If you have been following the blog lately, you know there is a lot happening. Between making game demos and working on At Your Feet 2, we were very busy. However, when we look at how fast the projects are moving, something interesting stands out: At Your Feet 2 might actually come out before Glamour Photographer!
This might surprise you, but let me explain. Glamour Photographer is a huge game. The story is already over 200,000 words long, and about 90% of the main work is already finished. So, why is it taking so long? The simple answer is: animations.
As you probably know already, while the normal character animations are done, we are also trying to have some animated intimate scenes. Glamour Photographer has more art than any game we have made before, with over 150 comic-style pictures, and so we’ll have budget to animate a scene for each love interest, but still that takes some more extra time.
This delay shows a common problem in making video games: the choice between working alone or in a team. As you know, I’ve worked mostly alone in my whole career.
When a developer works completely on their own (or almost), they have total control over the schedule. They don’t have to wait for other people, ask for approval, or depend on outside help. Working alone is fast and predictable. On the other hand, when you work with a bigger team or a publisher, delays are bound to happen. It takes time for everyone to stay on the same page, and waiting on different people can slow things down. That is exactly what is happening right now with the animation team.
However, think about the other side of the medal: working with a bigger team is the only reason a game like Glamour Photographer can exist! One person can only do so much by themselves. A larger team brings the extra hands needed to create much bigger, cleaner, and more beautiful games that a solo developer could never make alone. That is the big trade-off.
Because At Your Feet 2 is being made as a simpler, classic visual novel without complex extra features or animations, it is moving very fast. While we wait for the team to finish polishing the animations for Glamour Photographer, don’t be surprised if At Your Feet 2 beats it to the finish line sometimes around this Summer!
That’s all for now, in the beginning of August I might have an actual release date for At Your Feet 2 (just need to implement custom scenes and other minor things).
Now, before we get into more details, I want to answer an obvious question: what about Glamour Photographer? Well, things are going well! I’ve finished the game (of course will need some testing) and the reason why we’re launching this Kickstarter is simple: to optimize time.
Because right now the team of animators is working on adding all animations to the game. In particular, extra characters added later during development, the spiritual guides, etc. And also, the… ahem, “intimate scenes” (you know what I mean). Of course not all of them otherwise finishing the game would take 3 years (there are over 150 comic CGs!!!) but we’re aiming at around 3-4 animated events for each model which is definitely great, but still takes a good amount of time.
So in summary: I’m doing this Kickstarter so I can already start producing content for At Your Feet 2 while the animations are being added to Glamour Photographer. You know I don’t like to remain idle!
At Your Feet 2 game
in this story we assume Sybil ended up with Shiori in Summer In Trigue
I’ve already hinted a bit about this game in the past, but now I’ll go into more detail. First of all, the game will be a comedy, but a different kind from Glamour Photographer, which had some really absurd moments (the spiritual guides appearing, Filippo constantly triggering hilarious situations, etc.). The comedy here will be more subtle and refined, and it will revolve mainly around Linda, the main character.
While Emma from the first game was a sort of disaster — shy about her kink, a bit clumsy — Linda is an interesting contradiction. She looks confident on the outside, but inside her mind there’s pure chaos: she’s constantly overanalyzing everything. After all, she’s a psychology student, and she’s convinced every glance, every gesture, every micro-expression has some deeper meaning. The best comedy comes from her inner monologue: the gap between the composed adult she’s trying to be and the feral, dirty-minded brain that keeps betraying her.
Tommy is jealous of Linda’s success with women…but don’t worry, he’ll have his time to shine
Adding Tommy, her best friend since childhood, makes the whole thing even funnier. Tommy is the only person in Linda’s life who knows about her kink, and he happens to be into feet as well. So throughout the story, whenever a “foot situation” arises, the two exchange knowing glances, tease each other, and play off the secret only they share.
The fact that Tommy is still hopelessly convinced he has a shot with Linda adds another layer to the dynamic. Don’t worry, though! Tommy will have his own moments with Paige, Linda’s ex, who is also coming to Trigue… specifically to chase after him.
And what about the three love interests?
Jennifer — The ultimate extrovert. If there’s a party, she IS the party. A bisexual, polyamorous free spirit and unapologetic exhibitionist who treats every outfit like a performance. Chaotic on the surface, but more thoughtful underneath than people give her credit for, and the one most likely to push Linda outside her comfort zone.
