worked out. 

What do you think is harder from a writer's perspective....creating a whole new fantasy world or having a grounded game based in reality?

It’s definitely harder creating a fantasy world. At least for me. Writing a game grounded in reality, you don’t have to explain a lot and you have a full life’s experience to draw from. 

Knowing all you know now, if you have a time machine, and you can go back in time, what would you do differently in Come Home? 

This one is tough. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years, but everything I’ve done has worked out really well for me, and changing something might have made it not work out. 

I would say, “I wish I didn’t put so many characters in the game,” but that has been a major drawing point for the game, so it might not have been as successful if I hadn’t. 

I would say, “I wish I would have not made the game free and charged upfront,” but I know that there are a lot of people who would have never found and played the game, had that been the case. 

I don’t think I would change anything. Not that I did everything perfectly, but sometimes when you get so focused on doing things perfectly, you just never do them. I think it’s important to make mistakes and learn over time. And you can’t do that by rethinking and questioning the decisions you made.  

Obviously you underwent a great learning and quality curve with regards to the visuals and the coding of the game. But do you also see developments in the level of story telling? Am I right to feel that the game's story has become much deeper than originally intended? Do you feel you have developed as a story teller as well?

So, this is a complicated question. I’m going to tackle the second part first. Do I think I’ve developed as a storyteller. Sure, any time you write, you get better at it. I think that maybe I haven’t developed as quickly as I’d like, however, because a lot of the story for Come Home was written several years ago. So in the past few years, I haven’t done a LOT of writing and storytelling. My time was mostly spent writing dialogue, sex scenes, and then all the visuals involved. I don’t feel like I’ve been flexing my storytelling muscle, because, while you all haven’t seen it yet, I mostly wrote this story many years ago. I’ve been working on future stories though, so I’m not completely stagnating as a writer. 

And do I feel like the game’s story has become much deeper than originally intended? Absolutely. 

There was a moment, I think in like Update 8 or 9, that I realized the theme of what I had been writing. My father died not too long before I started working on Come Home, and I’d been struggling to deal with his death. I realized that (nearly) all of my characters had been dealing with loss as well - the MC with the loss of his mom and now his dad too, Mari with her parents, Reba with her dad, Izzy with her parents, Juliana with her parents, Jamie with her mom, Kendra with her own life. I didn’t realize that I had even done this, but I’d been working through my father’s death through the characters in my silly porn game. 

So yeah, the game started off as being a silly porn game, but because of my own perspective and loss, I had somehow accidentally started leaning towards a story with a theme about how people deal with loss. Once I realized that, I started leaning into it a little more. 

Are there developments in the story that you did not expect and you are happy about that they occurred?

Well the whole theme I just talked about is one thing. Something specific though -- Bai’s coming out. In the original script, the parents weren’t supportive of him and it was a tough scene. But as I started moving towards it, I began to feel differently about it. I wanted a more uplifting scene for Bai and I felt like we’d seen enough of the unsupportive parents. I really like how that scene turned out. 

I can’t think of anything else specific right now, but there are a lot of small things that change every time I sit down to write a scene. I have it all planned out, but sometimes things happen and I go off-book. I’m happy for every one of those times, honestly.

What are some of your regrettable decisions so far?

In the first release of the game, I had minigames in there as the school tests. Everybody hated them. I removed them. I regret wasting my time programming that stuff. 

I think most of the decisions that I’ve regretted, I’ve just gone back and fixed and got rid of them. I don’t think there’s anything in the game currently that I regret doing. 

Everything is a learning experience. I don’t really have many regrets and nothing I can particularly point to for the answer to this question. 

In terms of editing, how do you determine when to say "F it", I'm releasing it?

This is part of why I put a time limit on myself. I could read and re-read something to death, but I try to push myself to get an update out every few months, and I don’t have time to question things too much. As far as editing - I have my outline. I use the outline to write my first draft. Then I read over that first draft to clean it up a bit. Then it goes to my two editors. They catch a lot of my mistakes immediately and I clean those up. Later, I read it again when I do my own testing. Then it goes to alpha testers and they read it. Then I publish. 

