Update #20: The Entire Story
almost 6 years ago – Tue, May 19, 2020 at 06:49:21 PM

Well since its come to this...

I know that I’m only writing this for literally 4-5 people but I need to get this off my chest. Especially when I see people harassing one of my good friends and team members.

For me personally I like to keep personal matters to myself. Time and time again I see creators use the excuse of some kind of greek levels of tragedy to justify the reasons for a project shutting down and walking away with people's money (and also their goodwill). And even before this Kickstater happened... in case anything did go wrong I told myself that I wasn't going to be one of those people. I told myself that if something did ever happen. If I got sick, if my artist died, my writer got depressed and disappeared, whatever the excuse was that unless I WAS DEAD... I would stand tall and make fucking sure that I would punch through whatever obstacle that I had before me. 

And in a strange way I still accomplished that. DESPITE all the hardships and things I had to go through... I kept my mouth shut, told people to be patient and wait.

Be jesus christ you guys... 

I... 

But now thanks to just a few people not just here but also in the forums on steam for this game (yeah you too) that are impatient (I mean for good reasons in a weird way I totally understand that that impatience its a way of venting their excitement so I'm not like super pissed about it). And my success as a publisher... things are starting to get a little out of hand. So fine... I'll let you guys know what happened even though this is tremendously going against my principles. Think of me just venting here.

So what had happened was...

Buckle up folks this is gonna be a weird one and kinda long.

Before I start, I want to thank the people who did reach out to me like I asked if you had any worries about the project. You guys (who are most of you in this KS) already know generally whats up and I appreciate you guys keeping things secret and not spreading this private information around.

As most of you know I own LewdGamer.com 

Around the start of the inception of the project my father found out that I was doing H content. I was forced out of the house and decided to live in my car for the rest of the year in 2016. LewdGamer was doing well enough during that time ads wise and my idea was to save up so I could find a decent place to stay or get some kind of roommate. However, due to an unfortunate altercation with one of the companies I was advertising on my website, (essentially they wanted me to take some articles down that wasn't covering their games favorably and do paid post advertisement) I lost a massive chunk of advertisement funds and income. Again doing the right thing should be easy, but the reality is that it doesn't always play in your favor.

I was a bit down on my luck around this time while doing some work on the side for ad agencies, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to run my site properly if I did. But things were getting pretty bad... my friends however kept my spirits up the entire time and my staff at LewdGamer were very patient with me during this process. However something needed to be done... I needed to find some way else to monetize to support my writers since I refused to take unethical revenue.

So then came the idea... 

 Hey... how about you make your own game! 

I was actually getting bothered by a lot of friends in the industry for a while about this. Considering the situation though and after some convincing I began to feel that perhaps this was really the only way out of this situation. I thought that with knowing everyone else's horror stories with other artist, I could learn from those mistakes and try to set up a way where things could be avoided.

So after sorting out a deal. I began hunting down talent that could help me get a game together. My goal was to get it done in 4 months... and it be the size of Catch Canvas. After hopefully the KS success.

I only asked originally for 7 grand and I expected 7 grand. It be just enough to pay Lasterk and have a friend of mine program the game, someone write it, get some backgrounds and music, and put something together... but then something happened. The KS made 24 grand instead of 7 and I was rather surprised at how successful things were. In the end after fees, I received 18K to work with and I felt like "Hey! I'm feeling pretty good about this! Let's make something a bit bigger!?"

When the KS was successful a lot of people told me that I should find a place to stay so that I could focus better on the project... but I decided to keep living in my car. That way I could keep my overhead low and put all of it into Demons so it would be a quality project. 

I worked on the project in 24 hour gym called Anytime Fitness and attempted my best to be sneaky in Starbucks (eventually though the whole staff found out about what I do... lucky for me they didn't have a problem with it. As long as I was careful of course.)

Since this project was SUPPOSED to get done rather quickly I felt this risk would be totally fine. I could spend the money on getting the wallscrolls done fast and afford more quality versions of them. I could pay Lasterk and the rest of the team the money that I got and shit the project out as fast as I could with better quality standards. But as you can tell it didn't work out that way.

The 3-4 images done a month that was told to me didn't happen (even after paying in advance), the programmer that I originally got to help me out didn't do his job after paying him and delivered subpar work, the musician that I originally got we sadly came to a disagreement in direction, and I quickly realized that I would have to do my own writing since I couldn't find one back in the day that wasn't a fucking emotional wreck.

