Cruel Serenade: GutterTrash
Chapter 3 Progress Update: New Areas, New Enemies
Welcome back everyone! If you're in the US, hope you had a good thanksgiving. As always, main news up front, spoilers further down.
Time for another update. The very first news update for Chapter 3 (though not the start of work on it), was roughly a year ago. At the time, I had hoped to be finished by now, which is definitely not the case. But quite a lot has been completed. In my last update in August, I said I was about halfway done with the "mapping" process. I've made considerable progress since, but I'll let you judge for yourselves. For Chapter 3 so far I've completed:
-3 major maps
-15 minor ones
Not just the maps themselves and their lighting, but the scripting, story, puzzles etc. While I will continue to make minor tweaks, this part of the game is effectively done.
This means I'm into the actual core part of the game now, fighting through areas, getting defeated, etc. Part of the problem with predictions up to this point was that I wasn't sure exactly what form this section was going to take, I had general plans, but not specifics. Now I have it fairly nailed down, and it will almost certainly be:
-3 major maps
-7 ish minor ones
Of the major ones, the first is about 95% complete in terms of mapping itself, and I'm now well into the scripting/writing etc and starting to set up the battles. The second major map will be a bit larger, and the third a fair bit more simple. I also have one of the minor maps already complete. So, very roughly, in total I have:
Complete:
-3.5 major maps
-16 minor ones
To do:
-2.5 major maps
-6 minor ones.
So it's getting there. Maybe very roughly it's gone from 50% done on "mapping" to 75%, which may seem frustratingly slow, but keep production order in mind. We're 75% on the second-to-last step in the process (the last being scene cg). None of this could even be started before a bunch of other stuff was completed:
1. A bunch of new character sprites
2. A number of new character designs/standees (more than any chapter so far)
3. A bunch of battle-sex art (though I'll probably have to do even a bit more to get things ready for first release).
4. A bunch of song searching.
5. A LOT of searching and editing together tile resources to make interesting, new and visually cohesive maps. This was much more of a time sink than on GT.
6. Several different story-telling sections before the main fight section.
7. AND the boar side-story for Haven
All of this is now in the bag, along with a BIG chunk of actual gameplay. Which means I can finally start digging into the juicy stuff, making the core sections and bringing it all together/slotting it in place.
Also, there's an additional reason for this expansion, beyond just "I'm bad at predictions". In the midst of working out the new core fighting areas, I finally took to heart what people have been asking for: enemy variety. Chapter 3 will now, ON RELEASE, have THREE totally unique enemies, not palette swaps (though I may ALSO do some palette swaps at some point). But I warned in the past when this came up that it would increase dev time, and indeed it has, because new enemies meant:
-new designs/standees
-new sprites
-and an additional area
-POSSIBLY a new outfit
Aside from the outfit, these are now done (and I'll show off some of them below), but it took time.
So what's the damage? Optimistically, I might have "mapping" (ie everything left other than scene cg and writing) done by end of January, and CG is set to take about 4 months (art is painfully slow for me, and Chapter 3 is set to have considerably more CG than GT, even on initial release). So we've slipped to about May/June for preview release to supporters, and the following month for general release.
All I can really say is what I say every update: 1. This stuff is hard to predict ahead of time and 2. Things are actually being completed, just not as fast as I'd like. I'm really enjoying how it's turning out so far though, and I think you will too, when it's finally finished.
That out of the way though, let's get to the fun stuff. Spoilers from here.
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There are two main factions in the strange place Mezz finds himself, the cats, and the wolves. The cats will be like the center path of GT, an alternate path added later. The wolves will be front and center for this first release. But as I was planning things, I ended up thinking it would be fun to have a kind of cannon-fodder enemy first.
So now we have rats.
Without spoiling it too much, the wolves and cats hop from reality to reality, spiritually and magically strip-mining them, and their inhabitants, and competing for the approval of their dark god. By the time Mezz gets there, there isn't much left, which is why they're looking to...move on. But the rats aren't magical at all, or part of this travelling act. They're just the surviving remains of the petty criminal underworld of this reality. The wolves tried to prey on them, but their life-essence was too filthy to feed on, so they left them alone. Occasionally, newcomers end up stumbling into this reality, and when they do the first place they end up is Beggar's Row. Rat territory.
I haven't entirely pinned it down yet, but generally the intention is that they'll be fairly easy opponents in a straight fight, even when up against a lot of them. Mildly challenging, but it shouldn't be hard to put them in their place. It would be VERY EMBARASSING if Mezz was to somehow lose to them. Or KEEP losing to them, and getting EVEN WORSE at fighting them. Oh boy.