So, for me, I read it maybe three times. And have two passes from other people. I think that’s enough. There’s still going to be issues with it that will slip through the cracks, but people online will be happy to point those out and I’ll fix it later. 

I honestly don’t worry too much about making mistakes in editing anymore. I’m never going to catch every punctuation, every typo, every misspelling. It doesn’t matter. I just catch what I can beforehand, and if people find some stuff later, I’ll fix it then. Perfection is the enemy of good. 

As time has gone along do you feel more confident in your story/renders, or do you still have the "I just don't know if I like this" moments.

I do feel more confident in my story/renders, but there are still a ton of those moments. Same as the last question, I think that having a time limit helps me. I don’t have time to question too much or doubt myself too much, because the scene has to get done so that I can release the update on time. 

I know some people are like, “Take as long as you need to make it perfect.” And there’s a quote (by Miyamoto I think) that says something along the lines of “An unreleased bad game can still be made better, but a released bad game is bad forever.” I think that these things are true for some situations, but with my personal situation, I live off the money that I make from the game. The game makes more money on the months that I release updates. I am very incentivized to release regular updates. And the game is still in early access, so people expect it to not be perfect and be improved over time. 

So, I allow myself to make mistakes and be less than perfect, because it’s how the game gets finished. I know that if there’s something that I don’t like, I’ll improve it later. I can always go back and make things better. 

What do you draw inspiration from? Are there times that inspiration may make you go back and change or tweak  a scene?

I draw inspiration from literally everything. Books. Movies. Other games. My life. Hiking. Traveling. News. Having sex. Fantasizing during sex.

I like to joke that everything I do when I’m not working on the game is research, but it’s definitely true. I’m always doing something and then go “This gives me an idea for a game.” 

And yes, there have been a few times that inspiration has made me change a scene. The Bai scene I mentioned earlier where his parents were accepting of his coming out was inspired by me watching Heathers. I can’t think of anything other times that I was inspired to change something, but I’m sure there have been a few others.

I can imagine you get a lot of suggestions. How much, if at all, do you let that influence you?

It depends. Most of the suggestions I get are the same things I’ve been hearing for years. “Add more girls, add pregnancy, add marriage, more gays, less gays, focus more on the main story, let us date Suzy without Tammy, more threesomes, give Chinese translation.” 

90% of things in the game, I have already decided how it’s going to go and I don’t need suggestions. Especially when I’m not asking for suggestions. 

Sometimes however, I do ask for suggestions (especially on Patreon), or somebody will say something that I actually haven’t heard before or thought of and I take those things into account. 

There have been a few scenes in the game that I did not plan on, but I added because they were suggested and I liked the idea. Things like Connie’s scene, the Lisa/Jez threesome, the Izzy Catan game, the one night stand with the big-tittied-hottub-MILF. There are others in the next chapter as well that I hadn’t planned on, but I liked the idea. 

I think it’s important to stay flexible and take suggestions, but most of them don’t influence me at all and I honestly get tired of hearing the same ones over and over again. People are generally asking for things that they want, but I’m not making the game for any particular person. I’m making the game that I want to make and I hope that it will appeal to a wide variety of people. 

Are there any plot points you wanted to add, but would have been too much of a diversion?

I think I already mentioned the Mari furry convention. That would have been a big diversion. 

There was a scene I had originally planned for Kendra, where the MC was going to have dinner at her house with her parents and there was going to be some sexy stuff under the table and in the bathroom. Kendra talked about wanting to have sex in public, where they could get caught. It was going to be a continuation of that thought. But I just had too much Kendra content and couldn’t fit it in.

Those are the only things I can think of at the moment. 

Do you plan to reorder some of the older scenes when you've finished, ie to minimise time periods with nothing to do?

I plan on doing some polish after the game is done, yeah. I will attempt to tighten up the pacing a little bit for sure. 

Do you have hindsight now for having so little main story?

I’m not sure what you mean. Do I regret having so little main story? No, I don’t. 

The whole point of this game was always to have 20 character stories held together by a backbone of some sort. The intention was always for the character stories to be more interesting than the main story.

