Release Tomorrow!

To start this off, I will NOT be releasing at midnight. I'll release tomorrow when I'm satisfied with it. I figured I'd address that now because if I don't I'll get a bunch of comments when people at midnight (their time) want to know if it'll be released.

Second: To those of you who just donated recently and haven't gotten a new beta, I'm sorry in advance but I'm going to hold off on sending anymore of the highly buggy Beta 3 out for now. Don't worry though. One donation ever is all it takes to get you into any Beta. So you'll have access from now into perpetuity. Or as long as this game lasts, anyway. So anyone interested in getting into the betas can donate $0.01 and get them until the last version comes out. It probably won't take too long for me to start testing a version 0.5.5 after this one goes out and I can assess what needs reworking or what content can be added. I'm certainly going to release a new version with more Bilbao content soon.

Third: With the above stated I will note that I'm still considering patreon benefits. A lot of people have suggested donator only content. I don't like the idea of locking sections of the game behind a paywall, however. Incentives I'm considering include short cameos in the game (within reason), some special artwork I've made and stories I've written. I'm a writer first and I think the stories might be the best option. They'd focus on the backstories of the heroines and their adventures, or else generalized backstory of the world. While I don't think my art is good enough to go in the game yet it is getting to the point where I wouldn't mind drawing some bonus stuff as Patreon incentives. Sending out a pack with all the currently completed artwork (including unused artwork) is a given.

Of course the biggest incentive is just that the more money I get, the more time I can afford to take off from regular work. As it is the game is prioritized well below my regular moneymaking activities. This is NOT me holding the game hostage and asking for all your monies plz. The game will get done eventually even if I never make another cent from it. I've been working on this long enough that it would be silly to expect me to stop now. It's basic human nature that people tend to spend more time on the things that make them money than the things that don't, though. Since this game started I've worked on it solely out of my free time. I don't have my hopes set to any particular expectation and I'm not making any plans based on wishful thinking so anything I get is a pleasant surprise. If things go particularly well I'll reassess how much time I can afford to put into this.

Put simply I'll offer incentives, but I'm reluctant to offer incentives that are easily navigated by just pirating the game or content I should just keep free in the first place. I'll happily make more stuff for people. I want the stuff I make for Overwhored to be free. The main reason I want -anyone- to donate isn't that they want something, it's that they simply like and want to support the game and my work on it.

If you want something special tell me, and I'll consider it. But I won't treat donations as bribes to get the 'full' game. Cameos, a little extra art, some short stories - that's all good. But I'm not putting up a paywall for parts of the game itself.

In the end I guess it's because this game has been my hobby, and I love it. According to some statistics I've been compiling, the absolute low end number of fans I have is around 40,000. I likely have many more. How many people can say that a hobby they've whittled away at bit by bit at a time over a few years has a fanbase like that? The dedication this fanbase has shown this game is astounding. I am truly honored to be the creator of something loved by so many people.

In my normal life I'm a simple farmer and a few other things besides. Few farmers could say they have a following like that for anything they do. I'm humbled by the love that I've seen here.

I remember when I was still working towards getting full funding for the game. I had the majority of the money I needed but not all. Somewhere around $2000. A friend asked me, "You have all this money, why haven't you taken any for yourself? You've done so much work on it." And it was true - before the game was fully funded, I never took a single cent of money for myself from the donations and I'd already put a few hundred of my money into it. Only now do I accept any, and hilariously I've actually sunk a bunch of the money I could spend on anything and put it back into paying for little things for the game. Hobbies are rarely things you take money out of. They're usually stuff you put money into.

Yeah, if all those 40k people donated a dollar a month I'd be freaking rich and could hire whole teams to make games. I don't expect it and I'm not really pushing for it, though I'll certainly ride that wave if it comes. (That's when I could start looking into making the Steam of Western Adult Games.)

It's my hobby. And in the end I may be the biggest fan of this game of all. That's why I do it. And that's what you really support; one farmer's little hobby.

Thanks for being fans.

Overwhored BETA 2

There's a new beta that will be send out in a few minutes after I post this. It doesn't fix everything mentioned - I have about 200 donators and LOTS of you sent me e-mails. I'm still trying to get through them.

This does fix the game breaking bug and a lot of little ones.

If you get ANY blank items please tell me EXACTLY when they showed up. I'm figuring out all the items creating those now. I've got several of them fixed, but some things are still doing that.

Also, I really, REALLY need some gameplay footage. I'm making a trailer that will go up on youtube and I have to have some. My computer just cannot run something like FRAPS and the game at the same time. Hell, my computer can barely run my own game. So it'll be much appreciated. Again I don't need audio.

