would really prefer not to be forced to play this through steam since i would rather not broadcast my kinks to all my IRL friends...  is there anyway to download this as its own independent file/application?

Steam actually lets you manually set a game in your library to private now actually, some time back. So should be no problem there! If you're using Discord though, make sure to turn off game activity when playing!

oh cool, i didn't actually know that. i usually go out of my way to avoid steam for adult games and stuff so i didn't know i could do that. lol. thanks for the reply! looking forward to trying the game!