I’m deep in the middle of writing the Infestation Tome. It’s taking a while. Here’s what I’m trying to achieve:

1. Players who are grossed out by this stuff aren’t penalised if they don’t pick it.
2. Players who like this stuff aren’t penalised by picking it.
3. You can do interesting stuff in encounters with it.
4. Mortals only get infested consensually, and it’s believable that they’d be cool with this.
5. After they get infested, there’s enough unpredictability and variation that it feels like the creatures have a life of their own.

I think I’ve got a design that’ll work, but there’s a fair bit of writing to go because it’s starting to look a lot like a second seduction track.

I posted the store page for Steam Fleshcult, so if you want to wishlist it, go here!

I did some sales estimates and thought some more about what it’ll take to make the game easily moddable, and I’m not sure I can get there on $1. I’m now looking at a price of $2. It seems to be a popular price point with several other small adult games.

I’ve sent a Windows test build out to testers. On my computers it’s stable and I can play through to the end, but I suspect there’s still many compatibility and polish issues to discover on other configurations.

I’m signed up to Steam as a dev. Signing up is a bit like buying a gun: you can’t release a game until 30 days have passed, to prevent crimes of passion. This puts the earliest possible release date in October. In any case I’ll need some time to dig out and finish off the Infestation Tome, and make allll the marketing assets. Did you know Steam requires 10 logo images, all in different sizes and subtly different aspect ratios? And screenshots – my mind goes blank when I try to think of an exciting Fleshcult screenshot. That’ll be tricky.

So far I’ve been using PyInstaller to produce an exe. I’m unsettled to read reports that Anti-virus programs really hate PyInstaller exes. I guess an interpreter running bytecode embedded inside the same executable looks like fancy footwork to evade detection heuristics. This is not helped by PyInstaller’s lead dev’s pig-headed insistence that it’s not his problem to offer a less suspicious-looking process. I might have to revisit this decision, but we’ll see how it goes.

In the previous post I laid out how I’m gonna make a downloadable version of Fleshcult. The question is, how should I distribute it?

Putting it on Steam has a lot of interesting potential. It’d bring it to a new audience. If it does well, that might put restarting development into a new light. Modding support via Steam Workshop would be really cool. And Steam’s just really convenient to use.

On the other hand, Valve’s not in the business of being a file server for totally free or Patreon-supported games. F2P, yes – totally free, no. As I understand it, to pass store page review it has to cost money, or have in-app purchases, or have a plan to make money later. For example, Doki Doki Literature Club has a token item of DLC that acts as a tip jar. Actual DLC content would be cool, but the project doesn’t have enough momentum right now for me to commit to making anything significant – aside from the Infestation tome, which will go in the base game. I could just charge a buck, that would be simple.

I could also stick it on itch.io. They’ll happily host games in exchange for a cut of the tip jar. So, I’m thinking a buck for the Steam version, which will go towards modding support, and free/pay-what-you-want on Itch.

What do you think? Any other options I should be considering?