Ravager News

Our court events are done. Our plot-essential new scenes are written, and we're quickly filling out the remainder of them. Our latest playtest build, our twentieth, brings the game above 1,250,000 words. I am finaling about two thousand words every single day, so I expect that number to creep up significantly in the remaining time available. We have remastered our intro, improved our UI, mopped up dozens of bugs, and totally overhauled our graphics system. Our changelog is pages and pages and pages.

Version 5.2.0 will be a very big update, our largest ever, but it will not be the whole of Chapter Two. It will be our foundation, aiming to have something of everything for everyone, and we will build upon it exactly as we did with Chapter One. We have had to omit a few things: faction catchups, the war chamber, possibly the the kobold hatchery, and the Chapter’s final conclusion. These will follow, as soon as they are ready - as will a whole bunch of crossover and flavour events that are not vital to pushing our story over the next page, and towards its well-deserved conclusion.

Our target release date is 22nd November. If we hit critical problems immediately before release, that date may be delayed by up to a week. But you have waited long enough, and patiently enough, that I want to draw a line in the sand and give you what you deserve. And after that’s done, we’re all gonna hibernate for a month. Our regular update cycle will return, with the advent of 2025.

Greetings from the smut-forge! It’s looking fairly good over here – all the fires have been put out, and our kobolds are (very) hard at work. I’m not going to linger overlong on the calamitous month of May, besides to tell you that all of our problems have now been sorted and that I’m still very grateful for all the support that you’ve shown us.

We were able to get a reasonably chonky build out last month, which I am proud of, but it has also impressed upon me the need to focus. You might be experiencing a bit of ‘update fatigue’ while waiting for Chapter Two, which I think is reasonable. For that reason, I have decided that our next update will be Chapter Two. We will halt our monthly update cycle to free up all of our resources, and fully commit them to the task at hand.

And gosh, what a task! A novella’s worth of court events, new interactions and scenes and costumes for our harem, and new developments amidst the various powers that brought you to the throne. And new offspring! Our lead writer Mattrex has been drafting this monster of an update since last year, and Irrelevant Art has been spending that time getting all our art assets ready. The principal bottleneck has been my own availability, which will now be laser-focused upon getting everything finaled and tested and ready for your enjoyment.

That means this is likely the last you’ll hear from me for a little while. I’ll return, triumphant, when we’re ready to finally turn that page. Until then, I hope you enjoy exploring what we’ve already created – there’ll be a lot more of it, soon.

Dev Notes

• After the nightmare that was May, we are now properly back in business and working hard on Chapter Two again.
  
• While we’re busy doing that, we’ve put together an extra-big update for you to enjoy. So please, enjoy!
  
• MVPs of this build are all the people who took time to express their support when everything caught on fire. It has been a huge comfort, and has helped us each get things back on track. It’s hard to relate emotional sincerity in text, but it is true, and it is worth saying.
  

Act V Features

• Plot: A possible dream(?) at the end of Chapter One (collab with Mattrex).
  
• Dynamic: The developer interview at the end of the game has been restored and extended.
  
• Art: Eburon’s oral scene in the manor ruins (four images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: Remastered art for Naho’s pregnant anal scenes in the dungeon (two scenes, eighteen images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: Remastered art for Naho’s pregnant doggy-style scenes in the dungeon (two scenes, eight images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: A new sprite and set of emotes for Marie-Anne (two variants, twenty-two images, Irrelevant Art).
  
• Art: Remastered sprites for pregnant Naho (two variants, Irrelevant Art).
  
• Animation: Updated idles for nude Chia (seven animations, Amon Ra).
  
• Animation: Animated idles for pregnant Enid with torn clothes (ten animations, Amon Ra).
  
• Animation: Updated idles for pregnant Inej (eight animations, Amon Ra).
  
• Animation: Animated idles for Marie-Anne’s new appearance (two variants, twenty-four animations, Amon Ra).
  
• Voice: Chia’s conversation about Adeline, if the princess is gone (Marina Montague).
  
• Voice: Darja’s guided tour of the palace (Nyah).
  
• Voice: The hunt for Darja, and consequent discussion, if she’s not where she’s supposed to be (Nyah).
  
• Voice: Enid’s post-boink reflections in the storerooms (Demi Goggles).
  
• Voice: The omen’s mother reacts to her offspring’s condition being celebrated (Demi Goggles).
  
• Gallery: Eburon’s “Alpha & Beta” scene has been added to the Gallery (Tosk).
  

Act I-IV Features

• Scene: A proper reunion with Cooch and Rhyll (collab with Demi Goggles and DoItToJulia).
  
