DommeBreaker News

Progress? Don't ask me about progress! Listen, we're still working on improving the backgrounds. Meanwhile, there's writing and designing being done for Shizuru, but that's not very visually exciting without art to accompany it. Still, we're gonna be explaining the basis of Shizuru's combat and why it is what it is. See, instead of the timer-based combat where the player has to outlast the Dommes that will make up the base game (and most likely the majority of future DLC), Shizuru is gonna be a more straight up fight. Let me start this explanation at the beginning, though.

We decided early on that each DLC girl would have her own unique mechanic in some way. As mentioned previously, originally Shizuru's unique mechanic was gonna be phase effects that alter how each of the 3 phases of a fight plays out by giving her buffs/debuffs. As you may recall, we decided a couple months back to give Hana phase effects as well for the final fight of the base game. We may also add phase effects to other DLC in the future. This means Shizuru needs something else to stand out.

That's where our testers come into the picture. We mentioned once that early testers were ignoring defensive options and focusing only on offense, to their own detriment; losing fights they could've won, if they'd used a more balanced approach. This led to adding the Hints screen in the game, which gives tactical advice to help people grasp how the game is meant to be played. However, once our testers understood the game, there was one recurring bit of feedback: "Okay, but what about just a straight up fight, though?"

Seeing as Shizuru is all about pleasure through pain and her story/character makes it unlikely she'd care about Michael's usual techniques, we decided this would be the perfect fit for her DLC. Players will have to use new techniques to weaken Shizuru's resolve 3 times to win the fight. Each time they do, Shizuru will have a new modifier added that will influence how she fights, which is where phase effects come in. We haven't finalized these ideas yet (and probably won't until the artist has time to figure out what would work), but think along the lines of tying her hands together, so she resorts to more aggressive kicks or adding nipple clamps that damage her every turn in exchange for a damage boost.

The exact phase effects will reflect the pleasurable pain techniques that Michael learns throughout the story scenes of the DLC. Of course, they'll increase in intensity and sexiness as you progress through the DLC, but we'll explain more about the story setup of the Shizuru DLC another time.

So we had backgrounds for every area in the game. Have had them for a long time, in fact. However, as we're in the polishing stages, the decision was made to have them redone touched up, because they'd been made quickly in the past to get the game together. Now we want them to look better. How long will this take? Probably about another month or two, judging by the current pace. Once those are finished and added, slap those bad boys in along with music that'll be finished in that same time frame and the base game will finally be ready for complete internal testing. That should only take a week or two before we send it out to our other testers.

Fret not! We do have something more interesting than backgrounds to show for this month. Another aspect of polish is looking at scenes that could use just that little bit extra. Another bit of art. A little extra sauce. Some more of that good stuff. Like Stacy lying naked on the floor after sex. For the people not familiar with Stacy, who was introduced in our VN Stories of Submission: eNTeR the cuck, she does indeed have breast implants. Figured I should explain that as our artist did a very good job accurately depicting them. Enjoy!



By the way, if you want to know more about Stacy, Tomie, Jitsuko, Emily or Hana before the release of DommeBreaker, this is the perfect time. We're in the middle of the Steam summer sale and many of our games are currently on sale. It may not be the season of gifting, but it is the season to expand your Steam backlog. Granted, that's any season, if you're short on free time. Or just have too many games...

Anyway, on to the monthly roadmap update!

FINISHED:

• Stacy Endurance upgrade extra art
  
• 2 Of the polished backgrounds
  
• Final editing/polishing of Stacy upgrade scenes
  

CURRENT:

• Remaining backgrounds polish
  
• Redoing/polishing music tracks
  
• Shizuru combat Stage 1 initial math and writing
  

Things were going too well the last 2 months. I should've known the universe wouldn't allow this to continue. Termites from beyond the garden wall effectively ground writing and Shizuru combat design to a halt this month as I used what free time I had dealing with it. Fittingly, our artist finished the failure ending art, because that reflects how I felt about May:



In the absence of new content to work on, our artist has been polishing up the background arts. Sound effects have also been added and, some cases, replaced with others. The kind of polishing that comes up late in the development process. Sometimes it's hard to know where to stop with adding and polishing, but we're also just tired. Or I am, at least. We're also still looking for any small issues we may have overlooked as we get the base game near completion.

With any luck, we'll get the base game out to our testers in June and can then start collecting feedback. That will lead to final tweaks, possible UI changes or more in-depth explanations of mechanics in-game. Who knows? We'll see when we get there. That's the magic of feedback from people outside of the dev team. They may just find a way to break or soft-lock the game. Oh, the joys of game dev!