Thanks again to everyone, and here's hoping for an excellent public release in four days!

Beta Update

There will be a new beta tomorrow as there is a game-breaking bug with the diplomatic symbol. I thought I had that blasted problem fixed but it seemed there were two points of failure, not one.

I'm going through and fixing all the bugs mentioned by you, the fans. It should all be done by the public release.

I was going to upload a quick fix to the game breaking bug and a bunch of minor ones today but for no particular reason I can understand my internet connection is reverting to 56-damned-k levels. This is divine punishment for living in Idaho, one of the places officially known to be in the bottom 5 of states in the US for internet connection speed. Connection speed also drops here for no reason whatsoever for significant periods of time and you cannot actually buy a fast connection if you want to. Meanwhile our neighbors Washington and Oregon have some of the fastest speeds in the US. I think Washington may be #1, actually.

So as I said, divine punishment. The people of Idaho suffer that I may make you dirty games.

(It took me quite a while to actually load up that video for that gag, by the way)


I tried to upload it and my upload speeds were going so slow it would take about six hours to upload something. I may as well just take the day and fix a bunch of bugs in that case. It'll be back to normal tomorrow, most likely.

As a side note I have been asked a few times how much you need to get into the beta. The answer is $0.01 cents. Betas almost always start broken and really are given to help me do a lot of bug testing. Public releases rarely come more than a week or so later. If you have -EVER- donated any amount I'll send you the beta link. The reason I don't do open betas isn't just to reward donators (although they deserve that and more) it's because listing out bugs takes work. If you can't take the effort to donate a single cent you probably aren't going to help bughunt. In which case it's better to have you wait until the public release so you don't get frustrated with game breaking bugs and restarts. I value all my fans including the people who don't donate. You support me in other ways, not the least by just talking about me and my game in places. That said, I know not everyone is well suited to testing for bugs, particularly with the game as rough as it is after the big code rewrite and a new chapter getting hammered out in a short time.

Much as I wanted a public release on Christmas some of the comments for the last post should show you why I put up a beta. I try to fix as many as I can and hammer down a lot of them you'll never see but this game is, at its core, still mostly a one man show (though 0nymous had added a LOT to the project). And this release certainly is programming and writing wise. In a few days all the big bugs should be smooshed and things will be going well. Then you can enjoy a nice, smooth experience.

As a side note please go give Mindwipe some support on his tumblr. I want him to know he's loved. He's a rockstar and he's doing a lot of the art you now enjoy. He does it fast, on time, good quality and always goes the extra mile and then some.


http://planetofjunk2.tumblr.com/
http://planetofjunk.tumblr.com/

Overwhored Version 0.5 BETA release TODAY!

I made it. Let me say that again - I MADE IT.

Bilbao is a functional city! The adventure there is ready! 90% of the "in the next release" stuff is finally in THIS release!

For those of you that don't get how big of a deal this was, I set this goal before I got new pain meds for old injuries that made me sleep through whole days, before I got a mind-killing toothache that will only end in a root canal next month, before a ludicrous amount of IRL work got dropped on my lap - but I did it!

The past week I've been working about 14-16 hours a day, with one day going for 18 hours. All so I could make this release date and keep my word. So those of you who donated could play this game on Christmas.

The cut will be VERY rough, and Bilbao's religious district is still very underpopulated. Even so, you can play through this entire section! The Library even has a short-story hidden among the shelves.

Unlike some recent releases I made all of the Bilbao maps myself. I did my best to make maps of a quality similar to those 0nymous did in the previous ones. You will be the ultimate judge of that.

This game has been rewritten in VX Ace. It has a bunch of new stuff. And it WORKS.

Beta testers, you're heroes to me. You helped fix so many bugs that you made it possible for me to release on time now.

There are still a lot of rough edges though, and may be some game breaking bugs in this one. It ends after you fight Bilbine in Bilbao.

Please take your time and check thoroughly. I will continue to add content until the public release on the 1st of January, 2015!

I am also going to set up a Patreon account. I don't know what incentives to offer for bigger donations, so let me know what you would like!

You can expect an e-mail with the beta in a few hours if you have donated in the past. Happy Holidays!

Pre-Release Status Update:

Hi everyone! I am just getting done with about fourteen solid hours of work on the game. The past few days I've been working about 14-18 hours straight trying to get this release done.

So how close am I? Well...

The truth is that right now I could spend tomorrow working and have a Christmas Eve release ready, but the chapter would end up much like other chapters before it. Which is to say I won't be able to do the special stuff I want to do.