And then I come to find out later that Lasterk was ill with a lung problem and was was having an increased problem with drawing. Long hiatus were happening but I felt like I was piece of shit for having to condemn the artist for medical issues. So I kept silent and just told people to wait, but the work I was occasionally getting wasn't good either. It wasn't what I wanted.

I was beginning to run out of options and I was considering on finally giving up. Canceling the project, dropping everything that I had built and refund everyone. But my friends and even some of the backers continued to give me support.

And then an opportunity came... to be an AO publisher on Steam. I had a chance to use my marketing and data analysis skills, stare at Steam all day and figure out how its algorithm worked. And I manged to pull a win. The first western Nukige on Steam with incest non-consensual content. Completely Uncensored. 

Despite Snow Daze's success though I still decided to stay in my car... I had gotten used to it by then anyway. I used the money that I had made to pay my writers better, catch up on bills, (I wasn't paying my car bill for awhile in attempts to save money.) and pay people I owed. Staying in my car allowed me to keep my overhead low and keep Lewdgamer.com afloat.

With rekindled vigor to pay people out of my own pocket on WMNAD, I gave them even more money than what was originally planned and even Lasterk a cut of the sales % on the game. But soon after that my main artist stopped communicating as often and then...

He disappeared... he walked away from his Patreon, his fans, any forms of communication and yet again the game was stalled.

You can read the previous update for the rest of the story... for those who missed it.

Yes this happened.. this is the story that most of you didn't know.

Understand that the above is a condensed version of the story. A lot of shit went down during those years. Just stupid IRL stuff, me getting sick and hospitalized during the winter, ect... But I'd say this event I'm going to explain was cool highlight.

Back in the day there was a team of people from SCAD University. They are fans and supporters just like you that hung out in the Western Ero scene on discord. They ended up learning through the grapevine about my story and hard ships. And they decided to shoot a mini documentary about everything I had gone through. I have no shame and quite frankly I'm in the ero industry for the long haul. So I said yes...

They came down... payed for my hotel stay, put up with my loud as fuck snoring, and we decided to shoot this thing in Starbucks, Gym, and downtown Washington DC. I decided to to this because back then I felt confident that things would work out and that I'd release this mini doc after I was successful to publicly to help motivate other creators to go out an achieve something even through hard times.

Thanks to the publishing and current success though I'm pretty fucking okay now. I'm living in a hotel at the moment in Washington State waiting for this virus shit to go by to FINALLY get an apartment (and send these goddam fucking wall scrolls). 

Go on and watch if you think the story above is too crazy to sound real.

I’m not asking for pity… what I'm asking is for patience. The game will be done. It has over 70K wishlist on Steam which is insane for a visual novel pre-release (which only added more to the stress of trying my best to deliver a solid project)

Since a large amount of hype came to it I want it to be something good and memorable. Something that… even at the end of the day if it's not your thing (considering the futa content) you can at least say that a tremendous amount of care, love and effort went into the project. I’m not going to rush this out…

I want to believe that all of you are smart enough to just see WITH YOUR EYES that I’m plenty active… I’m not hiding from anyone… I have always had an open door policy for discussion, but if you refuse to use those options then I’m not going to care if you are upset considering I'm going out of my way to talk to people individually despite how busy I am.

I apologize for coming off a little aggressive and upset, but I hate repeating myself over and over and over again to select few folks. 

I'll have a new demo out soon to serve as a reflection of the growth that not only I have had as a director and project lead, but the project has achieved over the years. If you are not impressed with it you can ask for a refund. But please be patient until I have it prepared and ready to go for you guys. 

Due to the corona virus shit things have hit a slight snag... but thanks to my publishing branch I have manged to alleviate some grief among the new people and friends that have stuck with me over the years and keep projects going (including mine). Imagine if i didn't make that choice!? (I hope y'all are getting it now).

When the new demo is done is when I will start a new round of marketing and getting people excited for the title. But... let me reiterate this again. Considering that with AnimeFlux we were forced to start all over again for artistic consistency. WE WILL BE RELEASING CONTENT WHEN WE FEEL LIKE IS ITS READY.

We are taking this game very seriously for how important it is for the entirety of Critical Bliss. (and many other developer environments that support us.) We are NOT rushing this game and no amount of complaining is going to change that. So sit tight and wait.