• Scene: Mina gets overexcitable if she is neglected as your consort (collab with Anon and DoItToJulia).
  
• Fate: A followup to Maelys’s infernal fate (collab with Briar Bloodworth and DoItToJulia).
  
• Fate: A followup to Marie-Anne’s wolfman fate (collab with Georgette Miller and DoItToJulia).
  
• Fate: A followup to Mina’s mercenary fate (collab with Kiraworks and DoItToJulia).
  
• Art: Remastered art for Eburon’s oral scene in the wolfcamp, and as your consort (four images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: An alternate path for some of Naho’s consort scenes (eight images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: Remastered art for Naho’s breaking (nine images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: Remastered art for Naho’s broken anal scene (six images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: Drunken Mina has a sobering experience (five images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: Remastered art for Naho’s cowgirl scenes (three scenes, seven images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: Remastered art for Naho’s doggy-style scenes (three scenes, twelve images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: Remastered art for Naho’s various subjugations by the pack (four scenes, five images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: A new main sprite for Naho’s wild state (Irrelevant Art).
  
• Art: A new main sprite for Naho’s captive state (Irrelevant Art).
  
• Art: Remastered emotes for Naho’s wild and captive states (twenty-five images, Irrelevant Art).
  
• Art: Remastered sprites and emotes for Naho’s broken state (twenty-seven images, Irrelevant Art).
  
• Art: Remastered sprites and emotes for Naho’s draconic transformation (twenty-seven images, Irrelevant Art).
  
• Art: Remastered sprites and emotes for Naho’s plush transformation (twenty-seven images, Irrelevant Art).
  
• Art: Remastered sprites and emotes for Naho’s statue transformations (nine images, Irrelevant Art).
  
• Art: A torn-clothing sprite for Marie-Anne, in her mercenary fate (Irrelevant Art).
  
• Animation: Animated idles for Boof (six animations, Amon Ra).
  
• Animation: Updated talking animated idles for Chanwe (five variants, Amon Ra).
  
• Animation: Updated idles for Chia (six variants, Amon Ra).
  
• Animation: Updated angry animated idles for Enid (three variants, Amon Ra).
  
• Animation: Updated idles for Inej (eight variants, Amon Ra).
  
• Animation: Updated idles for Sabetha, dressed and undressed (twenty-one variants, Amon Ra).
  
• Voice: Darja’s part in the conclusion to her scene with Cuchilla (Nyah).
  
• Voice: Darja’s first visit to see Maelys (Nyah).
  
• Voice: A number of retakes for the dragon’s lines (GreyScale).
  
• Voice: Enid’s parts in your initial encounter with her (three variants, Demi Goggles).
  
• Voice: The kobolds’ part in Heloise’s kobold fate (Kobold34).
  
• Voice: The kobolds’ reaction to being gifted Maelys (Kobold34).
  
• Voice: The kobolds’ part in Malagar’s naga blood experiment (Kobold34).
  
• Voice: The kobolds’ part in fetching Marie-Anne’s things (Kobold34).
  
• Voice: The kobolds’ part in Valzira’s kobold fate (Kobold34).
  
• Voice: The kobolds’ cheer for you, if their Morale is high (Kobold34).
  
• Music: The lowlands suite has been completely remastered, and considerably extended (Exo Spectra).
  
• Music: Valzira now also has her own suite, which can be heard during her initial encounter (Exo Spectra).
  
• Gallery: Naho’s Gallery entries have been updated to use preview sprites from her remastered scenes.
  
• Gallery: Mina’s “Liquid Assets” scene has been added to the Gallery (Tosk).
  

Tweaks

• The game’s official-ish walkthrough is now included in its root directory, whilst we look for a more permanent home for it.
  
• Naho no longer wears clothes after her capture.
  
• Background flags have been added to remember, in new playthroughs, whether you have given oral to a given waifu before.
  
• Writing credits have been updated.
  

Fixes

• Adeline won’t comment on Hector’s court appearance if she is dead or imprisoned.
  
• Cooch will put her clothes back on after you join her in the bath.
  
• If your consort was an elf, the conversation with Malice about human consorts will not play.
  
• Malagar cannot liberate Darja from you in Act V if he was never encountered in your playthrough.
  
• Marie-Anne will get redressed after her promotion to consort.
  
• Mercenary visits will not softlock previously-seen fate scenes if a new fate scene is pending, but is disallowed by your content flags.
  
• Mina will get redressed after her promotion to consort, and after having a bath.
  
• Mina will not show up to court in Act V if she has been (decisively) eaten by a cute widdle abomination.
  
• Petruk will now perish if stabbed in the chest by Maelys. People die if they are killed.
  