See, I want to do a group battle scene like - say, the defense of Narshe in FFVI. I also have a script for it. I want that army you get after Audr to have some relevance. However that isn't simple. Programming in the switch is very much doable, of course. However a dungeon needs to be programmed with that specifically in mind.

Right now I have a fairly standard dungeon just prior to Bilbine as a placeholder and I'm debating whether to spend tomorrow fixing up Bilbao with that in mind or whether I should scrap that dungeon and redo it with the army and push the release back. I could still push back the army battle to the next release - I had always intended to have an army battle in that chapter. So I'm honestly not sure. I'll probably just try and make a Christmas release and stick with what I've already made though.

I also spent about four hours tonight working on this:

Behold the adorable final boss of the chapter. Sprites take forever, and making this was pretty difficult. I'm just glad it works. It'll definitely be worth the ten seconds of cutscene and battle, haha.

So let me go over some things that will be in the next version no matter what:

1: All the sex scenes that said, "In the Next Release". Guess what? They're actually in this one. I brought in a friend as a writing assistant so I could focus on Bilbao and still get those done. Don't worry about the quality though. Said friend is uncredited by request and has already written a few sex scenes for the game in previous releases.

2: The three slaves optional impregnation scene. The art has been done for a while but I didn't to take them out of your party until after Audr.

3: Intro Pics for Rubati and Nanshe. Now you get to see them looking all kickass before you fight them.

4: A finished Dwarven Chapter. Now you can finish resolving things with the goblins and dwarves, get Audr in your party and explore post-victory Beerenberg.

5: Lots of new and fixed equipment.

6: Lots of new abilities.

7: Battle system improvements with your party having sprites on the screen like the old Final Fantasy games.

8: A few sex scenes you didn't know about, like getting to bang one of the goblin girls.



Stuff that I intend to do that probably won't be in this release:



1: A finished Orb of Dominion system. I have a script for it but haven't had the time to deal with setting it up. For now you just gain the abilities via leveling. As much as you get it at the start the Orb system has always been really low priority; it's more of a post-core game finished polish thing.

2: A proximity based monster chase system. This would make it so that monsters wander randomly until you get close, then they try to chase you to initiate combat. They would be restricted to certain areas as well. I have the scripts but not the time to go back and do this to everything so I'll probably leave it out until the next release.

3: The option to corrupt the Sayda Princesses and build a cowgirl farm. This would let you bang both princesses.

4: Who even knows - tons of stuff. I'm a bit too tired to think of more, but I know there's more.

Note that although I really wanted the Monstergirl Village in this release there were some issues with getting the art. So I will NOT be including that until the art is finished. Said artist started University half a year earlier than expected, so at least the delay is for a good cause.



I'm working with artists down to the wire to get all the art I can into this. Thanks to that I want to show you something very special.

This was a special gift to the project by the artist Mindwipe, one of my favorite members of the art team. He is an AWESOME guy, so check out his site! He provided this awesome sketch of Rubati as a gift:

I'm going to try as hard as I can for a release on Christmas Eve, but if I don't manage it I'll go for Christmas Day.

Thanks for being fans!

Bilbao and its Inspirations

The next chapter will be focused on the nation of Bilbao, the home of the heroine Bilbine Bengochea. This chapter was actually intended to take place before Audr's chapter but due to delays in getting the art for it done (when Audr's art was already done) it was swapped in order.

This does reveal the strength of my modular system. Really any heroine's chapter could happen in any order while still telling an interesting narrative.

In this case I have a few inspirations for this chapter. First is Locke's scenario from FFVI, as I previously mentioned. It's one of my favorite sequences in gaming. That said, those of you familiar with it will know I am going to take some pains to differentiate it from the Sayda chapter which also drew a little inspiration from it.

The second and obvious influence on this chapter is Spain. Notably I want the terms and locations based on Basque Spain (and Bilbao is a town in the real Basque Spain). However I will be using Spanish throughout this section because Basque is not a popular language now and I cannot be certain of using words and terms in Basque whereas I can have Spanish language speakers vet any Spanish terms I use.

As for how it will be based on Spain I intend to use Francoist Spain as an inspiration. Bilbine is the heroine of kindness, an interesting choice for the leader of a fascist regime. However it was also a highly religious Regime and this is a good chance to show off a bit of the faith of the Goddess in Overwhored and how an overzealous heroine focused on getting everyone to stick to the ideals of kindness can take it in the wrong directions.

A lot of the civilizations in Overwhored have inspirations from real world groups and locations. Nanshe's civilization of dark elves is sort of an underground Babylon; Sayda is based on Sidon (Also known as a city in Lebanon); Beerenberg is based on Norway and the Goblins are based on Australians. The connection with these isn't that strong yet. I would like to make it a clearer connection in future rewrites. People tend to forget that this game is more or less on a first draft right now. I'm more focused on getting new chapters out than polishing each one as much as I'd like. I often go back and make numerous small tweaks and revisions but those aren't really equivalent to doing a second or third draft of the script, for instance.