In the mean time however...

Here some projects that you can look forward too that you will be getting for FREE  for being a patient KS backer!

PaperCat Studio's visual novel “Give an Imp a Chance” received a ban on Steam. Reason? Seemed that the main character Sophie was a bit too flat chested for them. I had originally picked up this title to help a writer get back on his feet after getting screwed over by his previous boss.

I also planned on releasing this a while back in 2019, but bad luck stuck here. We but we are still committed to getting his game done and selling on other smaller platforms. Critical Bliss won't be receiving a cut from the other stores... as knowing he is living comfortably at his home with his family is good enough for me. But in exchange I will be providing you guys this game for free! The twins will have 3 scenes instead of the original 2. Hopefully this will help tie some of you guys over until WMNAD is out. All the CGs are done and completed by one of WMNAD's colorist SleeperHigh. All that's left is a little bit of writing and some tidy up. You can EXPECT that very soon in a future update.

 For those of you who were looking forward to Demons for its more degenerate content. KS backers can look forward to also getting Futa Fix for free as well when its all ready to go! Kupaa is a close partner with us and they also want to make you guys happy as we continue to develop our debut title. This slice of life comedy featuring Emily coming to terms with becoming a futa and all that comes with. It will also come with full animated scenes made by CyberUniqe. Should be done in the next few months we'll let you know for sure!

 The Twins will also be showing up in My Forest Home! The demons will be a secret tough boss that if not defeated will do some... special things to the main heroine. You'll be able to get a glimpse of who they were are at full power! (The twins are not at full strength in WMNAD sadly... for very fun reasons).

 This is a project we picked up late last year for publishing. We gave him an option to turn this rather simple randomly generated house builder into a full on Metroidvania. By having access to our resources and connections, he was able to craft a far better and more fulfilling experience. Just another example on how we help devs aspire for greater heights and have them not repeat the same mistakes I did during development with proper guidance. 

In closing

Despite a lot of good reasons for the project to be delayed for as long as it has I do feel plenty bad about it. Trust me you're going to be happy about me feeling bad about it. When the game is ready you'll see why things are taking long.

If all of the above isn't a good enough then I don't know what else to do. All I'll say though is that I'll continue to do what I have always done and that move forward and continuing my work and helping others. But just keep tucking along, doing my thing, and release my game when its set to go.

Quality and effort takes time and sometimes shit happens. You'll be handsomely rewarded with a fantastic studio quality ost, stunning art direction, animations and special effects, top tier sound design and VA work... all this takes TIME. I mean... listen to this fucking song!

What Nukige have you played that has music like this!!! >:U

With my consistent success on the Steam platform due to my data analysis skills, I have attracted others to come on aboard the Critical Bliss brand and make projects exclusively for me to sell. I've been using the funds I make well and you guys can look forward to a lot of neat and surprising projects that will be made on the side while Demon's is getting worked on.

To keep track with all the crazy amount of stuff me and the guys do give us a follow here.

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/criticalbliss

And again thanks for the patience. I hope this update has been an enlightening one.

Now please calm the hell down... and let me do my job! Take care~

P.S. 

I'll be sending out the wallscrolls once this virus shit calms down.

Update #19 Welp... That happened!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 01:24:25 AM

Hey, guys!  I'd like to preface this new update post with an apology for the lack of stable updates over the past months as things have been not only hectic for us, but also quite turbulent for the whole project.

Without further ado let me move on to the bad news and get that shit out of the way.

So what's the bad news...?

As you are aware from our previous update, our lead artist Lasterk has gone through a multitude of issues ranging from extreme health concerns, family obligations, and keeping his fans happy on Patreon. To be honest this was one of the main reasons for the project slowing down in the first place. I was being very patient (maybe a bit too patient) about this considering the amount made on KS was not enough to lock Lasterk down on the project long term. It made sense that Demons would be moved to to the side lines priory wise due to this.

However this is of course very much unfair to you guys, so I decided to strike a deal in order to ensure that we get the game done faster. He agreed and I got excited that now we could finally get the ball rolling consistently forwards.

Our joy, however, was quite premature as some of you who are following the artist previously may have noticed that he has completely vanished from the face of the Internet. This all occurred around the middle of March as evidenced by his last posts on his social media accounts. Not even is Patreon has been updated. Since that time, there has been no contact with him and we could only assume that either his health has deteriorated to the point he could not continue working or his family issues have overwhelmed him to the point where he felt he could not continue any activities online.

