Chapter 1 of Wet Velvet: Strip Case is finished

Chapter 1 is done, and it goes out to patrons now.

The build is right here in the two links below, and access opens by tier, with the $25 tier first.

*1440p links*

*1080p links*

*What the game is*

An adult noir detective visual novel. You play a homicide detective with the Mirage Bay Police Department. You name him at the start, and from there he's yours. Mirage Bay is a sprawling coastal metropolis in Southern California, big enough to lose a body in, small enough that the same faces keep coming back around.

It's choice driven and it genuinely branches, and where you end up differs in substance, not in a closing line. The part I care most about: there is no correct answer sitting behind the choices waiting to be guessed. Every reading of this case has evidence for it and evidence against it. You'll be asked to decide who's telling you the truth while knowing you could be wrong, and the version of events you walk out with is yours.

*The case*

A Wednesday night call. Two men dead at a strip club. The owner shot in his back office, the shooter dead on the floor beside him.

On the surface it's gang business, and gang business with the shooter already lying in the room is the kind of case that closes itself and gets filed by the end of the week. This one doesn't close. The further into it you get, the more people surface who had a reason to want the owner dead, and the evidence refuses to line up behind any one of them. Pull one thread and it holds up a story. Pull the next and it holds up a different story just as well, and both of them explain the same body on the same floor.

That's where the case stops being a procedure and turns into a judgment call. The question isn't who pulled the trigger. It's which reading of the case you believe, and you're the one who has to settle it.

*The women*

Eight women with developed roles, and I want to be specific about what that means, because it's a phrase that gets thrown around. None of them started as a walk-on who got expanded because a scene needed a body in it. Every one of them had a written profile before a single line of her dialogue existed: history, psychology, what she wants and what she's not saying out loud. Some of them are tied to the case. Some of them have nothing to do with it at all and belong to the half of your life that doesn't politely pause because a double homicide landed on your desk.

Part of the cast are romance options with fully developed storylines, adult relationships, and explicit content if that's where you take it.

- *Victoria Ellison*, the victim's widow. Platinum blonde, striking, clearly a woman with money and standing in this city.

- *Elena Voss*, a local artist. Auburn hair, warm, and already part of your life before any of this started. Whether she stays that way is a live question.

- *Samara Reyes*, 21, working nights at a neighborhood store and paying her own way in a city that isn't offering to help.

- *Jenna Whitfield*, your aide at Homicide. Sharp, blonde, and a little friendlier with you than the job strictly requires.

- *Kira Tanaka*, the department's digital forensic specialist. Blue-streaked hair, a lab in the basement, and a gift for getting data out of devices that weren't built to hand it over.

- *Thea Mercer*, the forensic officer. Cool gray-blue eyes, exact, no wasted words.

- *Candy* and *Nikki*, dancers at The Velvet Room, both working the night it happened.

Seven of the eight have their own introduction post, with renders, published separately on my Patreon page. All of them are public. If you'd rather meet someone before you play, scroll back through the page and they're there.

What's in the build:

- 70,000 words

- 12 animations

*How to get it*

Two editions, by resolution. 1080p at $10, 1440p at $15 and $25. The difference is image quality; the story, the scenes and the content are identical.

The $5 tier is closed to new members at the moment. I expect to open it again in about a month.

The $25 tier gets early access to each new chapter, and it also includes my three finished games: Going Rogue, With Eyes Closed Season 1 and With Eyes Closed Season 2.

The schedule for this chapter:

- September 16: early access for the $25 tier.

- September 25: early access for the $15 tier in 1440p, and for the $10 tier in 1080p.

- October 2: everyone already subscribed at $5 gets the 1080p version.

If you've been on this page since the announcement, thank you for sitting through the long quiet stretch where all I had to show you was progress. If you arrived today, you picked a good day to do it. Chapter 1 is finished and going out now, and I hope you enjoy it.