The friendly lad up above is the main one, but to add some variety, we also have this enthusiastic gent:
The container is filled with a very potent, concentrated gas. I'm sure you can guess what it does.
I don't want to give away TOO much more concerning maps, but since it's been so long, and I DID put "areas" in the title, I'll give ya these two quick:
That's all for now. See you next update.
Comments
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Hahahah, Gotta admit, I'm curious to see what'll happen to Mezz if he can't even handle a few rats. Gonna just have a few minor consequences and a bad end, or maybe some more major, lingering consequences for being such a pathetic hero?
Oh there's a lot of possibilities. Only limited time and space to put them in, but there will definitely be some fun ones.
I was utterly suprised i genuinely love this game. Usually porn games are usually meh but this game is oddly fun
GT you mean? Really appreciate it. I mean at the end of the day, it IS just the porn game. I'm not making earth-shattering art here. But I take these games seriously when I'm making them, and I'm glad that comes across at least a little. There's a lot of potential for explicit games that just isn't explored, most of it is extremely flat. It's an interactive medium, and you can do a lot of fun things with that if you care.
Buying the moment it drops, because I DO love the writing, art, and gameplay loops, so many little fun secrets to find, and talk to every NPC even if some of them don't have much to say, its something.
Thanks! Yeah, I really enjoy the RPG format, because once you have a few art assets you can easily drop in a new NPC here or there and add some more little dialog etc. It's easy to fill out the little corners of the world, and a fun thing to work on.
Also the included kinks in them really appeal to me as well. I used to use RPG maker for years in the early 2000's, but am curious how much better its gotten over time? I haven't used it since 2008 or so.
Oh MV, which came out around 2015/2016 I think, is a huge step up from the earlier stuff. Much better gui IMHO, huge plugin ecosystem. If you want, you can basically put the whole thing up on blocks and make it whatever you like, because MV swaps from being an ordinary exe to basically just a headerless browser running a big pile of javascript. So definitionally, anything js can do, MV can probably do as well.
MZ came out a bit later, which was more of a modest tweak to MV to improve the GUI a bit more, add a few things here and there. And then...they made it into an addon for Unity. YECH. I'm content to stick with MV.
oh my! having alot of more enemy types means more of your fantastic writing(and more mezz humiliation)! this is awesome!
It does certainly open up some fun possibilities. Lot to chose from.
Ohhh I like scary themes
hyped! :D
The second this game drops I'm buying it. I'm so excited !
Woah! It's great to finally see how the chapter 3 is panning out! I haven't texted here in four months but I've been watching every update you post. Enemy designs are great and unique, and I'm curious on how the "cannon fodder" enemies will work out. Considering it's a turn-based game, I feel like it's a tricky concept to implement on the system already used.
I love how you always manage to get the ambience right in your world building, which is honestly that captivates me the most in yours games. Hornyness aside, the universe you made is pretty damn cool! lol
Would you mind talking a little bit more about how the new fight mechanic is going to be? I know you don't want to spoil much, but the cannon fodder idea mentioned made me intrigued on what your plans are.
Once again, I'm happy to see you making progress!
Aw thanks, glad you enjoy the worldbuilding. Like I've said, a lot of how I make the games just comes down to instinct and what I want to see in a game I play, what I think is neat. And instinct leads me to having actual interesting backdrops for the stuff to happen on (and also spending ages editing together tilesheets to make that happen -.-).
"Cannon fodder" is actually pretty simple in this engine/genre though: the enemies are fairly easy to kill, and there's a lot of them. They exist to make the player feel good about themselves, feel like they're powerful and making progress, and also a safe introductory zone for learning the feel of the mechanics and gameplay. That's the general RPG framework anyway. And then we sprinkle on the filthy implications of that. I try to make most of each game first from the perspective of being "legit" and clean, and then add in "but what if it went wrong?" In theory if you play through the games on the "pure" route, they should almost entirely resemble ordinary RPGs. I want the filth to feel like you took a wrong turn down an alley in the game somehow and suddenly significantly changed the narrative and framing.
In terms of more specifics than that though, not a lot to share because I haven't fully worked it out yet. I will say that the fights with the rats will be fairly simple: not a lot of battle-sex art (because again, the meta-implication is that you're "not even" supposed to lose to them, so why would there be?) But if things go far enough south, there will be some...interesting things happening during fights. And after.