I’ve talked a little about how I originally was going to publish those character stories as novellas. They were the focus for me. The “main story” is just there to connect them really. 

I was a bit inspired by Twin Peaks. For people who don’t know this show, David Lynch starts off the story with a murder that brings Agent Dale Cooper to town. But the murder is not really the focus of the series. The series is focused on all the weird inhabitants of this town, with the murder plot as a backdrop. David Lynch didn’t even really want to ever solve the murder in the story, but was forced to by producers. Then after the murder was solved, the show kinda went downhill a lot, because it didn’t have that backbone there anymore. 

I always intended to solve the “Where’s Daddy” story, but not until the end of the game. It’s there to hold the rest of these stories together, but it’s not intended to be the focus. 

How did you animate the scene where Mi-Cha dances? 

It was an experiment, and I was really happy with the way it turned out! So, there’s a website called Mixamo, where you can download pre-made animations. The dance animation itself is premade - I didn’t do it by hand. I was able to figure out how to download it and apply it to Mi-Cha’s figure though. Then I simulated the skirt movement (which was probably the hardest part) and I animated the camera. 

It took a LONG time. I was using the rtx3070 back then, and it took a couple of days just to simulate the skirt movement. And it didn’t turn out quite right, so I had to cut the animation and put it into two camera views to hide the jankiness a little. The animation from Mixamo was long too. Something like 800 frames, I think? That’s a lot of frames to simulate and then render. I think it took like a week and a half for me to finish everything with that single animation. Which is why I don’t do it very often. 

But, I mainly tried this out because being able to apply animation poses from other software is pretty useful. It means that if I wanted to do some motion capture in the future, I could, and I know how to do it. It’s something I’ve considered. 

Were you surprised by the success of the game? 

Yeah, I guess I was. I sort of banked on the fact that the game would be successful. I needed it to be. But even so, I never thought it’d be as successful as it has been. I figured I’d make a little bit of money, just enough to scrape by. Maybe about the same as I would in a retail job or something. Just enough to give me an excuse to not get a “real job”. 

But it’s been so successful that I’ve been able to do things that I never dreamed I would be able to do. Buying a house. Paying off my Mom’s car. Opening a retirement account. Affording insurance for both my wife and I. Traveling. I never thought I’d make enough from this game to be able to live comfortably. It’s been surprising and I’m extremely grateful. 

Did you think that the project would take more than 4 years when you released the V1 of the game? 

No, I thought that I’d be done with the game in a year or two at the most. It just kept getting bigger and bigger, and everything took longer and longer to make. I’m glad that it’s taken this long though. If I would have made the game in two years, the quality would not be as good as it is. 

Why did you choose to stream a free game with fan support rather than a few free episodes and paid DLC?

The marketing strategy for this game changed over time and I feel like it’s a strategy that works particularly well for this specific game. I don’t think games like Leap of Faith or Being a DIK would have been as successful with this strategy for instance. 

At the beginning, I was only focused on Patreon. The first version of the game was locked behind a Patreon paywall. I soon came to realize that this was silly. That people wanted to try my game out, but they didn’t want to pay to try it out. When I saw how many people were pirating my game, I decided to just make it free. 

Over time, that changed to the format where I’d release it to patrons first, as a reward for support, then release the free version later. This worked for Patreon, but when I put the game on Steam, I needed something else. People on Steam weren’t flooding to Patreon to support me there. 

So, I came up with the idea for the Premium Edition, and this is where the game became very successful. The idea of having a Free version of the game that has all the story in it, but have a Premium Edition as well, which has extra content and early releases, works very well for this game, because it’s a sandbox and can be played in a sort of piecemeal way. With a more straight-forward game, I don’t think this would have been a very good option. 

So, I think the free version did a very good job of getting attention to the game and bringing in fans. And the premium edition is there for those fans to support the game and get a little extra, and most have been happy to do so. 

Were the quality of the graphics and animations essential from the writing of the project?