• A niche sequence of events can no longer result in both elves being pregnant at the same time.
  
• And everything found during playtesting. Thank you to our playtesters Stuke, Teddybear355, and Barry!
  

People frequently speak, in various shades of suspicion and superstition, of the H-dev’s curse - the tendency for developers in our space to fall afoul of variously awful and improbable fates. I think the most compelling explanation is that crises sometimes befall all of us; it is only when you have a large project that anyone else notices you’re taken out of commission for a while.

Working as a team provides a healthy buffer against that. The Ravager crew have individually sustained various slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune over the years, and our peers have picked up the slack until normality reigns again. But lady luck is fickle, and there is always a chance that she hits the core team with six unrelated crises in one month. It has not been a kind month.

It would be possible to pull out all the stops, chug all the coffee, and do our damnedest to pretend that nothing has happened – but that kind of crunch would mean making sacrifices on quality, as well as degrading our ability to continue work past the release of Chapter Two. Neither of those are acceptable to me, so instead I’m here doing the thing I never want to do, asking for your patience.

There will be no update this month; there has been plenty of progress on many fronts, but it isn’t ready for primetime just yet. That also means that Chapter Two won’t arrive to meet my original goal of “first half of 2024”, which is on me. As soon as the remaining fires are stamped out and I have a good sense of our new momentum, I’ll get you a revised goal that I can be firmly confident in.

Thank you for all of your support thus far and, I hope, your understanding. I’ll be in the comments if anyone has questions for me.

Dev Notes

• The Ravager Soundtrack is now available for purchase on Steam, if you would like to support our musicians!
  
• Our development focus remains on Act V Chapter Two, and it will continue that way until Chapter Two is ready to share with you.
  
• But we'll keep up our regular updates with everything else that finishes while it's cooking!
  
• MVPs of this build are Exo Spectra, for his fantastic new tracks; Mokkel, for cutting all of our new VA; and Stuke, for single-handedly (pun unintended) doing all our playtesting for this build.
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Act V Features

• Scene: Showing the wolf tribe how a real alpha and beta do it (collab with Briar Bloodthorn and DoItToJulia).
  
• Voice: Darja’s responses to your advances in the palace (Nyah).
  
• Voice: Enid’s introduction and reintroduction in the creche (Demi Goggles).
  
• Voice: Issa’s conversation about the princess (Maya Fae).
  
• Voice: Marie-Anne’s response to your advances while pregnant in the dungeon (Marina Montague).
  
• Voice: Marie-Anne’s thankful oral scene in the dungeon (Marina Montague).
  
• Voice: Mother’s various appearances at court (Midnight Iris, Demi Goggles, and GreyScale).
  

Act I-IV Features

• Scene: An alternate path for Naho’s ‘Return’ consort scene (three variants).
  
• Art: Remastered art for Naho’s ‘sunny side up’ scene (two variants, eight images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: Remastered art for Naho’s Reprimand scene (six images, Lubbio).
  
• Art: Remastered art for Naho’s Leashed scene (six images, Lubbio).
  
• Animation: Valzira’s post-breaking scenes, animated (four variants, thirty-six clips, Amon Ra).
  
• Voice: Assorted missing dragon lines (GreyScale).
  
• Voice: Valzira’s older lines have been updated to new recordings from her current VA (Jezebeth).
  
• Voice: The kobolds’ response to Darja’s arrival (Kobold34).
  
• Voice: The kobolds’ part in fetching Marie-Anne and Mina for Malagar (Kobold34).
  
• Music: The infernal suite has been completely re-engineered, and it absolutely slaps now (Exo Spectra).
  
• Music: Issa now has his own suite, which can be heard during his initial encounter (Exo Spectra).
  
• Translation: All the dreams have been translated in the Russian translation (Lipach).
  

Tweaks

• Eburon can now be visited in Act V any time after you’ve seen your court briefing.
  
• Choosing to have your kobolds punish Issa during first meeting is now (partially) illustrated.
  

Fixes

• Darja no longer visits her uncle after you have snacked on her.
  
• A pair of Dragon lines in the Bastion heist have had their VA restored.
  
• Eburon will allow you to visit him in Act V if you promised the wolf tribe something rather than the lowlands.
  
• Eburon will tell you how the pack are doing if they have exactly 3 Morale.
  
• Handling for Malagar leaving during Act V has been fixed for new playthroughs.
  
• Valzira can no longer poison herself, or talk about her pregnancy, after being given to Malagar.
  
• Numerous typos have been fixed, as sure as the Sun rises in the morning.
  
• And everything found during playtesting. Thank you, Stuke!
  
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