Rose — A wealthy, prim-and-proper “good girl” from a strict family, on her first solo holiday and ready to slip the leash. Soft-spoken, easily flustered, with a clear submissive streak that only emerges once she feels safe. A locked garden quietly hoping someone will find the key, and her arc from blushing newcomer to confident woman is one of the most rewarding parts of the story.
Alex — The sultry singer from Summer in Trigue, returning in a timeline where she never got together with Sybil. Magnetic, commanding, in full control of every room she walks into, but the femme fatale persona is partly a mask. Underneath the dominance is someone who cares, ferociously, about the people she lets close.
The current draft of the story that I’ve been working on and off since the beginning of the year is already around 60,000 words and I suspect the final game will surpass the 100,000 words (so will be much bigger than the first title).
If you’re interested in knowing more, check the Kickstarter page, I’ll be constantly updating it as the campaign goes on!
First of all, work on Glamour Photographer continues. The publisher is adding animations, and the final amount of comic style CGs will exceed 150 (NOT all animated of course!!!).
This sets this game as the game I made with the most art content ever. I hope you’ll appreciate all our efforts!
I’m also confirming that we’ll have a demo of the game for the Steam Next Fest, but we could also have a demo for our other project, At Your Feet 2. But first of all, a bit of an announcement/news
Back to Mac
Those who follow me knows that I had a love-hate relationship with Apple over the course of the years. I absolutely think their hardware is amazing and they’ve done some of the most innovative products. Their software, the OS, was great too, until they started to force devs to use their tools and notarization system.
I had a macbook that I used until 2012, then a macmini, but after 2016-17 I gave up keeping my devices up to date (another thing I didn’t like was the forced obsolescence).
Anyway, long story short, I’ve recently decided to give it another go, also because the new Macminis are really good, so I got myself a M4 with 24Gb of RAM, and over the course of past week I’ve started updating all the iOS apps in my free time.
I plan to keep updating all old games and also maybe publish the new ones, of course they’ll be heavily censored since those platforms don’t allow adult content (but even just sexy is too much).
I will of course update it as I port newer games. I ran into problems with Save The World but I must admit that the review team was surprisingly cool, I mean I could talk to them and explain stuff and they changed their mind, unlikely a certain store that once decides something, there’s no way to make them change their mind… (yes I’m talking about Steam lol).
I will also look into porting the regular Mac builds of my games later.
At Your Feet 2
As you probably know, I’m a hard worker and even if I had finished already 90% of my work on Glamour Photographer, I wanted to start working on this game too. And so in the last few weeks I began to plan the general plot outline, refine the characters’ backgrounds, and all that.
normally this wasn’t allowed, but I can do it even if Glamour Photographer isn’t officially out since now I have a good reputation on Kickstarter… probably releasing 15 games all before the deadline has some impact!
At the same time, maybe I’m getting old, or more likely I don’t have a big amount of following in the adult games world, but I decided to ask Glamour Photographer’s publisher Andrealphus help again (but no extra animations this time, just marketing).
This way, I’ll be able to focus on the development of the game only, and this means I’ll be able to release it sooner and/or add more content (though this will also depend on the amount of funds raised from Kickstarter).
But if you want to know a bit more about what I’m planning, here are some info about the game:
it will be comedy setting too, not like Glamour Photographer since it will be mixed with some more serious moments, but still definitely leaning on the comedy side, especially Linda’s inner thoughts
it will be a plain visual novel, using a system similar to the first At Your Feet game: no relationship meter, but each character will have two “alignments” and your choice will influence that
the endings will change based on the alignments, plus there will be some variations of the main story depending on them, in particular the alignment of Tommy (your friendzoned best friend)
it will be yuri, with some potential scene including Tommy (100% optional!) and maybe even polyamorous endings depending how the crowdfunding goes!
As you see there’s a lot of stuff going on, but next month or July I might also start talking about that other fantasy game I mentioned with female MC and two male + two female love interests.
And don’t worry I haven’t forgot about ToA: Reign Of War but that’s a very big game so I need much more time to finish it!
First of all, the good news, I’ve made exceptional progress on Glamour Photographer. I’d say I’ve done about 90% of the work. The story is all written, still needs to edit/tweak some parts, I’m waiting for some missing imags from artists, etc.
Of course I also need to do a bit more of testing and bugfixing, but since this game is simpler compared to my previous one (lol full townsim+RPG+roguelike vs light management sim + match3!) I am confident it won’t take much work.