I think they’re essential, yes. I could have focused more on the writing, but I never viewed this game as an “Adult Visual Novel”. Like, I wasn’t ever trying to tell an amazing story here. It’s a porn game. It’s a masturbation aid. I think you can have a good story in there too, and I think good characters are essential, but I also made the game for guys to jerk off to. So, I think that visuals are very important for that reason. And to make the characters feel more alive. 

In this writing, how and in what order did the characters "appear"?

I’m going to try to remember this, but I might forget in a few areas. I’ve mentioned that I started with writing novellas. The idea of the novellas was that each one would be focused on a different character. Dana and Jamie were the first ones I wrote.

When I moved over to the idea of making a game, I made a list of sort of tropes that I wanted to play around with in the game - the landlady, the roommate, the gamer girl, the teachers, the gang leader, the furry, the skater girl, the boss, the school counselor.

So, after Dana and Jamie, I created Lisa, Suzy, Mari, Izzy, Kendra, Adrian, Ms. Welch, Mrs. McGee, and Mrs. Mills, and Gertrude. I actually also had three other teachers in mind: a math teacher, an art teacher, and a computer sciences teacher, but those ended up getting cut because their stories were not much different than stories that I already had in the game. 

I knew I wanted to have a variety of ethnicities and sexualities in the game. I knew I wanted to have a trans character and a male character. So, I decided that my gamer girl would be trans at this point. I also added Juliana, Tammy, and Jez at this point. At some point, I decided that Tammy and Suzy would be linked together as best friends who secretly loved each other.

When I started developing the main story, I had the police officer character and a scientist character deeply involved. I filled the police role with Jez, but I needed to create Whitney to fill the other role. 

After this, there were a few other things I wanted to play around with: the idea of a streamer character (Brandi), a more redneck character (Reba), and a male character (Bai). I don’t think these characters were in the first few updates that I made. They came in a little bit later. 

And the last character to be added was Mi-Cha. I was at 19 characters by this point, and I wanted an even 20, so I put a poll up on Patreon to either make Mi-Cha a main character (she was just the counselor’s receptionist at the time), or make Claire (the married one-night-stand redhead) a main character. There might have been another option as well (Connie?), I can’t remember. But Mi-Cha took the votes and was the last one added. 

Is this project for you just entertainment for fans of the genre or a militant act, both on the quality of the storytellers and concerning the LGBTQ+  "cause"?

I wouldn’t say it’s militant. That’s a little extreme. 

I am queer. I am part of that world. The story is written through my voice. It would be impossible for me to write a story that didn’t contain some of that. 

That said, I do feel a sort of obligation to not only put out a product that people can have fun with and enjoy, but also try to educate a little, open up people’s minds, and maybe make the world a little better? I don’t have huge ambitions that my silly porn game is going to change the world, but I do think that artists have a responsibility to use their influence to make things better and not worse. 

I see all these video games where you shoot people, or in the adult world, take advantage of women, and my thoughts are “who does this help? How is this helping society?” 

I don’t think that somebody is going to play Grand Theft Auto and then go on a shooting rampage. But I do think that it influences people. I do think that people become desensitized to things that they experience in games. So, a game where you treat women badly could make a person (especially a young man who might be playing a porn game), be more comfortable with treating women badly in real life. 

In the same way, treating LGTBQ+ people with kindness and respect in a silly porn game might influence people to treat those people the same way in real life. 

So, I’m not being militant here. I’m not trying to turn everybody gay or force people to suck dicks or something. Every LGTBQ+ relationship in the game is optional. I am only trying to influence players in what I believe is a positive direction - one of acceptance and love. 

Future Questions

Do you think you're gonna make any new games similar to Come Home?

Yeah, definitely. I have some ideas for games that are very different from Come Home, but they’re all going to have some similarities I’m sure. Come Home is a very personal game for me, and I think that my future games will be personal as well.

Will you write any more novels or stories besides adult games ?

Ooh, I like this question. I actually have a couple of novels that I’ve written already and haven’t published yet. I’ve been thinking about publishing them as RJ Rhodes, but they are not adult novels. That could happen, but I haven’t decided yet. 

I love writing and it’s likely that not everything I write will be smut. Right now, most of my writing time has been writing adult games though, and that’s where my mind is at, but it might not always be there. Maybe I’ll release some non-adult games in the future. Who knows? 

