itch.io

The rewrite was required because Steam banned Confusion for content, and would not even entertain a resubmittal with the sensitive parts removed. So, I redid the whole thing, taking out the (hinted at) plotline of Ellie and Jordan, and reworded the Ellie rape scene.

While I was at it, I also added the new scenes with trans/male encounters, since I’ve been yelled at for Confusion only ever being trans/female.

The bottom line is that the Steam version will only be available on Steam. I was only going to charge $14.99 for it, like Confusion, but with all of the extra content (achievements, profiles, 4K images, new scenes) I thought I’d bump up the price a bit.

Release 2 is done. It’s just in beta test right now. What I was trying to say is that my original plans for this release were larger—I didn’t know quite how much larger until I started trying to cap this release off earlier than originally planned. It’s still a good-sized release, especially when I compare it to many other visual novels out there.

Confusion was written as chapters. When a chapter was done, it was a release. This time around, with University Trans-fer, the “chapters” are actually seasons, and those seasons span several releases, so it’s not immediately clear to me when looking over the script where the natural breaks are that would make for a satisfying release. There were originally only going to be two releases for Year 1-Autumn, but now it looks like (at least) four.

I’d already solved the issue around save games by the time I posted this status, so no worries. I’m glad you don’t have an issue (so much) with having to restart, but most players do. Take issue. It’s all solveable with the right tools and, more importantly, a good understanding of how Ren’Py works. After six years more or less full time working with it, I’m pretty good at it at this point.

Once during the development of Confusion I had to force a restart because the changes I had to make were far-reaching and extensive. (I had to rebalance all of the effects of choices made through the first seven chapters of the game.) But most of the time that restarts are forced, they’re avoidable if you just know why it happens. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel. I’m just trying to tell a story in the best way I know how, without penalizing faithful fans for whom those reasons are unimportant.

As far as music goes, it’s part of the experience. Viewing a VN without music is to me like watching a silent movie. I once saw a cut of the original Star Wars movie without John Williams’ famous score. Just dialogue. It was a weird, unsettling experience. But some people don’t care for music, which is why the option exists to turn it off.

Thanks for your comments!

There isn’t a “guide” as there really doesn’t need one. The story has branches, but it’s meant to be played as though you were the protagonist. Make the choices that you would yourself when presented with a decision.

If your goal is just to “see everything,” then just be forceful and bold any time you are asked to make a choice. Most of the deviations to the story happen in the epilogue, depending on how you’ve acted during the game. Some depend on being meek and mild, but most are of the bold variety.

I wish I could, but I can’t. When Steam places a title on permanent ban, they won’t ever accept changes or resubmissions. I don’t know if there is a possibility that I could make major changes to title, story, and characters and submit it as another title. But since it’s the only game I’ve ever submitted, I think they’d figure it out. Thanks for your comment, though.

Next release is coming along. It’s a little too early to be zeroing in on an exact date, so don’t hold me to it but it “feels” to me at the moment like late January.

UT is a little different from Confusion in that releases aren’t broken up by chapters like Confusion was. There are also multiple paths which didn’t exist in Confusion, either. I currently have 21 scenes mapped out for chapter 1 of which so far I’ve finished three, in addition to the two that were in release 0.1.1. I may cut it off sooner if the story makes sense at that point, so you can see why I can’t be very committal at the moment. 🙂

I don’t know or control how itch.io handles billing. I don’t know where you’re located, but I can use VISA and Mastercard to pay for itch.io games. But…

At this moment, if you want to get your hands on the UT first release, you can support me at the minimum $1 level (or whatever currency that works out to) on my Patreon or SubscribeStar sites, and you’ll have access to the current version download links. Aside from that, I don’t know what else I could do.

As somebody else here said, it’s easy to tell if the site is down. And I don’t need to go to another site to confirm it.

What sucks is having to manually come back every 10 minutes, then 30 minutes, then hours at a time to see if the site is back up. And even then, after it came back up the other day, images weren’t been served properly for hours afterwards meaning I couldn’t finish the post I was writing.