What’s really left is, beside some images, also the animations. The characters animations are almost all done, but I recently spoke to the publisher and … they want to add sex-scenes animations as well! That’s the first time it happens in any of my games. So this is the good news, the bad news is that of course that will take time. And obviously NOT all the scenes will be animated, there are too many!
This confirms the planned demo release for the Steam Next Fest next month, and a potential release somewhere in Summer, depending how long adding animations takes.
But the good news don’t stop here. I am thinking to enter the Steam Next Fest also with my other game, At Your Feet 2. There’s two months of time, and for a demo I don’t need to have a lot of content, also because this game is a plain VN, doesn’t have any extra mechanic like other titles. I believe that I could manage to write enough content for a demo in this timeframe. We’ll see!
I’m going to provide more details on both games now.
Glamour Photographer
As I posted the 1st April (but it wasn’t an April’s Fool!), after some pressure by some backers/fans, we’ve added a short one-night stand scene with Lila Stern, one of your guides.
It’s only a simple scene but it turned out very nice. I’m getting a habit of adding those one-night stand scenes for secondary characters. In this case she isn’t even a real person in the story! Indeed the scene takes the form of a lucid dream by the protagonist.
Because of this, I had to add a way to change your spiritual guide while in game:
See at the top-right of the screen. This way, you can play most of the story for example with Master Li Bido (objectively the most fun of all guides!) and switch to Lila just before the final choice scene and unlock the scene, without forcing people to replay the whole game.
Speaking of content: the game current script is already past 200k words! And as said I’ll have to finish writing/tweaking some scenes. The amount of art content is also very high, with over 160 unique images done in comic style, plus over 50-60 photoshoot images (though I have to be honest and we’ve reused many body poses in this case and changed only the faces, hair style, skin color, etc).
We’ve also started adding some bonus scenes and outfits from backers, but I’ll speak about this more in detail next month!
At Your Feet
As I posted already before, the character images of this game were initially for another game. It was still a yuri game, but more toward the romantic side, set in the 1980s. It was a story about a black woman who falls in love with a rich white girl who is supposed to marry a man. They would meet each year toward the end of summer (that was also the working title of the game) to talk. Since it was set in the 1980s, the world was much harder back then for lesbian women, and you can imagine many of the topics and situations (also the social class difference).
Then there would be a final plot twist, which I won’t reveal just in case one day I’ll somehow make it.
The reason I decided to cancel it wasn’t about the overall story (I had already written a full plot outline and some scene drafts that turned out well). The reason, or better the reasons, were two: 1) that there wasn’t enough adult content, and 2) after Christine’s Care release I understood that just a simple, serious yuri story doesn’t sell well anymore on Steam, no matter if it’s well written and the art is great.
This is the sad reality. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I believe a title like At Your Feet 2, yuri with a clear, recognizable kink and also a comedy setting with very fun characters, inner monologues and situations, would have more chances. Nothing big, of course; the visual novel market on Steam is basically a wasteland, only porn stuff survives.
The setting is now modern times. The location is the island of Trigue, which made a perfect way to have Alex show up again as a love interest (it rarely happened in my games that a character was a love interest in two different stories with different protagonists!).
And as already mentioned, this time beside the feet stuff, each character has a kink, this way even if you’re not into that, maybe you’ll find something interesting anyway! I am going to use comic-style CG for this game too, since I can have a good variety with same amount of money I’d spend for a high quality CG.
I have only started the game pre-production but I’ve already over 36 unique images done this way for the story, and the final amount once funded will likely go above 100.
For example below is the scene where the protagonist Linda first meets with Alex, who’s singing as usual:
Being distracted by Alex, Linda will pull a “Grace-move” and pour the drinks over the unaware guest nearby!
This is instead when you’ll first met with Rose, who comes accompanied by Paige, Linda’s ex.
Paige was a character originally made for C14 Dating but was never put in the game, so I decided to have her show up in this story (not as love interest though, just as secondary character).
And last but definitely NOT least, Jennifer. This image/pose might be familiar if you’re a true WinterWolves fan:
Yep, I sent the artist same reference as Dolores from my 2024 game House Of Chavez, since I particularly liked that pose and was perfect for a foot fetish game.
Conclusions
That’s all for now: as you can see I’m working hard to bring some fun and happiness your way, even while everything else seems to be falling apart… see you next month for a new update.
