Hey, everyone! I finally have a new status update for you.
Today's cover boy is the main guy himself, preparing to take one of his new toys for a test drive. Which he will be doing very soon.
I've definitely stretched the definition of the "few weeks" I mentioned in Status Report #91. The content in the later part of the first dev build has been the big hang-up, so I decided to go through and trim out scenes, some permanently and some temporarily.
What I've been doing the past week is tying the sutures, as it were—sewing together the scenes that surrounded the ones I took my scalpel to. What work remains is testing to make sure everything is stitched together correctly, and then I'll finally be able to share the first dev build for the next update.
Working on all this has made me reconsider how I will divide future content into individual releases. What's clear is that anytime I make content where all the main characters are involved, it takes a long time to put together, and in the end so much of what I've created is hidden behind choices that it may not seem like I made much at all.
I'll talk about that a little bit before sharing a new to-do list for the rest of the next story update.
Dev Builds
For the uninitiated, before I put out a full release, I post in-progress builds on here for Senior & Graduate patrons that I call "dev builds". Basically, previews of what content is playable while I work on the rest of an update.
Early on, I was sharing these builds in a rougher state with placeholder art and unfinished scenes. But starting a few releases ago, I've only been releasing dev builds when the content is much more polished—meaning that instead of dev builds, they very well could have been released as normal updates for everyone to play.
And that's what I'll be doing once the current story update is complete—releasing what I used to consider "dev builds" as final updates. Dev builds will still exist, but will transition back to what they originally were.
The Getting to Know You Updates
The first week of the game will be comprised of a string of "getting to know you" story updates that place the focus on a few guys at a time. The next story update will zero in on Evan and Matt, with the beginning third dedicated to keeping in touch with most of the other guys you can have significant interactions with.
When first conceived, this was meant to be a smaller update. How it opens was supposed to be a fun mini-scene showing Connor playing with his new toys, a sequence originally planned for the end of the Morning After update.
As is obvious now, I didn't slice these down as small as I needed to, and so this will once again be a pretty hefty story update when completed. And making a hefty update means long gaps between releases.
Those gaps can give the impression I'm not doing much. I've definitely received comments saying as such.
That on its own is a good reason for more frequent, smaller updates. But as demonstrated by the "small" playtime scene that expanded to include more guys, trying to include every main character in every update just takes way too long. It's also pretty mentally taxing.
Breaking Down Future Updates
I will still finish the Getting to Know You Update, Part 1 so that it includes both Evan and Matt, since I've long promised it on the game's end screen. All that's to come after has been re-divided into smaller releases.
As an example, here's what was originally planned for the Getting to Know You Update, Part 2:
An afternoon & evening hangout with Riley, including hookup scenes
An afternoon & evening hangout with Dominic, including some sexual content
A group dorm scene between those afternoon & evening hangouts that will involve every dorm guy
A variety of smaller content that the non-featured main characters will pop up in
Based on what I'm making currently, the final count for the number of CGs in this stretch of the game will be at least a few hundred, and that's on top of other art like sprites and environments.
As well, that group dorm scene would have involved a whole lot of story threads converging at once, complicating the writing process quite a bit.
You can see by the bullet points that there are distinct sequences, and each of those would have been posted as a dev build in the lead up to the bigger release. So dividing it up is pretty easy—Riley and Dominic each have their own dedicated release, and the group scene will be its own as well.
To make it even simpler for myself, I've decided to pull back on how much I try to keep every guy "alive" in the story until we reach his featured update. My original thinking was I wanted every player to get a little something for their fav guy in each update, even when he's not taking center stage.
But as I said earlier, doing that really delays things, so ultimately you're waiting a long time to see more of your favs anyway.
The new workflow will instead have me focus on only one character a time. That means some scenes with Riley that were originally going to come in the story update I'm currently making will be skipped for now, then backfilled once I focus on him.
There are other edits as well. For instance, there will be a scene in the upcoming story update where you meet Matt at a gym before going to his place. I had planned some stuff featuring Owen and Isaiah that would have appeared there... but now the focus will just be on Matt. The other two guys will have their planned scenes inserted into the game in their featured updates.
Essentially, I'll be simplifying how I weave each person into the ongoing story. I think ultimately it will get us to each guy's main content quicker than trying to handle everyone at the same time.
The Revised Releases
Below is how I've divided up the rest of Week 1 so you can know what to expect. I use "hangout" as a catchall term for the dates & hookups you can have with each guy. There are also some smaller but still impactful scenes that'll be paired with a main featured guy, much like one with Marco that'll be in Getting to Know You, Part 1.