Apple’s developer site has a system status service you can access via this link. You can tell at a glance if there are issues anywhere. Itch would need such a detailed chart, but a few stoplights showing current status would be nice. And should be fairly easy to automate.

I want to be fair. You could go to Patreon or Subscribestar and make a $3 pledge and get the release on the same day. $20 patrons get it today, $9 patrons get it next week, and then $3 patrons as well as itch.io followers get it on the 1st.

And I probably wouldn’t have a free version at all, except that the paid version will show up on pirate sites almost immediately. If someone isn’t willing to pay for it, then no amount of goading or shaming will help. I felt that it’s best to just get out in front of the situation. 🫤

The site has been under a DDoS attack most day yesterday. Both our admins and the hosting provider worked on it for hours.

I get that. But I think that makes my argument–you shouldn’t have to stop working on defending the site to report that it’s happening. I still don’t know without actually trying it whether things are fixed or not. A simple site that has health meters for the various services that autmoatically update would help a lot.

After my experience with Confusion, and the fact that 99.96% of downloaders never paid anything for my hard work, I’m going to be charging a minimal amount for UT releases. As time goes on, the price will go up commensurate with the retail price of the final release. And it’s hard work–I’ve been working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for three months getting this first UT release out.

Because of the way that itch.io works with product releases, I can’t release a free version here after having charged for it without making it free for everybody from then on. The public version will be available on my Patreon or Subscribestar sites a week after the final supporter release, which would make it Nov. 8 for this first release. I have free memberships available on both services.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time today trying to upload a new product to itch. Because the site keeps going up and down, butler fails regularly on larger uploads. Nothing is more disheartening that seeing butler fail at the 96.9% mark on a 1GB upload. I also can’t seem to upload images for a devlog nor its cover art.

There needs to be some kind of system IMHO that alerts your devs when your site or any of its helper apps are down. And I don’t mean having to follow itch on Twitter/X because I refuse to let that garbage personal data grabber and ideological hellhole in my life. A simple link that devs could go to to see the site’s current status like some other sites do would be great.

There hasn’t been an editorial review of the game. Yet. Steam objected to a host of things having nothing to do with the app itself, and said they wouldn’t review it until all of the requested changes were made. That’s what I’m working on.

There are a couple of scenes in Confusion that are arguably objectionable, at least in Mastercard’s eyes, so we’ll see. I expect there to be at least one more round of changes before they allow it to be released.

Had some other things to do trying to get the first release of UT done, but this next week’s goal is adapting all of the changes Steam requested. I’ll post news as soon as I get the okay from Steam.

IKR I’ve been using fans to make up the difference. They’re cheap and I can put a bunch of them around until I can actually afford to do something better. Which will happen someday, I hope…

I mentioned the progress with Steam in another status post. Essentially, the ball’s back in my court after they sent me a laundry list of issues that needed to be addressed before they would even consider reviewing the game. I’ve been putting off making the changes for a variety of reasons, but mainly in order to get UT off the ground with a first release.

Confusion is my first AVN. As I get to point where I can share progress on my other two projects in development, I’ll post it here. I anticipate that it’ll be late fall before I have something to show more than just a few screencaps here and there.

😕 How is that conclusion “such an obvious thing” based on your reading of the story? Alex never experienced any sexual attraction at all until later in life. Young Alex saw a psychologist for years before she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Gender does not mandate sexual attraction, in fiction or in real life, and contrary to what the Right would have you believe. That’s part of the message I was trying to convey.

Thanks. Technically, foster children doesn’t qualify as, you know, but yeah, there is sex in it. I prefer to call it “erotica” versus “porn,” but yeah.

Though, trans people have sex and relationships as well, which is one of the things I was trying to communicate…

Yes, it will be on Steam in the next few months. Fingers crossed. 🤞

Not beyond Ellie’s nightmare in Chapter 8. It just didn’t fit the narrative, and I felt it would have been just a step too far for Alex’s F-it-all path.