Anyway, here's where we're at and hoping to get finished in June, barring any other unforeseen disasters.

FINISHED:

• Ending art: failure.
  
• Background arts polished up
  
• Repeatable sex scenes for defeated Dommes.
  
• SFX added/updated.
  

CURRENT:

• Music
  
• Shizuru combat design Stage 1
  
• Shizuru intro scene
  

We told you last month that the Hana fight was already designed and programmed well ahead of schedule. This month, we'll explain a little more about what makes her fight unique. A quick refresher on the flow of combat: the goal is to resist the Domme until the timer runs out, but they go through 3 phases in a fight; each of which changes up the attack patterns and art. The key difference is that each of the 3 base Dommes has a specific combat style, but Hana can do it all: offense, defense, buffs and debuffs. This makes it harder to counter her style and will force players to adapt per phase. The scariest part? Testing revealed the most commonly used strat to deal with tough fights and we specifically designed Hana's phase 2 to counter that.

That's not all, folks! Hana will also be the player's first encounter with a mechanic we were initially gonna reserve for DLC chapters: phase effects. In simple terms, this means the Hana fight will have modifiers that are caused by the phase change rather than an in-combat ability. I'll spoil the phase 1 effect for the sake of clarity: Hana starts the fight with a damage buff that lasts several turns. Players cannot prevent this buff unlike normal buffs that are applied by an ability the Domme uses. Phases 2 and 3 have completely different phase effects that set the pace for that part of the fight.

So how difficult is the Hana fight really? Well, I just barely beat her on my first try. I was genuinely one turn away from losing and I could easily have lost, if the attack pattern rng had gone differently. However, I did design the fight, so that's not fair. I knew all her tricks beforehand and went in with a plan. Zee beat her after 3 attempts. Our external testers will give us a better insight into how hard her fight is, but we've added a way to make her fight easier for people who are struggling. After all, we do want everybody to be able to beat the game. We're just gonna make you work for it.

So where are we at right now? As always, it's time for the Roadmap update where you'll notice we've started actively working on the release DLC. Obviously, we'll get more into that next month.


COMPLETED:

• Hana combat art
  
• Ending art: Victory
  

CURRENT:

• Ending art: Failure
  
• Shizuru DLC Stage 1 combat design
  
• Shizuru DLC Prologue and Stage 1 writing
  
• Music
  

We've all got jobs, responsibilities, lives, families. You know how it is. Every now and then, though, things line up just right. This was one of those months. We got so much done! When evaluating remaining workloads at the end of last year, we figured it would take about 3 months to finish the Park scenes, including testing, re-writes and fixing. Done first week of March.

Behold!





Hold on, hold on. I know that doesn't sound like we're really ahead of schedule. Oh, but then there's Hana. See, we'd assumed another 3 months or so for Hana's final boss fight and had hoped to finish her in June. Guess what? Nearly done already and we were supposed to start on it in April. We'll show off some more details about that fight next month, because she'll be mixing up the formula a bit (as befits the final challenge). Her fight's designed, most of the art is done and we internally tested/balanced it using placeholder art. We've managed to beat her with all upgrades, but even then just barely. We're really happy with her current balance, but there may be tweaks before release based on tester feedback.








Speaking of Hana, our artist decided to touch up her original character art. The basic, standing character images were made at the start of development and also function as references for combat and scene arts. However, our artist has continued to improve in the slightly over 2 years we've been working on DommeBreaker. Here is a comparison pic with the old version on the left and new version on the right. The shading has improved, there's much clearer abdominal definition and her breasts look more voluminous:





This caused a weird sensation in the team: we're getting so close to finishing the base game. We started on DommeBreaker at the beginning of 2023. We try to add content to our other games from time to time to keep them interesting for long-time players, but this is our first project that took multiple years just to complete the base game. We're hopeful the Shizuru release day DLC will also be finished and tested this year, even if the coming months aren't as smooth as March was. Don't hold me to this, but 2025 release looking very possible. Just how possible?

Well, let's look at the monthly Roadmap update!

FINISHED:

• Jitsuko Park scene art, re-writes, programming and testing.
  
• Hana combat programming, testing and balancing; along with 1/3 of the art.
  
• Endings (Success and Failure) writing and editing.
  

CURRENT:

• Hana combat art finish
  
• Endings art: Failure/Victory
  
• Stacy upgrade scenes writing