After spending way too long trying to figure out a satisfactory ending to the protagonist’s conflict with The Baron, I think I’ve got something promising. It requires the ability to merge minions together, so there are some game mechanical things I need to sort out before I can go ahead with it.

Since my last update I’ve been working on adding angels, monks and nuns to the game and it’s taking longer than I expected. How to work angels into the game puzzled me for a wee while because angels always work for someone – there’s no such thing as a freelance angel. I started thinking about deities (plural, monotheism is boring) and I did invent a couple of gods to add to the pantheon, but then I realised it’d be an awesome surprise to have guardian angels instead.

The basic idea is that immediately before you recruit a monk or a nun, their angel intervenes. Angels are supposed to be chaste and virtuous so they’re bound in chastity equipment. You can’t seduce an angel directly (corrupting one takes some persistence), but if you arouse them enough they get really uncomfortable in their bindings and have to leave, which lets you have your wicked way with the monk/nun.

Trouble is that it’s not fun yet, so I’m going to have to shitcan something in this formula. Chastity limits your options during a sex scene to an excessive degree*, and the whole interruption thing feels a little punitive.

* Though it’d be great as an end to a scene. If you know you’re going to lose the encounter, you could put a mortal in chastity which would give you a bonus to lust the next time you visit.

I’ve compiled the Fetish survey results. This was open to people who contributed to the OffBeatr crowdfunding drive in January, at a level of $15 or higher.

Which transformation would you most like to see in the game?

The write-in results had a range of interesting ideas, the most popular of which was muscle growth (3 requests). The suggestions for living clothing, flavoured cum and being able to secrete spiderwebs also caught my eye. For now I’ll only commit to putting Nagas in the game, and leave the rest for any spare time I might have at the end of development.

What kinds of partners would you most like to see in the game?

OK, so I’m definitely going to have to put angels in the game! I’ll have a think about what that means in world-building terms, because I never imagined Fleshcult taking place in a monotheistic world (in spite of the fact that succubi and incubi are part of the Christian mythos). I’ll figure something out.

The most popular write-in results were Amputees (3) and Bimbos (3).

Which activity would you most like to see in the game?

Minion breeding would be awesome. In contrast to the others it’d really make more sense as a meta-game activity, though I haven’t figured out what that will entail. Seeing as I don’t want children in the game, I’m imagining minions incubating demonic spawn of some kind.

This also had some pretty cool write ins: unbirth (3) and fucking machines!

Thanks to everybody who took the time to fill this in. It’s really helping me prioritise.

Here’s a really rough schedule of the major milestones I have planned during the development period. Bug fixing will take place throughout. I’m also counting on final paintings getting delivered at some point, although it’s hard to know when that will be.

The OffBeatr total has dropped below $12,000 and is fluctuating due to failed transactions, but that’s OK, I’m still committed to achieving all the stretch goals that we reached.

I’ve decided to accept donations during development under the same terms as the crowdfunding campaign: $10 gets you unlimited turns during development (and after development, everybody gets unlimited turns), and $5 extra gets you unlimited characters. I want to be transparent about this, so I’ll do a weekly update showing the total donations collected, the money spent and what the remaining balance of project funds is. I’ll do the first balance update when I receive payment from OffBeatr.

v0.50

Mid Feb

• Set up forum.
• System for donations outside of OffBeatr.
• Ability to start research on upgrades that have a chain of dependencies (ala Civ).
• Less randomness in invasion combat.
• Arbitrary player character names.
• Beast multipliers re-balanced.
• Apprentices can research tomes.

v0.60

Early March

• Survey results announced.
• NPC names integrated into game.
• First new player skills.
• First new NPC skills.
• Testbed for writers to test in-game messages on.
• Placeholder text for existing transformations replaced.

v0.70

End of March

• Plot arc fleshed out.
• Wider variety of concubine upgrades.
• New unique characters, based on which fetishes were chosen in survey.
• Placeholder text for minions replaced.

v0.80

Late April

• Mobile UI.
• Test on Android, test on iOS.
• Improvements to desktop UI.
• New unique characters.
• More variations in encounter messages.

v0.90

Mid May

• New unique characters.
• New chance events.
• Some dialogue snippets for unique characters.

v1.00

Early June

• Remaining new player skills added, based on which fetishes were chosen in survey.
• Remaining new chance events added, based on which fetishes were chosen in survey.
• Gender effectiveness rebalanced.

• Firstly, hit the prerequisites I’ll need for it to be suitable for public consumption:
  • Profile extensibility.
  • Improving workflow for writing submissions.
  • Server performance improvements / reliability monitoring.
• More beta invites!
• Writing, writing and more writing. Fleshcult needs more characterisation in particular. A harem is no fun if all the inhabitants are indistinguishable. A lot of the writing effort I have planned is going to go into making the characters react in individual ways in the sex scenes.
  
• Random equipment drops at encounter start.
• Spell tomes as prerequisites to shapeshifting categories, perhaps? I’ll play with some ideas here.
• Rework concubine & beast upgrade trees to be more interesting and less gross respectively.
• Special high difficulty content.
• Initial public release. A soft launch, start out small?
  

Longer Term

• Boss invasion events.
• More variety in partner encounter actions.
• More player actions.
• Random turn events.
• Encounters with multiple subjects.