Holy shit. The story is amazing!

Wow! Thanks so much!

Is there a chance at an epilogue?

That’s why the finale is taking so long to finish. Chapter 10 and the Epilogue are essentially two chapters in one. I’m finishing up the last of the animations this month. (Health issues notwithstanding…)

Thanks!

Yes, chapter 10 is the final chapter. It will also include a fairly extensive epilogue as well, which is almost as long as an entire chapter unto itself.

Hmm. Did you upgrade your computer, or change to another machine? Save files go somewhere that you have to go way out of your way to delete. I wish PyTom would add an Uninstall feature that would get rid of your save files along with your game if that’s what you wanted, but nothing like that exists today.

Of course, the game has been improved a lot since the beginning, so maybe you’ll see things on a new playthrough that are better than they used to be?

Thanks. For the record, I will not abide by lower quality. I may just skip some more involved animations in order to get the project out in a reasonable amount of time. Some of the images I create take hours to render. Then, they’re denoised, re-exposed, and touched up in Affinity Photo, a process that can take almost as long as the original render. Animations are just a series of renders, and if each one takes hours, then 60fps animations take…well, you can do the math. 😇

Sincerely sorry. I saw your login and answered you over on Discord, as I didn’t want to do it in public and we have no way of contacting you outside of public messages. itch.io doesn’t provide any contact information at all. If you log back into Discord, I think you’ll be pleased with the result.

Come join our Discord and we can talk there. Thanks.

It was Glenn. Hilarity ensues. 🤨

Thanks for playing. ❤️ Everyone will get what they deserved before the end of the story. Both good, and bad…

No worries. Thanks for thinking of us. Next chapter should be out soon enough.

That will be an option.

“Make peace?” Okay, let’s go with that.

It’s the player’s decision, ultimately.

Don’t get me wrong–some people liked the pics. In the note that accompanied the images, I said something along the lines of imagining that she was an actress playing a villain in a movie, and wasn’t so bad IRL. Think Hela in Thor: Ragnarok. She was a sociopathic killer with a (literal) God complex, but Cate Blanchett…

As far as the story goes, chap 7 will offer a bit of catharsis. Can’t say more without giving things away, but karma’s a bitch.

🤣🤣🤣

Thanks for understanding.

Thanks for your comments. I know chapter 6’s ending was rough, but it sets up Alex’s path for the rest of the story. I tried my best to warn people that it was coming, but it’s still hard to visualize until you actually see it. You can only have true highs once you experience some true lows as well, right? The main issue is that it’ll be another 3 to 4 months until the next chapter releases, so try not to let your imagination run wild. Rest assured that everyone involved will get what’s coming to them, more or less, by the time things wrap up in the final chapter.

Thanks as always for the kind words. There are ten chapters in total. That’s the benefit of writing the story in advance, instead of on-the-fly like most VNs—we knew where to put all of the plot twists and reveals as the story progresses. And, how things are going to end… 🤫

Thanks. We really need this mini-break coming up. Hopefully, it will give us a chance to let some of this blow over and put us in the right frame of mind to the eventual fallout we’ll get from Chapter 6. We’re putting the final touches on the second scene in Chap 6 today. Eight more to go!

Hate to say it, but things will get even more “serious” as time goes on. This isn’t a romance. Everybody has a breaking point… 🙂

I’ve disabled the filter. You should be good to go, and thanks for your support!

For chapter 6, we’ve put scene 1 in the can and started on scene 2 (of 10). As far as the length of the chapters go, there’s a definitive calculus to creating AVNs. tl;dr: Quality, Time, and Cost. Like the classic Iron Triangle, you can have two, but not all three.

Confusion is more a short story than a novel. It was written in 2021 during the pandemic. It’s complete. All we’re doing is staging and rendering the images needed for each scene for each chapter.

So, for this reason the rest of the chapters will be approximately the same length except for the final chapter which will be about twice as long. If I could afford to hire three more 3D artists, we might get things done more quickly, but the story length would still be set.