Oh, so you mean a lot of weak enemies on the map? I guess it was confusion on my end, but I thought you meant in the fight itself, as in a cat/dog mentioned along with the cannon-fodder rats.
Now that I'm thinking it through, it wouldn't make much sense for them to team up given the little background you just gave about them. Oops, I guess! xd
I remember we got some sprites of the dogs a while ago, which made me wonder how they fit into this setting. I might take a look into the hideout computer and try to match for myself. That lore dump you did was much appreciated lol
Lastly, had that whole ordeal with payment processors and Itch.io been solved or will it affect your next chapter's pricing? I haven't been able to follow the news.
No, you were somewhat right to begin with, though to some degree it's both: more enemies to a mob, and probably a few more mobs on the map (though not going crazy with this).
The payment processor thing is part of larger push this year, and into the future, for increased censorship and surveillance, driven by moral panic and apathy. The specific situation with payment has not gotten any worse or better, but the larger picture continues to get worse. Even more states continue to pass porn ID laws, which are effectively laws attempting to intimidate people out of consuming explicit material in any way, since if they do, their name goes in a database, which will obviously be used for blackmail and coercion in the future, either by the government, hackers, or both. Buy porn, give your government ID, a year later there's a hack, billboards go up in your city with a bunch of the id photos, including yours: "THESE PEOPLE ENJOY [socially unacceptable kind of porn]. DO YOU KNOW THEM?"
We'll see what effect this has on Itch. A number of states are also attempting to ban the use of VPNS to access explicit sites (and will likely succeed, in the sense of passing the law). If they didn't, VPNs would obviously make short work of their surveillance attempts. It's unclear how any of this will work, but if it sticks we are rapidly moving toward a totally de-anonymized internet where, as we've seen elsewhere, you can then be penalized, jailed, debanked etc for saying things the government doesn't like. So we've moved a bit beyond just porn censorship: we're now looking at the potential for TOTAL censorship on the net, enforced by jail time. Meanwhile, Chat Control (all tech companies forced to de-encrypt and monitor all communications of their users) has been resurrected in the EU after Germany killed the first proposal, and will be up for yet another round of negotiations and deal-making.
This is another reason I'm trying to get the game out as soon as I reasonably can. But no, to answer your question, no plan to change pricing at this point.
I see! My question was more focused regarding how the whole thing affects your project, and you did make a good job clarifying it. Any game, regardless of genre, takes time, effort and dedication to make, and I appreciate that above all else. I'm sure these issues are a stress that you did not sign up for, but I assure you there'll always be people to support a good dev who cares for what they publish. I gotta admit, you've done a lot of good progress with such haste even being a lone dev, which is on its own very impressive.
I won't keep on this thread as to not pollute the update page any further, but consider this a token of appreciation!
I'm pretty sure by "enemy variety" half of them meant sex-pose variety. That's what I want, at least, which is why I'm glad to see it seems like you are introducing quite a bit of them with the new chapter's gameplay.
I think the "cannon-fodder enemy" idea is neat -- I assume you meant the enemies Mezz encounters before getting his conditions? It even makes a narrative sense to have a type of mooks distinct from the Main villains. Maybe you can keep and reuse them in later chapters?
Probably won't reuse, as the setting for this particular one is a bit...odd and removed from the rest of the series (though it will tie in here and there).
But no, I'm sure everyone would have liked more battlesex stuff, and there will be a fair bit of it with the wolves, but "there's only one enemy with palette swaps" was a recurring direct complaint for both games, which is somewhat understandable. The client dogs were an attempt to stem this in GT, but then they ended up in their own area and not really appearing in combat. The rats ALSO ended up with their own area, but you will definitely be fighting them!
I'm in LOVE with your artstyle
Man I wish I was. It is steadily improving though, and I am a LITTLE proud of these standees, because they represent a mostly successful effort to break out of the really stiff, flat poses I did for the hyenas and the boars. The second especially, but even with the first I tried to have a little more life and flex to the pose, rather than looking like a pressed leaf. And I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!
Tbh I don't pay much attention to poses. More accurately, they're all good for me. Your style is unique and cartoonish. That's exactly what I love. Keep up the good work, you're really good at it? you're the best <3
Ha, well I appreciate it!
I have to agree as well the story, writing, and setting of the games is awesome but the art style is definitely my favorite.
Well thanks! I'm glad it's gotten to a point that people do at least somewhat enjoy the art.