This honestly made me, a person with an almost endless well resilience and positivity, incredibly depressed. Yet again I make a promise to you guys that I can't keep and it was very hard to muster the courage again to even write this unless I knew FOR SURE that things were going to be okay from now on.

Having waited a reasonable amount of time for Lasterk's reappearance me and the team finally decided we would be forced to move the project along without him and find a replacement artist that would meet our standards and provide us with artwork on a consistent and reliable basis. 

Now usually what developers do in these cases is find the first \artist that they can get their hands on, but not us. We promised a weird yet quality title in the visual department and refused to settle for a lesser artist. So we searched around for a bit and...

Well... did you find anyone?

In my meticulous search for a replacement,  I eventually ran into Anime Flux by recommendation from Kupaa Networks. Flux is a well established, popular artist with an art style that fits our aesthetic goals going forward. For those who are not familiar with Flux's work, here are some samples below. You can also check out his twitter page as well! 

I'm sure you guys are wondering why we are just showing his linework. We'll that's because there is indeed a catch. Flux will only be doing the linework for WMNAD's primary CGs. I decided that this would be the best course of action so we could divide the the work for quicker completion. The team coloring Flux's lineart coloring is Taixi Studio, a professional freelance team from HongKong. This is to take some stress off of Flux and allow him to focus on making detailed material for the final product.

To be perfectly honest I find this situation a little funny. This is due to the fact that Anime Flux in the past was one of the first people I originally thought of to be the main artist for the project. Funny how things work out sometimes.

Due to the work Lasterk provided being unfinished and without alternates we are forced to make a complete overhaul of Lasterk's contributions. His work will still be in the game, but only for splash screens and transition purposes. You'll also get to see all the work he's done in the Digital Art book and the bonus gallery inside the final game.

Wait... So what about that Chibi artist guy? Is he still on the project?

MegaSweet  was originally just going to be a chibi artist for small scenes of the project, but this idea evolved into something more thanks to his speed, consistency, and a drive for us to try something different. We decided a long time ago to go out of our way to add chibi H scenes (which is something a bit quirky and new compared to other Adult focused VNs). Some of his material is actually partially animated in WMNAD and will have some interactive options when his work appears at certain parts of the the experience. We were motivated to give this a shot due to being inspired by Zone's previous flash work and we wanted to do something similar to it a nice little treat. Zone-tan will be also showing up as guest in the game. She's well hidden though so make sure you're paying attention!

We are trying our best to squeeze out as much content as possible from a deceptively simple premise. Its been fun coming up with a system to make these series of events happen in an entertaining way.

By the time this game is FINALLY done, it will have 20+ h-scenes with Flux's work (not including alts and doujin-like cut in panels for style and presentation) and 12+ more h-scenes of Mega's work. We still also have some bonus contributions from some other popular artist under Kupaa Networks such as Hizzacked, Dsan, Cyber Unique, and maybe more if we have the time.

So I hear that your making other games on the side... is that true?

No its not... 

What I am doing is publishing titles!

As some of you already know, Critical Bliss has ventured forth and become a publisher on top of being a developer. This decision was made due to the fact that we refuse to ask our fans and backers for more financial support to finish the game. Consider this as us taking full responsibility to finish the project on our own accord. We have successfully released Snow Daze back in October of last year on steam and currently the game sits as one of the best selling games under the adult only section. We are also currently underway to publishing more titles under our brand that will inject a healthy dose of capital going forward to WMNAD's completion. 

One of these titles is on the brink of getting finished even!

 "Give and Imp A Chance." A short little visual novel about a office worker who decides to tamper into the dark arts in attempt to bring a succubus into the mortal world. Unfortunately things don't go as planned and he accidentally summons an Imp on mistake. Cevi and Vulse will show up as guest characters in this title, but only if you decide to take a trip on the wild side.

At first this developer came to us seeking advice due to our sizable success with Snow Daze, but we eventually seduced him to our cause.

The developer for this project will also been assisting us in the final script for WMNAD as he is a seasoned writer for other Visual Novels. A fully powered version of the  Imp from GAIAC will also appear as a guest character in the final version of our debut title.