Some civilizations are more variable. I had originally intended to make Rubati's civilization more like Phoenecia but I haven't really fleshed it out yet, it could be more along the lines of the "generalist Englandish fantasy" type at this point. I suppose I'm obligated to include it. That was originally the intention of Wardhaven so people's expectations of fantasy aren't immediately subverted though over time I decided to make it Welsh instead. Welsh words are fun.

Bilbine's chapter has been based on Basque Spain for a long time and the intention was always to make her somewhat fascist. You could argue that most of the heroines at this point are to some degree fascist but there is some difference. Branda was a totalitarian dictator of a populace she wasn't native to and wasn't loved by. Audr was obviously inspired to some degree by tumblr (which although not totally terrible there are people there who are worse than I ever depicted Audr to be). I intend for one major difference to be that Bilbine is the leader of a truly prosperous, technologically advanced nation that was never all that evil. Indeed, in contrast to the other heroines her rule has made her state MORE prosperous. The issue, however, is the cost.

Namely what happens to those who disagree with the political or religious stance her state takes. The "unkind" are taken, encased in mechanized magical golem suits and forced to act for the rest of their lives as servants and enforcers of kindness, never again to control their own actions. I'm trying to come up with some snappy alternative to "grises" for them. Thanks to the labor of the eternally enslaved 'unkind' (ideological dissidents) Bilbao is perhaps the most prosperous and advanced city in the world. It is even a republic - albeit one where now those who do not make the right choice when voting get mechanized.

For those who do stick to the party line the place is great. It's a wonderful paradise where mechanical labor takes the place of much of the physical work people would do in the rest of the world.

If most of the world of Overwhored is somewhere around the 1400's-1500's (with some aesthetic exceptions) then Bilbao is in the 1600's with bits of the 1700's creeping in. For a modern person it would easily be the most comfortable, stylish, and safest place to live in the Overwhored world. People drink coffee and alcohol, people enjoy their vices in moderation and the whole place is well maintained.

There's an old story that presents a moral dilemma called, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas". It goes something like this:

In a city everything is perfect, prosperous, and all people are happy. But to maintain this state of affairs one child is brutalized and isolated for their entire life in order to power the magic that makes it work. Is it worth it? Is it right?

That story had its own inspirations from a number of sources I won't go into now, but needless to say the question of whether the suffering of a few is worth it for the sake of the prosperity of the many is an age old one.

Is it worth it to live a life of wonderful comfort, prosperity, and plenty when the cost is that those who disagree with the government are trapped in a magical golem suit that will forever control their own movements? If what you replace it with won't possibly be as good for the people is it right to do it? Yes, they will forever be stuck in a state of being of having to scream and not having a robomouth to do it with. But it is for the good of all, and hey - they're criminals, right? If they didn't want to end up that way they wouldn't have broken the law. Nevermind that the law is insane; those that follow it have it made.

The Overmind, of course, won't care. The Overmind is the Overmind and a force of nature. He wants the girl, he will chase the girl, he will get the girl or die trying. Anything is justified in that pursuit. That is what he is; it is his fundamental core of being.

But will you, the player, feel the same way?

Find out in the next release of a porn game where the creator spends way too much time thinking of ethical dilemmas and reading history books when all you wanna do is masturbate.

Art stuff

I wanted to comment a bit even though I did comment recently. I've been working a heck of a lot on the game but I've also been working on some art. Also I am gonna whine a bit because I can, I guess.

So first the whining. I decided to finally spend some of the donation money you all have been giving me and be a bit extravagant for once. I'm bad at spending money so when I do spend it I tend to do so in a big way and this was no exception! Of course I'm still me. So that meant I was still going to spend it on something practical. So I went to the dentist. Yes - for the first time in a long time I could go. And I needed to because my teeth were killing me.

Turns out I need a root canal! This is not very fun news. Worse is I can't do it until next month. So I'm stuck with a bad tooth for this month. I can't just get it pulled because it's a canine tooth and I'll be damned if I lose one of those! They're my favorite teeth. So right now the sensation is... poor, to say the least. Between the pinched nerve and this I'm surprised I'm still sane.

So I've been spending time doing two things that help keep my mind off of things: The game, and art.