Yes they look much refined than your previous work -- which weren't bad to begin with. Always good to witness improvements!
<3 rats, I had even been imagining what they would be like in this series for a while now. Mean little guys with an emphasis on how EMBARRASSING defeat at their paws would be is really exactly what I would want out of their inclusion, so I am confident you are once again hitting the nail on my head specifically with this one.
Ha, excellent!
good
No nsfw art? Oh damn it
Yeah, like I said, most of that, aside from the scene stuff, was already finished a while ago, and I don't want to spoil ALL of it. So for now it will probably be more basic stuff like this. Might be one or two more explicit preview pics before release though, can't say for sure.
"Without spoiling it too much, the wolves and cats hop from reality to reality, spiritually and magically strip-mining them, and their inhabitants, and competing for the approval of their dark god." PFTTTTTTTTTTTT, Are you a 5 star Michelin chef, what you cooking~? I am getting lore in my smut game? God damn! I loved the idea of cultists, but I might love your execution of them even more.
Oh my god the lad with the blue potion feels straight out of Don't Starve Together! Your style never elicited that from me before this, I love DST's style!
Maps feel soooo barren, I like it!
As always hope you doing good, this devlog was worth it just for the enthusiastic gent I love his design, really looking forward. Stay well!
Oh you say that, but you're gonna be ready to strangle me with the amount of lore this thing has. Still every one of these is an experiment in different ways, and in this case, among other things, I wanted to go a little ham with that, create a really lush, weird (but fun) setting.
Glad you like the look! I wasn't thinking of DST, though I can see some slight resemblance. Just aiming for the bleak and creepy, while not TOO dire. One of the problems I've had making this while sourcing secondary assets, ESPECIALLY music, is that most stuff is either too happy/cartoony "spooky" or way too dire and intense. Hard to hit that middle ground, though I think I'm managing so far.
And thanks, you too!
Canon fodder rats with chemical weapons gives me Skaven vibes, but Victorian street urchins and less grimdark vibes. Be interesting to see what you do with that.
It's been a conscious effort to not just do skaven, but these guys are definitely a little more cognitively gifted (a LITTLE).
I haven't played this game in a while. Can someone tell me where the different routes start?
GT you mean? Check out the pinned guides by OpenFireplace on the main page.
I'm normally an avoid-spoilers-and-be-patient sort, but I keep looking at them for this because they keep being stuff I'm extremely into. You happened to hit one of my favorite creatures with this one, so my interest couldn't be higher right now!
Aw, appreciate it. It'll be interesting working with them, because I usually think of rats as being larger characters, but in this case they're more like weird little gremlins. I mean not THAT short, but they will be one of the few enemies Mezz faces that's not taller than he is.
So long as he's not on his knees ;)
Exactly :D. Or his back. Or strung up. But of course that could NEVER happen.
That's perfect since, as you so knowingly put it, Mezz shouldn't have any trouble with them then.
Heh~!
Exactly. I'm sure he won't have any momentary slight slip ups that end up rapidly snowballing into something worse.
Or randomly deciding to get blackout drunk on Skullcrusher in the middle of the fight for reasons. XD
I can't wait for the release
I am actually SOOOOOOO excited omg
I cannot wait for this, keep cooking cause so far its looking incredible
Aw, thanks, appreciate it. Just wish I had more to show, but we're getting there.
We're def getting there, def my most anticipated game of 2026 and that's not even a joke lol
I just love the way you do hypnosis in ur artwork and games!
dose the game crash after you get to the end of all the content or dose it let you know? just saying bc last update it kept crashing on me only at what feels like what would of been the end of such chapter, Ill play this and let you know if it still happens if that isn't the case.
Otherwise YEAHHH NEW UPDATEEE
GT you mean? Shouldn't be hard crashing at all, no. Keep in mind that RPGMaker does not like being run from external drives, system folders, basically anything with the potential for weird file permissions situations.
Otherwise though, let me know what the error is if it's ongoing.
Would keeping the save folder outside of my (C:) Drive cause it to throw up errors? (the zip extractor I have dumps the files it would usually make in the (C:) drive to the folder it just created)
Sorry, didn't see this for some reason until just now. "Outside" of c:? If you're unzipping to a folder on C:, that's still on C:, which in most cases is the system drive. If possible I'd try it on another drive/partition (as long as it's not external). Theoretically a folder plopped down on C: should work though, it's mostly system folders like My Documents that might give you some odd results. What errors are you seeing? From the extraction, or when you try to run the game?
These rats have me very stoked. :D