As you might know if you follow me on socials, last month the campaign for Glamour Photographer has ended. However, since I got several people asking to, I decided to leave the late pledges on. This means you can still support the game, and in particular this last stretch goal that wasn’t fully reached:
It’s a… very interesting goal, don’t you think?
Some people asked several questions about the game so I thought to try answering them directly here:
Estimate release date
Hold your horses, the Kickstarter campaign just ended! haha while I’m renown for always finishing my campaign much sooner than the deadline, in this case bear in mind that I’m working with another company, and in particular since they’re going to add animated characters and other features to the game, in this specific case it also depends on that.
In any case, we have as goal to release a demo for the Steam Fest in June, and I think that by that date a beta version should be ready as well. A potential release during the Summer is definitely realistic. That’s only 3-4 months away after all!
Optional Adult Content and Steam
We want to have a game playable by anyone, so while there’ll obviously be some optional spicy content (and probably some of the hottest stuff ever seen in my games!) we also aim to have a clean, streamable version of the game.
In the base game there won’t be any nudity obviously, but not even any vague reference to some of the models kink. Some of you might be a bit disappointed, but I’d like to remind you that my previous game Thieves Of Dingirra got forced in adult only section just because of an image of a character in a leather suit with a whip. Stop, that was it. So as you can imagine, we’ll be very very cautious this time!
I just hope that sexual jokes are fine since it’s a comedy game (but you never know, the inquisition is back at full force!).
This will also mean that pretty scenes like this one below won’t appear in the base game:
As you know, lingerie = extreme pornographic content! (though I admit the image is … hot!)
As I already mentioned before, if you go in any random beach in Europe you’ll see women with micro-bikini much more revealing than that image. But that’s how the rules are, and since you can’t have a PG-14 on Steam (unless you pay some insanely high fee to get an european rating!) we’ll just play safe and not have anything even vaguely remotely sexy in the base game.
Then we’ll have a separate, free adult DLC which will let players enable the optional adult stuff (or even just lingerie outfits).
Game Length, Romances and Gameplay
Another question I got asked is how big is the game and how the romances work. The game is currently already 160,000 words and I think the final script will be close to 200,000 words, more or less. Regarding how it will work plot-wise and in particular related to the love interests, I decided to go with a system suggested by several fans.
Premise: normally my games (but any classic dating sim, really) start with a story, then introduce the various love interests, and then you unlock each character’s route scene by scene, until at a certain point you have to choose a romance (of course there are cases in which you can unlock polyamorous routes, but that’s another matter).
The problem with forcing a choice too early was that people had to save at a specific point and then redo the story from it. If there’s a main story that occur, or a lot of gameplay elements, that might take a long time.
So in this case, you’ll be able to see about 80% of the scenes for each love interest before committing to a specific character. This way if you want to see all the other characters (something that’s rather normal I’d say) you can simply go back to that point and not need to replay a huge part of the game.
Last but not least, a few of you commented negatively about the match3 gameplay. Each match takes about a minute, so they’re very short, and I already added an Easy mode. Normally you can schedule two photoshoots each month of the game. So assuming 24 photoshoots that means one year is only going to take you 24-25 minutes of match3 gameplay. That’s honestly not much!
After the first few years, you become rather famous in game and so you don’t need to do two photoshoots every month, but just 1 is enough to not go bankrupt.
I’d hope players try and play the match3 since I put a lot of effort in it, however I am also thinking about adding a Visual Novel Mode, for those who really don’t like it. You’ll still need to schedule the photoshoots but they’ll be done instantly.
If I go this route I’ll still have a few achievements related to playing the match3 though!
Conclusions and At Your Feet 2
That’s all for Glamour Photographer for now, remember that if you backed the game on Kickstarter I’ll do monthly updates on it. I’ll do almost daily updates on socials instead.
In other news, I also put up the Steam page for the other game I’m planning to work on this year, At Your Feet 2. Of course, the game was instantly forced into adult only, apparently for this screenshot:
Which I thought was completely harmless and funny even, typical comedy style. But, just writing the word “foot fetish” triggered the inquisition at full force apparently!!
So, the game ended in adult only, and because of that I have added some X-rated screenshots now. There’s nothing worse to end up in adult category and then not have anything really adult displayed…no one will wishlist the game!
You understand now why we want to be very careful with Glamour Photographer content?