Alas my mapper is not present so the new maps will be mine. That's mostly what I've been doing. So you'll have to deal with some sucky maps for the next section. I'll try to get them remade later. I've got a whole city to make but the maps are the easy part. Figuring out how to program what I have in mind will be trickier. I intend to make Bilbao play out a bit like Locke's sequence in South Figaro from FFVI.

The other thing I've been doing is art. You saw the pic I did last week. Well I've been unusually productive thanks to the whole pain thing and needing a distraction. So here's a bit of what I've done lately. It's all Palutena because - I dunno, she's fun to draw and I have all these reference photos.

(There's a permanent post for the last one here: http://hypnohub.net/post/show/21479

A bit more on topic with the whole game thing I've got some lineart back for Rubati's intro scene. This was drawn by the talented member of the art team; the artist Mindwipe! This guy rocks. Go support him, okay?

Hoping for a Christmas Release

There's an age old question in the adult game community. "How's your health?" There's a reason for this question. It's the excuse people use to stop making a game they no longer have the passion for. Maybe they just don't care. Maybe they have other priorities. In the end the reason doesn't matter. They're in "poor health" so they quit working on their game. 

I have gone through significant issues in my personal life I've never revealed here. I have mentioned a few things like enduring a molar that broke in half that I had to put up with for two weeks before it could get fixed. None of this has EVER stopped me from working on Overwhored. Nor do I intend to stop working on the game until it is done. You all gave me the money to work on it. It would be a fundamental and horrific breach of trust to ever abandon this game before completion. 

Things have not gone well lately. Not even slightly. Needless to say the floor in my house collapsing recently is the least of my problems. I have a permanent spinal injury that causes me constant pain and has recently caused one of my legs to alternate between extreme pain and total numbness all day. Many other things have come up as well. However this is not a place to complain about my problems and I won't. 

I have not stopped working on the game. I have continued even with things going as they are. But damn is it slowing my progress. 

My sincere hope is to have a release with a new heroine at the very least for donators near Christmas as a present for the fans of this game. If I do not I sincerely apologize. It is because things have been very, very difficult and this is ultimately something I do in my free time. I may have to get another job soon since farming stops in the winter and things have been expensive lately. Besides - I need to start saving up for a move eventually. 

I always feel guilty about how long it takes to make new sections of this game. If I get done with work and end up playing a game with my friends I stop and think, "I could be working on the game instead." Even art, my other big hobby, feels like a guilty thing. I still allow myself to do it mostly because I really do want to do my own art for my games some day. I'm still not there but I am getting closer. This is a recent picture I drew a few days back: 

http://hypnohub.net/post/show/21314

Yet it still feels on some level like a waste of time. If I spend an hour and a half drawing something like that I'm not spending that time on the game. 

That is part of why I'm so very reluctant to take money; why I was so hesitant to take donations in the first place. I hate that I can't give you all the speed you want and deserve. 

Why haven't I set up a Patreon? Because I don't feel like I work on the game enough to justify getting money from you. Why don't I have fund raisers and drives? Because I don't feel like I give you enough. Even when the floor in my house collapsed I didn't ask you all for money to help get it fixed.

Why? Because there is a horrible type of person out there. They make terrible adult games as a hobby. They leech all the money they can out of fans and then claim they have bad health and abandon them. They're basically ripping people off. 

I hate those people. When things take too long I always feel like I am one. That's the very last thing I want to be. 

I wish I could do this faster and give you all a new release every month. But I can't. So at least I try to give you the best I can when a new release does come out. 

I don't know why I'm going on about this now, save that the not-entirely-effective pain killers I'm on are scrambling my brain at the moment. But I want you all to know how very much I care about this game and you as fans. Yes it's a porn game. But that doesn't mean it should be bad or done halfassedly. Whether it's porn or not I want it to be the best I can make it. I've told you all in the past that this project is for me first and everyone else second. And that's true in a way - it's for the sake of me being able to look at myself as a decent human being. If I stopped this project before it finished after all you all have done for me I don't think I could live with myself. 

I wish I could give you all everything you as fans deserve. You have been extraordinarily supportive over the past several years. That's why I want to make this Christmas release despite everything going on. If I don't make it because of the way things are going I want you to know that I tried. 

If you want to help support the project right now I need game footage. To coincide with the next public release I'm going to put out a safe-for-work youtube trailer with some specially designed animation work done by the wonderful art team member Mindwipe and narration by Nekochan of Bad Kitty Games. A recording of at least 720p resolution, sound not necessary. My computer isn't good enough to run the recording programs and the game at the same time. I'm going to put in a short montage of gameplay footage in the trailer. Short clips of varied locations preferred. 

To finish things off I'll present you with the finished Nanshe intro scene. I'm going to get one of these done for each of the heroines. 

Thank you so very much for being fans.