Future plans
So what's next?
First, other than minor additional bug patches, I'll be retreating to my bunker to work on a few more art assets for the game. Nothing huge, just filling things out a bit more. I expect this to take another month or two.
Beyond that, here's the rough plan for the larger project:
Three missions like this, except a bit larger and more varied. New enemies, new gimmick (still at least vaguely involving mind-fuckery though), new tilesets etc. Each will pass a small amount of data on to the next via a simple text file (should be able to do this with plugins), allowing each to effect the subsequent ones in small ways.
After this, there will be a fifth final mission for the final "boss" that will play differently depending on the outcome of the other four. This is ambitious, but not wildly so: I mostly just have to do what I've already done four more times, just a bit larger and with a few additional moving parts.
However, how far this project goes from here depends on interest. I planned from the start to do this first mission gratis, partially because I wasn't even sure I would even be able to finish it, and partially because I wanted to do something like this at least once, whatever the reception. That said, I had two worries going in:
The first was that nobody would really care; there would be some polite "That's neat I guess" and that would be it. That worry has obviously been proven wrong, and I'm deeply grateful people can see the same spark of something fun in this little project that I do.
The second was that no one would really be interested in paying for it, and this worry remains to be seen. I've already received a few payments/donations, and to those responsible,thank you so much. It's wild seeing this project, that's seemed like phantom for so long, actually bringing in ANY money.
That said, this chapter took seven months to put together. Subsequent ones will probably take about the same, if not a bit more. I intend to always keep payment on this first one optional, and do a hard price on the rest (probably $5), but the hope is that this first one will still bring in enough to justify sinking another seven months or so into dev on the second.
All of this is to say, if you like what you see, and you're able, toss some money in the hat. If there's a decent response, I can justify continuing to work at the pace I have been, and we can get the next mission out quickly. If not, it will be a lot longer, and depending on the response to mission 2 there may or may not be anything to follow.
Either way, thank you all for your interest and feedback so far. I look forward to sharing more of this with you as it's made.
Get Cruel Serenade
Cruel Serenade
| Status | In development |
| Author | bitshiftgames |
| Genre | Role Playing |
| Tags | 2D, Adult, Furry, Gay, hypnosis, NSFW |
More posts
- Cruel Serenade 0.4.2 is up!27 days ago
- 日本語のウサギ: Cruel Serenade now available in Japanese!37 days ago
- Cruel Serenade 0.4.1 is up!Jun 29, 2023
- Cruel Serenade 0.4.0 is up!Jun 26, 2023
- It's here ("Cruel Serenade 2" released)Jun 17, 2023
- Doing anything this Friday?Jun 15, 2023
- Cruel Serenade 0.3.3 is up!Jun 09, 2023
- The announcement before the announcementMay 25, 2023
- Chapter 2 Update: Maps are done!Jan 01, 2023
- Chapter 2 Update: Some bad news, and some good newsSep 15, 2022
Comments
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I definetely liked what I've seen. The art was great, the scenes were really good. My only complaint was that 3rd stage hypno combat took way too long, maybe make an aoe move to "defeat" them all so I wouldn't need to press all the buttons over and over. Other than that, will definetely pay for future chapters if they're the same quality. Loving all these M/M with purple hypno stuff that have been coming out recently!
Thanks! And will certainly consider tweaking that a bit more.
Played it through the first time and came back to buy a download. Cant wait for more updates to this. It's truly amazing.
Thanks! It's still pretty basic right now, truthfully. But I'm glad people are seeing the potential in it.
One thing I do wanna point out real quick is that the player modle sometimes disappears during a battle when hypnotized. It doesnt happen often but I wanted to point it out in case nobody else noticed it.
Most of that should be fixed, but I'll keep an eye out and keep working on the sprite sheets. The engine can be a little unpredictable about what sprite it chooses sometimes.
id pay for this game honestly
You can, if you'd like. That's what the recommended "Pay what you want" price is for. No pressure of course, but if you'd like to toss something toward the project, you're certainly welcome to.
another question, do you have anyplace for like recommendations, bugs and thoughts?
If you already hang out there, you can leave a comment on post for this game on my FA, or just send me a note there. Otherwise, if you'd like to step away from the sea of general comments under the main game, you can comment right here, or whatever the most recent devlog is. Always glad to get feedback!
I really love the game, and it's easily worth the money. thought I admin I originally download it for free, before going back and actually buying it. Sadly there are to many bad porn game out there that want you to spend money before play than turn out to be terrible. I am excited to see more, and can't wait for the nest update.
I sure you probably have tons of people says you should put this or that into you game (I admit i am about to be one of them) Just remember to make the game you love and the fits the vision you have for it.
The two things i would love to see in your game. First the ability to auto lose a fight like a submit skill so if you just wanted to check out h scenes. And the next thing is that went you have been hypnotized in combat you remain naked for the rest of that combat or maybe even the ability to get you weapon but leave you clothes.
whether you use my suggestion to completely ignore them i happily await the next update and thank you for the great game
Thanks for the purchase, and glad you're enjoying it so far. Quality can definitely be hit or miss with games like this, especially hypnosis stuff. And thanks for the kind words, I definitely plan on making this mostly to my taste, as I have from the start, but I do keep an eye on feedback, good and bad, especially on gameplay tuning and the like.
