August Progress Update & New Release Announcement

Hi everyone, Warumiyo here.

It's been a while since our last update. I know many of you have been waiting a long time for Arin's story, and I'm sorry that we went quiet on top of that and may have left you worried. Today I'd like to catch you up on where things stand, along with the announcement of a new game releasing on August 29 — depending on when you're reading this, it may already be out.

To get straight to the point: the game coming out is not The Taming Massage Parlor ~ Arin's Story, the one you've been waiting so long for. It's Massage my Ex-bully: Side Story, a spin-off starring Dana, who has appeared throughout the series. With TTMP: Arin's Story already running late, I imagine your first thought is "why a side story, all of a sudden?" — so let me explain how we got here, step by step.

After the last post went up, we kept pushing pretty hard to get Arin's Story out within August. We even worked out that if we rushed the finish and moved some content into post-launch updates, a release was technically doable. But with development closing in on a year and a half, we just couldn't bring ourselves to ship a game we've poured that much time and effort into in an unfinished state. You've waited this long — we wanted to show it to you done properly.

The problem was money. Since we hadn't released anything in a while, we had roughly three months of development funds left — and then our accountant told us that part of our corporate taxes was due in August. It was a large expense we hadn't planned for at all. When we ran the numbers, the company's funds would run dry by the end of August, and even after putting in our personal savings, we could barely hold out one month until sales payouts arrived. We had to release something within August, one way or another — and at the same time, we wanted it to be something that genuinely helps the series in the long run, not a hastily patched-together stopgap.

The conclusion we reached was to take the Dana content we had already developed for the next installment and complete it as a standalone side story.

There was actually a content-side reason for this as well. The early portion of Arin's Story has gone through several rewrites, because explaining the backstory of Dana — a character who appears across the whole series — while weaving it naturally into a story centered on a new protagonist turned out to be trickier than expected. We know how many of you love Dana, so we wanted to fit her in somehow. But after a lot of deliberation, we concluded it would be better for both sides to let Arin's Story focus fully on its new characters, and to tell Dana's story properly in a dedicated title of its own. In a way, Dana's story — which until now existed only in my head — is finally seeing the light of day.

This side story covers how Dana ended up working at the protagonist's massage parlor, and who she was before all that — you could call it the first chapter of the massage series, retold from Dana's point of view. And once the story wraps up, you'll get to play the completed version of the minigame you briefly tried in the Arin's Story demo: taming Dana at the parlor's front desk.

Pricing differs slightly by platform. On FANZA, thanks to the support of our platform rep, it will be available at its lowest price — "one coin" (under ¥500). On DLsite it's ¥660, with a 10% launch discount for the first four weeks bringing it down to ¥594. And on our Patreon shop page, it will be sold at $5. Either way, we hope it's an easy price to take a chance on.

Originally I thought this could be finished quickly — in about a week — and that's what I told you, but in the end it took longer. I'm sorry about that as well. Since the story was already in my head, the first draft of the script was done in two days. But revising it and translating it into three languages myself took far longer than expected, eating up an extra five days. For the languages I can't speak, I relied entirely on Claude; but for the ones I do speak, when I looked over Claude's draft translations, the cultural nuances, the prose, and the flavor of the dialogue fell short of what I wanted — so I ended up reviewing and rewriting nearly every line by hand, which took much more time than planned. (Commissioning a translator wasn't really an option either: the turnaround was too tight, and the text kept changing throughout revisions...)

The illustrations also took longer than planned, since I couldn't bring myself to compromise on composition or quality and kept reaching for more. And directing the delivery of each individual line, reaching out to voice talent, selecting the background music — doing it all hands-on, there was far more work than I had imagined. All we ask is that you know we never intended to cut corners just because it's a short side story.

And that's exactly why, if there's one thing we're genuinely confident in with this release, it's the quality you get for the price. Every bit of support you give this side story carries straight into completing Arin's Story at the quality it deserves. The moment the side story is out the door, we'll be back to focusing entirely on Arin's Story.

To everyone who has kept waiting and cheering us on through the delays — thank you, truly. Next time, we'll be back with news about Arin's Story.