Devlog #1

Happy Valentine's Day! And welcome to my current madness...
Making a fan-made fan disk for Steam Prison with the express purpose of finally giving my favorite trash man LI a fully fleshed out Foe Yay-riffic route with my best girl MC (who definitely deserves better than said trash man lmao). 

Regardless of my initial passion for this project, I'm honestly shocked I've made it this far. I've had a lot of dumb ideas I've felt strongly about, but very few if any ever see the light of day.

This project began as an idea I had after finishing the official fan disk route for Sachsen (Another Theory) during my Christmas break of 2024. While I was of course ecstatic to get more Steam Prison content, including a real route for my favorite trash man Sachs and plenty of new character and world lore, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed in the fan disk in general. Judging by the Steam reviews for Beyond the Steam, I am not the only one, unfortunately.

I won't get into why that is right now, as I don't want to rag on the official game too much. After all, the reason why I felt compelled to do this is because Steam Prison, as Hunex/dramatic create have presented it, is awesome. Not only does it pander to me in a way that no other otome game does (lol), but it's just a good product.

That being said, I really wanted to make something that would supplement the official content in terms of giving Sachsen's backstory some closure, and presenting his relationship with Cyrus in a way that is a little less, ah, random than Another Theory. Hench this fan game.

So, as it stands, I've outlined and written about half the script of the first route of the fan disk, "Legacy Route," which is essentially the Sachsen max affection route. It's the reason I started this project, so it's what I want to finish before publicly releasing it and possibly getting hit with a C&D (lol).

Legacy Route will consist of approximately 3-4 hours gameplay. Currently, most of the first "act" is done, and clocks in at about 45 minutes of gameplay. Although I worked on it for 3+ hours a day for the first few weeks, my initial enthusiasm has (thankfully, said my social life) waned a bit and I'm doing more like an average of 1-2 hours a day of work on it on average per week.

From here, I've struggled with how to go about sharing it with fellow Steam Prison fans. First of all, I kinda feel bad implying that I think I can do better than Hunex/dramatic create at giving Sachsen a route. I don't mean to do that--I don't know anything about the development process or limitations of Beyond the Steam/Another Theory. And I fear that I'm too into my own work to see how bad it is to begin with, so I'm really anxious about what people will think about it.

Additionally, I'm also honestly afraid of legal action. All I really want to do is essentially make a mod or addition to the main game, but on paper what I'm doing is not especially legally sound at all. Given the legal splash screens at the beginning of each of the official games, I fear that Hunex/dramatic create would not appreciate the existence of this project…Worse, I fear that I really am making something that would be offensive to the original creators of this awesome world and its characters.

Still, with all this constantly in the back of my mind, here I am over 100 hours into developing my dumb fan game. I just can't help myself; it's fun, and I really do want to create a fan work that celebrates and contributes to the base game and fan disk in a way that keeps the fandom alive and encourages the Hunex/dramatic create to make more Steam Prison games.

Will I actually finish a whole route for Sachs? Will I manage to shoehorn in multiple endings? And most importantly, will I be able to somehow mash Cyrus and Sachsen together for a kiss CG?! (lmao) Probably not that second one, but join me to find out if this project will really take off! 

Next time: Maybe I will dive more into why I felt compelled to write the story of Legacy Route, and talk about my fun adventures in getting back into (pseudo-) coding in Ren'Py.

Thank you for reading.