Another visual novel that we shall be publishing is none other than Dragon Date! DD is another project that has gone through similar woes as us. With that in mind we reached out to Akemari to offer publishing assistance and she accepted our proposal. Due to this arrangement, we will be contributing some of our resources to help move the project along to final completion and eventually Steam.

Other stuff down the pipeline is, Princess & Conquest, Sequoia State, and more!

Alright fine... you have my attention, but what about the WALL SCROLLS THAT YOU PROMISED TO SHIP!?

For those of you concerned about the physical rewards such as the wall scrolls. They have been completed quite a long time ago and still feature Lasterk's artwork and we do not plan to update those. As for getting them shipped we plan on sending the rest of them after GAIAC is released. We will have the access capital to due so since sending the overseas is surprisingly extremely expensive and caught us off guard originally. 

Thank you for your continued support of What!? My Neighbors Are Demons!!? and your unrivaled patience with us as we move forward to continue with our original no compromise vision of this title. I still strive to deliver an accessible, yet experimental take on your typical "Nukige" experience and my goals to strive for quality still hasn't changed.

Thanks to Flux being on the project now, there certain fetish material that I can dive into that I wasn't confident Lasterk would be able to do well. Luckily Flux is just as degenerate as I am. Where I've had to comprise with Lasterk on various things, this won't be happening with this new guy. 

... This make me very happy since now I can make sure that WMNAD will have: Mind break, transformation, corruption(The best!), moral degeneration, yuri, genderbending, drugging, futanari (Yum!), dick growth, monsters, BDSM, public use, body modification (YUMMMMM!!!!), traps (*cough*), cum inflation, and all kinds of fun stuff! (No Scat or Guro though... Sorry!). Just a reminder for those that may have forgot.

While I'm not on the verge of having hate for this project, I more than anyone wants to get this debut out of the way. I have so many interesting plans for the twins and future projects that I ultimately can't approach without accomplishing this title first. While WMNAD isn't my dream project, all that I want from it is to be a game that 10 years from now I can look back and say: "Yeah, this game wasn't my best work, but man did I start out with a BANG!"

My first plan of attack now is to update the VERY old public demo from almost two years ago to show you all how much growth has occurred overtime and show off the new talents involved.

See you soon and thank you~

...

Wait...

One more thing...

MY OPEN DOOR POLICY STILL HAS NOT CHANGED! IF YOU WANT TO GET IN CONTACT WITH ME DIRECTLY FOR QUESTIONS, GO INTO THE DISCORD AND ASK ME WHATS GOING ON PERSONALLY!!

 Also here is a SONG!

 Alright bye~

Update #18 Some Details on the Speed of the Project
about 7 years ago – Fri, Feb 01, 2019 at 01:28:01 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Update #17.5 Happy New Years Everyone!!!
over 7 years ago – Tue, Jan 01, 2019 at 12:24:32 AM

Hey guys! Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Me and the guys this month took some time to self reflect and reorganize in order to start off the new year strong next month.

Next year in 2019 is going to be a very important year not for this game, but the entirety of the Critical Bliss brand. Despite suffering some struggles with WMNAD, over time I have made some strong connections with others and have learned a lot of harsh lessons about development that I’ll won’t be repeating again with my next projects. There a lot of good things on the horizon, but lets get this game fucking done first and take this milestone step to greater things.

Thanks for the support everyone! We’ll be talking again soon as in January we will begin sending out the wall scrolls to the people who are owed them. This is the serve as an apology for dev time taking so long and a sign that we are still dedicated on delivering our project for your lewd eyes to see and enjoy.

Cheers everyone~

 -LewdLogic

Update #17: What!!? You Didn't Think I'd Keep My Promise?
over 7 years ago – Sat, Dec 01, 2018 at 01:14:36 AM

WELL SIKE!!! You have been blindsided!!!

As I said, there will be an update every month no matter how small an update it is. So let me give you guys a brief rundown on what happened in the month of No Nut November.

For those who didn't know, we already published a game called "Snow Daze: The Music of Winter" on Steam. Due to my history with helping other developers in the baby stages of the western H-scene as well as me owning LewdGamer.com, I was approached by Cypress Zeta to handle publishing his game on the Steam platform now that Lord Gaben has allowed fully uncensored content. While slightly hesitant at first due to still working on my own project, I realized the situation I was in personally for my own project could greatly benefit from extra funds. Plus, I planned on doing publishing anyway in the long term, so I felt like giving it shot.