Part 2 - Riley hangout, smaller Leo scene
Part 3 - Dominic hangout, smaller Alex scene
Part 4 - Marco hangout
Part 5 - Dorm group hangout, smaller Isaiah scene (potentially)
Part 6 - Isaiah hangout
Part 7 - Training with Will
Part 8 - Owen hangout, smaller Tomas scene
Part 9 - Frat group hangout, smaller Julian scene
Part 10 - Asher Hangout, smaller Will scene (potentially)
Part 11 - Griffin hangout
Part 12 - Alex hangout
Part 13 - Club group hangout
Part 13 will likely be broken up into a few updates based on what's planned. I may also add in more of the smaller scenes as I go along.
Grind'm
I haven't forgotten about Grind'm scenarios! They were originally intended to be small updates that gave us something to play while I worked on the main story, but as we saw with the Trevor scenario, it grew well beyond small, ultimately leading to me returning to the main game much later than I intended.
I mentioned in previous status reports that I'm at a place where I may be able to bring on some collaborators. In thinking of what I could hand off to someone else, I realized Grind'm would be perfect.
Between the scenarios being non-canon and the featured side guy having very little characterization that needs to be matched, it would be easy enough for another writer to tackle. I would still do final edits and revisions, primarily to keep Connor's voice consistent.
On the art side of things, the early scene setup tasks like basic poses, camera framing, and lighting can be done by someone else, after which I can do the final steps.
The big hurdle, though, is actually finding people who can more or less match my writing and art styles, as well as determining how payment will work. Grind'm isn't a priority at the moment, but this is some of what I'll be considering when it is.
The Current Update
Let's set aside the future plans and rewind to the present.
With the first dev build out shortly, it's time to shift focus to the remainder of the full story update. Let's start with Evan.
His portion of the update—the hangout where you take photos and make Grind'm profiles—is pretty straightforward with a few parts already written. The main hurdle here will be the number of CGs needed.
Evan is the first guy you can hook up with that will have more options than just oral, so the format and amount of art will be similar to Jordi's Grind'm scenario rather than the first round of hookups already in the game.
For his portion, I also need new sets, and there's an important storyline character that needs created. I don't necessarily think any of this will be overly complicated, but I have become pickier about art over the years, so we'll see.
On the Matt side of things, there's actually a lot more going on. Just a brief meeting at the gym led to me creating an entire shower set entirely from scratch since I couldn't find any existing environments that looked how I wanted. (If you're a Junior or above, you can see one of the CGs I made it for in Sneak Peek #43.)
The beginning of Matt's hangout will need to address a lot of what Connor can have experienced before that point, especially when it comes to talking about losing his virginity. Matt will definitely have something to say!
That is the most complicated portion from a writing standpoint. The rest of the hangout has variations as well, all offering up (optional) sexual situations, but I've actually already written those scenes in their entirety. So they just need their CGs created.
Originally I was going to include a smaller Leo scene at the end of Matt's hangout. There will likely still be some stuff featuring him in a few specific scenarios, but the bulk of his planned content will now be moved to Riley's update. I figured more people would want to experience the Matt story as soon as possible, and I didn't want to rush through Leo's content to facilitate that.
New Art and Revisions
I haven't talked about it much, at least not for a while, but I've been slowly and steadily updating each model to fix issues like proportion, skin textures, and various oddities that have made creating their art needlessly difficult.
(As an aside, I previously talked about making the guys a little smaller in the dick department. The proportions weren't working, though, because I calculated the measurements all wrong. I've since readjusted a lot of dick assets so they're the actual size and shape they're intended to be.)
I generally only do these tweaks for guys I'm actively making new art for, so I've done some for Matt as we advance into his big scenes. Something I occasionally do to test if a tweaked model is working is remake an earlier CG that I already earmarked for a revision. Specifically, ones that are very simple to recreate so it doesn't hog a lot of time.
Here's the revised version of Matt's first CG from the Morning After update that I did for his model test:
And here he is a side by side with the first version.
When I made the Trevor Grind'm images, I swapped editing programs from GIMP to Photoshop, and I also started rendering in 4k HD before downscaling to the size they are in game, 1920 x 1080.
I really like the results, but you can definitely see the difference when looking at the gallery. I'm not planning to do a ton of revisions, at least not yet, but when you play the upcoming dev build or the full release, you'll see a couple other CG alterations as well.
