DommeBreaker News

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
  

Okay, the title’s a bit dramatic. I’m actually just talking about some stuff we’ve been playing around with physically. This was the surprise we’d planned for December before that community post got buried under holiday chaos. Let me clear this up upfront: this isn’t about anything official yet — just us messing around a bit.

Here’s a set of DommeBreaker stickers I had printed:


That’s all five base game girls in four different sizes. I threw in some poker chips and a book for scale since I didn’t have any bananas handy. We got these printed just to see how they’d turn out, and we’re really happy with the quality. They’re just test prints for now, but they look solid at different sizes.

I also printed a Jitsuko character card and a small poster with some Tomie art we’ve never shown before.

Check out this sneak peek, with the same book for scale:


You might think, “So what? I could print stuff like this down the street.” Sure, but not everyone’s got that option, and we had fun putting these together. Anyway, we figured you’d get a kick out of seeing them.

Oh, and speaking of sneak peeks, we’re super close to wrapping up all the main scenes for DommeBreaker.

Here’s a little preview of Emily’s park scene to tide you over:


Now, onto the Roadmap. We’ve made great progress this month while keeping other projects going. Durak NTR fans might’ve caught the “Total Humiliation” DLC we dropped, and we’ve got another game in the works we’ll talk about later—though it’s still a while off.

FINISHED:

• Stacy + Tomie + Emily Park scene art, programming, and testing
  
• Hana combat design
  

CURRENT:

• Jitsuko Park scene art and programming
  
• Good ending writing
  
• Stacy Stamina 2 + 3 scene writing
  

So the December post got lost in the ether and the secret thing we were gonna show is getting moved to February. As 2024 came to an end, we finished up the Pool scenes. Next, the even spicier Park scenes.

They're not finished yet, but here's a sneak peek at the WIPs for Stacy and Tomie:



This month will proceed according to schedule, which is to say the big list of where we're at and what still needs doing for the base game. I'm gonna try to make this as clear and concise as possible:

PLAYER:

• All Combat abilities and upgrades designed, programmed and tested.
  
• All Passive upgrades designed. Most programmed and tested.
  
• Bad ending writing.
  

MISSING:

• Park upgrades programming and testing.
  
• Turn clock money mechanic testing and balancing.
  
• Bad ending art and programming.
  

INTRO/TUTORIAL:

• Writing, art and programming completed. Tested.
  

MISSING:

• Music.
  

STACY:

• Body 0 & 1 upgrade scenes writing, art and programming completed. Tested.
  
• Stamina 1 scene writing completed.
  
• Control 1, 2 & 3 scenes writing, art and programming completed. Tested.
  

MISSING:

• Body 2 & 3 scenes writing, art and programming.
  
• Stamina 2 & 3 scenes writing, art and programming.
  
• Music.
  

EMILY/ JITSUKO/ TOMIE:

• All outfit variants.
  
• All combat art, writing and programming.
  
• All victory scenes.
  
• Pool scene.
  
• Park scene writing.
  

MISSING:

• Park scene art and programming.
  
• Music.
  

HANA:

• Intro and combat writing.
  

MISSING:

• Good ending writing.
  
• Combat design.
  
• Combat art and programming.
  
• Combat testing and balancing.
  
• Good Ending art and programming.
  
• Music.
  

About a year ago, we made mention of having music already, but that was before we decided to massively expand the amount of art and scenes, so I've decided the music needs improving. That will probably be done after all the writing is finished, while waiting for the art and programming. For now, we're prioritizing finishing the Park scenes for all 3 girls. Then we'll move on to the final fight with Hana, which we'll test as the artist finishes the Stacy upgrade scenes.

CURRENT:

• Tomie Park scene art
  
• Stacy Stamina 2 & 3 scenes writing
  
• Hana combat design
  
• Turn clock money mechanic programming.