"Suicide" items are pretty common in games like this, so I'll probably end up putting some in eventually to aid in seeing all the events. Will consider this for the next release, though that will be a while. As to the second request, I'll just say the next release, probably in a couple months, will mostly be for additional "art assets." So keep an eye out!
Honestly, my only wish is that this could get a mobile port, but I also understand that's a whole nother can of worms. What you do have is honestly good, and I hope to see what happens down the line.
Thanks! Yeah, no mobile version, but I'm glad you're enjoying what's there so far.
I was going to write an in-depth comment on this until I went on FA and realized you are very smart.
You understand your game is very small, with proof-of-concept level of content, and that it needs, and will need a lot of work. I agree with everything you said there and I'm surprised with how aware of things you are.
From your wording on FA you seem to know this already, but I'll develop on it anyways:
With the way most porn games go out nowadays, they are either subsidized by donations whilst in-development, or go out for free and the artists plug their stuff and ask for donations in the end. Unless your game is really shiny or has a lot of content already I doubt it'll work with a price tag. And I don't think this is what you want to do, seems to me you want to add an optional price tag, which I agree on as being the best solution. I just want to say this that if you do a normal price tag. 7-8 months from now the game's activity might get so cold that you won't get enough traffic of people that'd be willing to pay for it and that you'd be better with donations.
You can see this as the crazy ramblings of a person who does not want to pay for porn. Or a guy that saw the amount porn game devs get paid on patreon before they started hiding it.
Your game is 3 days old and has 5 stars and many reviews, I really don't want people months from now to go and say "I'm not paying $5 for a RPG maker game", when they you'd gladly donate because they enjoyed the hypno stuff. Besides it's not like F95 wouldn't just leak the game.
You can do optional prices, as it seems you will do, or even open a patreon now if you wanna take it a bit more serious and get donations mid-development. (If you already have a patreon link it on the main page!)
You seem to like writting, so I hoped you enjoyed reading my wall of text lol
Also, whatever choice you make, good luck with the game and remember to have fun with it! You make dialogue not boring, and god is it horrible to read dialogue in porn games, so thank you for that. I even will replay the game next week, to kill everyone and get every line of dialogue, there's also a sprite in the IMG folder I haven't gotten so I'll search for that.
I absolutely like the wall of text: like I've said elsewhere, feedback helps a lot, and I appreciate people taking the time to share.
I spent a lot of time considering appeal. pricing etc, and still will. I agree that it would be a bad idea to make this one a hard charge, and I don't plan to. To clarify, overall I'm taking a full game, chopping it into five pieces, and releasing them as they're finished. The first piece, this one, will probably always be free, and serve as a demo/intro to let people get a taste. The others will be a small hard charge. When/if it's complete, I'll probably bundle them all together for convenience. I think this stands a good chance of working, but it's impossible to know until Mission/chapter 2 is out.
I've had over a decade of watching artists struggle with how to monetize their work in a way that was sustainable and didn't alienate fans. Two decades really, got in around 2000. I'm old enough to remember artist bragging about wild invisible watermark schemes and other nonsense, long before Patreon. So many artists make the mistake of either undervaluing their fans, failing to put themselves on the other end and see how it feels, or the mistake of undervaluing themselves and underpricing/underpromoting their stuff because they don't want to make waves. One thing I've learned is that you can never make everyone happy: someone will start complaining the moment you charge ANYTHING, which is somewhat understandable. But it's a balance. You want to hit something that's reasonable for most of the people interested in your work, and for you. It's a tricky process, but I'm trying to approach it with the right balance of humility and self-respect. We'll see how it goes.
And glad you're enjoying the writing! It's always kind of boggled me that the writing is so bad in these games, because to me that's the one easy part of all of it. This game took 7 months to make. The writing was...maybe a week all condensed? But people obviously have different skill sets. I'm glad I had another opportunity to write some fun stuff for the game (and I'm actually still slightly tweaking it as I playtest; no "lore" changes, just phrasing and stuff).
I'm really looking forward to seeing how far you can go with this! I've been craving to find and play a new good hypnosis-themed game for a good while, and I'm glad I managed to stumble upon your game!
Hope you enjoy! There definitely isn't enough good hypnosis stuff out there.
Each zone having a diffrent gimmick? Hope you dont mind me trying to pick your brain a bit. Based on the mind control, corruption and hummiliation focus. Will further zones show diffrent types of these that alter slut mode a bit? Example: If sissyfication/feminization was the type used, would it alter mez's outfit and skills to match the theme of the level/affliction? the final mission will be diffrent based on results of the prior ones? That is very ambitious indeed. shoot for the stars and all... Just hope this don't turn your hair grey, or worse become un-fun... Burn out sucks after all, take a break if you need it please. Have you thought about promoting your game elsewhere for reach purposes? Like maybe make a post on f95 or e621 to draw more eyes on it and yourself? Not trying to be pushy, just wondering given it can sometimes be hard to find games on fa...
I don't mean to get anyone's hopes TOO high with "different gimmicks"; I just mean there will be a different flavor of the same general thing shown off here. I probably won't be changing the core mechanics too much, although they may be tweaked a bit to fit the situation, and there will probably be some smaller stuff unique to each mission.
Don't worry about burnout: I don't plan to plow into all this immediately. Like I said, should mostly be working on some extra content for this first release before I move on to anything else.
As for getting the word out, I'm gradually working my way outward, first on FA, now here, and probably something up on e621 before too long. That goes with the avoiding burnout though: I'm pacing myself. A full release everywhere at once would be a hell of a thing.