More noticeable will be Matt's sprites, which have all been recreated. Not just to account for tweaks to his model, but to change his pose to better meet the needs of his upcoming scenes. Firstly, by making sure he's in a position to better highlight his dick.
The way the dick was originally posed didn't really represent how he actually looks—the way it points towards the camera distorts it a bit. The new version is not just had a better angle, but the tweaked dick is now the correct length and girth, and is also a better skin match.
(Another aside—figuring out proportions has always been a struggle, which is why the head sizes are so different. In-game, the original's head looked way too small next to other characters even though in isolation it mostly seemed fine. Even with measuring tools, it's tough to gauge!)
So, those needs I mentioned? Matt had to be positioned so he could grab his dick—something that will be very relevant in some of his upcoming scenes!
I made two versions of each expression so I could do a dissolve between them, making it appear he's stroking up and down. I also added similar "animation" to a few earlier scenes, namely when he needs to adjust himself to wrangle a growing erection.
Anyway, all that to say that when it comes to the sexy stuff with Matt's scenes, a lot of the foundation has already been laid. (I also wanted to break up all this text with a few pretty pictures.) One of his upcoming CGs is being highlighted in the new Behind the Scenes posts. The first one is located in the 2026 Behind the Scenes collection, and more posts will come in the future.
The New To-Do List
Okay, I think that's enough preamble. I have a new to-do list to share that shows the extent of what remains before the full release is ready.
If you're newer here, I stopped guessing at timeframes for releases after I continually got them wrong. (See above, re: "a few weeks" for a fresh example.) Instead, I share these lists so you can get a sense for yourself how progress is coming along.
I'm not going to include the more general portion this time, stuff like the guide or code adjustments. That will still be going on, but I want to keep the focus on the new content for now.
I'll break this up into two parts: Evan's content that'll come in the second dev build, and Matt's content that'll come with the final release.
Dev Build #2 - Evan
WRITING
"Variants" are different versions of scenes to account for choices; there are many choice-reactive dialogue changes in these scenes that are not included in the count.
Tuesday evening (2/2 variants, completed)
Wednesday morning (partially completed)
Evan hangout opening (needed)
Evan hookup, level 3 (1/2 variants)
Evan hookup continued, level 4 (1/3 variants)
Evan hangout ending (0/2 variants)
ART
Note: These numbers will likely fluctuate with each new status report.
Sprites
Evan, revised (22/45)
Evan, new (0/84)
Connor, new (0/21)
Corvin (0/6)
Patrick (0/?)
Zeno (0/?)
Storyline character (0/?)
Various classmates (0/?)
CGs
Morning transition (1/2)
Evan hangout (0/100+)
Backgrounds
Zeno's classroom (0/1)
Evan's apartment (0/5)
Character Models
Evan (tweaks, done)
Corvin (tweaks, done)
Patrick (tweaks, needed)
Storyline character (new, needed)
2 additional storyline characters (potentially)
Additional classmates (potentially)
Character Design
Evan, week 1b outfit/underwear/naked (needed)
Connor, week 1b outfit (needed)
Cherish, week 1b outfit (needed)
Corvin, week 1b outfit (needed)
Duke, week 1b outfit (needed)
Patrick, week 1b outfit (needed)
Zeno, week 1b outfit (needed)
Storyline character, week 1b outfit (needed)
Additional storyline characters, week 1b outfit (potentially)
Additional classmates, week 1b outfit (potentially)
Sets
Evan's apartment (1.5/5)
Zeno's classroom (needed)
Final Release - Matt
WRITING
"Variants" are different versions of scenes to account for choices; there are many choice-reactive dialogue changes in these scenes that are not included in the count.
Gym transition (needed)
Matt hangout, opening conversations (0/40 variants)
Matt sexual situation #1 (2/2 variants, completed)
Matt sexual situation #2 (2/2 variants, completed)
Matt hangout ending (1/2 variants)
ART
Note: These numbers will likely fluctuate with each new status report.
Sprites
Matt, revised (107/107, completed)
Matt, new (49/107)
Leo, new (0/?)
CGs
Gym (1/3)
Matt hangout (0/79)
Backgrounds
Gym (0/4)
Character Models (done)
Matt (tweaked, done)
Leo (tweaked, done)
Henri (new, done)
Will (tweaked, done)
Character Design
Matt, week 1b outfit/gym outfit (needed)
Leo, week 1b outfit (needed)
Sets
Gym (1/4)
I think that about covers it for now. I didn't add in any programming to-dos since it's not relevant yet, but I will once I get closer to that point.
I hope everyone has a good week!