Since Come Home basically happens in the span of a few weeks/months....are you interested in creating a game with full seasons, where you can have season specific events or do you like keeping your games compact?

Yeah, I am interested in that. I originally wanted to include that type of thing in Come Home. One of the games that I’ve been planning on for the future does have a calendar system, takes place over a full year, and is more rigidly structured than Come Home, so I’ll be doing things like seasons and holidays and stuff in it. 

Are there any plans to release Come Home 2 or do you want to mainly focus on expanding the current version with DLCs?

A sequel to Come Home is not currently in the works, but could happen one day for sure. There won’t be any more DLCs however - the Premium Edition will be the full game.

Have you started to work on another game? If yes is there a possibility it would be released before Come Home is complete?

Yep, I have a few other games that I’ve been developing in the background. Two of them in particular, I have developed extensively. I haven’t quite decided which one of those two I’m going to release first. 

But no, nothing is going to be released before Come Home is complete. The only way that would change is if I meet an artist I want to work with. If I was just doing the writing/coding/developing and didn’t have to do the artwork, I could do more than one game at a time, but the artwork is just so time consuming that working on another game would only prolong the release of Come Home, and I’m not going to do that.

A while ago you mentioned a potential female MC game. I’d love to see a non corruption driven (at least not as the main theme) female MC lewd game. Any chance that could be in the works?

I’ve been playing around with ideas for a female MC game, but I haven’t developed anything very far just yet. I have a couple ideas, but I don’t think they’re going to happen immediately after Come Home. I would still like to make a female MC game though. 

Will your future games be free, like Come Home?

I don’t think so. Come Home being free was more of a marketing experiment than anything - plus maybe a little bit of my own insecurities at charging for something that I wasn’t sure if I could actually deliver on at the beginning. My future games will likely be released as a single charge up front. I don’t like the whole “Seasons” structure that a lot of these types of games are doing, and I won’t do that. I also won’t do endless DLCs. Just one payment up front and you get the whole thing. 

But marketing strategies change, and I could release another free game in the future as well. Who knows? Currently, I don’t plan to, however. 

RJ Personal Questions

Have/would you ever show/talk about your game to friends or just people, who visit you or would it be too awkward in one way or another?

My wife knows about and plays my game. I talk to her about it all the time. I have a couple of friends who know that I make a porn game, but they don’t know which game it is, and I like to keep it that way. 

Part of it is that it would be a little awkward, but another part is just for my personal safety and keeping my online presence separate from my real life. That’s very important to me. 

Are you a woman?

Yes I am. Which is one reason the personal safety thing is very important for me. I feel like if people online found out my real name, I would be in actual physical danger. 

Most people online have been extremely friendly and supportive of me as a female dev, but there’s been some threats and creepiness over the years as well. 

What is your creative process? What inspires you? 

I think I talked about inspiration earlier - everything. But my creative process… well, I like to write a lot. I write while I’m watching TV in the evening. Or just put some music on and start writing. When I write, I usually write by hand in a notebook. I have tons of half-filled notebooks lying around the house with half-developed ideas in them. 

Eventually, when I like an idea enough, I’ll spend some time at the computer expanding on it and creating a sort of outline for a story. Then I just keep expanding that and expanding, until I get a full rough draft. 

And that’s basically my process. It’s like a ball of yarn that I start with one end and just slowly roll it up, adding more and more to it, until I have a full story. Then comes all the trimming and editing and rewriting and restructuring, but that’s all mostly mechanical. The creative part comes mostly in the outlining. 

What's your favorite color?

Blue. But not just any blue, like an azure blue. Almost Cyan. Like the ocean off of a tropical beach.

Which character is most like your partner? 

Hm… none of them are particularly like my partner, honestly. I guess she’s sort of a mix between Ms. Welch and Juliana? She’s fiery and opinionated and passionate. But she’s also shy and sweet and smart. 

THE END

That’s all the questions for this Q&A. If I didn’t get to your question, it’s probably because it was stupid. Love ya! Bye!