The road ahead for The Builder

Now that Episode 9 is just released,

Has The Builder suddenly transported itself back to the early 20th century?

Yes and no. If you follow the plot, you might remember the sepia AI illustrations of the story behind the curse in Episode 6.

Well, AI no more. I finally came around to create real 3D versions of the flashbacks.

The image in this post took me half a day of work. A lot of details, and I had to buy some more costumes to give the scene the right feel (or actually the wrong feel, as the action takes place in the 1920s but her dress signals late 1800s - explained by the fact that Fjorda is an isolated place in the north, so new trends arrive late).

I've also added some cute'ish illustrations to the mayor's story of how she met her husband, Machine Man. His story of the mechanical doll is also now 3D illustrated (Ep6).

There might therefore be a 9.2 release of the game before I proceed with Episode 10. This depends upon some other factors:

Steam release of Season 1 and Season 2 (early access)

The release is scheduled for late January 2025, but I might have to postpone that.

These are the issues I need to solve before the release:

• Creating a Stream build of both seasons (I might need to get paid dev assistance on this one)
• Building and figuring out the Steam Achievements API, so you can be rewarded as you progress through the story. I reckon this will make playing the game more fun.
• Render separate animations for the trailer of Season 2, so people can see that the story is moving on.
• Post videos of gameplay, so people can make a well based purchase decision.
• Getting to 5k people with the game on their wishlist (we have just rounded 3k). This is necessary for the game to appear on the top released games today-list, which I've understood is make or break when it comes to releasing indie games. Again, if you haven't done so yet, please head over to Steam and add both seasons - and, if you dare involve your friends in your taste for classy AVNs, ask them too.

As mentioned in earlier posts, getting traction on Steam will increase the economy of the game and allow me to work faster with new episodes.

Season 1 on Steam | Season 2 on Steam

Holiday Plot Fest

As soon as I can organize it, I would like to invite you to present your plot ideas for Season 3 of The Builder.

By experience, we all tend to attach ourselves to certain characters, and often nourish wishes for how they are given the life-bringing dose from our hero. Or just to have them involved in interesting (sexual) situations.

The Holiday Plot Fest is thus a way for you to develop story ideas together with the rest of the community around The Builder.

Here are my thoughts so far on this:

• I create an overview of all characters so far and post it here and on Discord.
• For Discord users we will use threads on the #plot-o-rama channel. Each idea gets a separate thread and we can develop them further there (or not, if they don't catch on).
• For itc.io, we will experiment with threads in the comment section of the plot fest post.
• Once the ideas are explored, we can use the like button to fathom the popularity of each plot idea. This will serve as an indicator for me, but I will reserve myself the dictatorial right to be the final arbitrator of what ends up in the season. Art isn't democracy :)

I know quite a few of you have things you would like to see happen, and this is one (of several) shots at getting it into the game. With six seasons planned, I reckon we can redo this exercise ahead of each season - provided that this is something you find engaging.

On that note: Being creative together with others on plot is one of the great pleasures of my work as a writer. It doesn't matter if it's my stories or other's, it just brings out the pure creative joy.

Episode 10 

Angst essen Seele auf is the working title of the episode. It's a reference to a German language film (you might have noticed that some of the episode titles are either directly taken from songs or other works of art, or word plays on the same).

Roughly translated I'd say it means something like "Anxiety eats the soul".

Despite his shortcomings, our hero is not a sociopath, and the share volume of good and bad decisions, plus his ever mounting challenges with the build, might bring him to a breaking point.

Not all of us have experienced anxiety, but it is one of the human emotions that tend to have a great influence on the way we live our lives.

So my plan is as follows: Our hero has a crisis, and, depending upon your choice of kink with Hege, the GILF, in Episode 9, you will have a clear goal for how to get to a safe harbor.

At this point, you will be given a choice: The path of darkness, the path of light or the path of reason. Roughly corresponding to your scores in the game: perv, karma and confidence.

This will give you six possible ways of playing through the episode. Adding to that, you might be given the opportunity to change paths along the way. And, rest assured, there will be inseminations taking place :)

As I've mentioned before, I don't want to do major branching of the story at this point. This will mean a lot of extra renders and thus demand more time in development. But I am this time considering two alternative pre-endings before the final climax scene where we round off Season 2 and cliff it for Season 3.

I might, once the story is completed, go back and add branches. But then again, I have new stories emerging that I would love to explore once The Builder reaches its climax.

If you've played Episode 9 attentively, you might have noticed that your choice with Hege creates subtle shifts of dialogue throughout the rest of the episode. The plan is thus to keep that variable also for Ep10, but actually with a bigger impact on the experience.

Ahh, a lot of words this time. Thank you for reading through to the end - and thank you again for your generous interest and support of the game! None of this would have been made without it!

Best,

Chris / Lewd Robotics