Where I've been. Red Room Cancellation. Holy Slaves: Convent. And an apology.
Hey everyone. I will cut straight to the chase with a quick TL;DR for those wondering about The Red Room's fate.
In the middle of 2024, I lost a year and a half of progress on The Red Room update. Combination of my own negligence and some unfortunate real-life circumstances outside my control. I was basically back to square one with that update. It absolutely destroyed me. I tried picking it back up repeatedly over a few months – nothing worked. I burned myself out completely and couldn't touch anything gamedev related for almost a year after.
So yeah, The Red Room is cancelled, I'm really sorry for that. Really fucking sorry. You could have probably deduced this from my absence, but I want to make it official. I wish I could go back and handle this differently, wish I could have been brave enough to face you all sooner rather than hiding. The Red Room deserved better than what happened to it. You all deserved better.
At the time I did a lot of thinking about what happened. I've came to a hard realization: The Red Room's style of game just isn't feasible for me. I can't make 100-150 images per update with my render style and not have it turn into year-long updates with 20 minutes of gameplay. Which always resulted in this very bad loop:
- "Fuck, this update's taking a year. Everyone's going to be furious about the lack of content. I NEED to add more."
- "Fuck, I NEED to overwork myself and finish it in six months."
- "Fuck, I've burned out and can't touch anything Red Room related for three months. I'm such a failure."
Rinse and repeat. Every single time. I genuinely couldn't work like that anymore. It did real damage to my mental health, which obviously didn't help with working either. I considered making smaller, faster updates. But Red Room REALLY wasn't built like that. I can't update the game with 1/4 of a big event made, do I?
With many other compounding issues: losing of progress on the update, me overgrowing DAZ in my skills and wanting to get better at my craft, my declining mental health at the time and feeling like a failure, not being able to withdraw money from Patreon and even being scammed by people who said they could help, losing a year and a half of income from that site as a result, I've decided that I should just stop everything, and get a normal job – which I did. That’s why I didn’t touch anything gamedev related for almost a year.
I know that none of this excuses the years of silence, the failed promises or the trust I shattered. I think about the people who supported me and I feel this crushing weight of guilt. You didn't deserve to be ghosted. You didn't deserve to watch a project you cared about just disappear, with no explanation, no closure, nothing. I was consumed by my own shame and burnout. But you deserved to know what happened. And I'm sorry it took me this long to give you that.
I was thinking about where exactly I went wrong. What I could've done differently to not be in this situation. I was thinking that I should make a list of things I should have avoided, and things I should have done different. Especially if I ever do this all again. That list was:
- No to focusing on cinematic experiences. Use old and tested sprite method to carry basic conversations and scenes. Those 100-150 CGs per update were killing me – especially rendering basic conversation shots of characters just standing there. If I only make CGs for important moments and sexual encounters, I can manage 5-20 images per update.
- Let gameplay carry the game, not constant story progression with massive text events. Never again make a huge continuous event requiring 20 minutes of reading and insane numbers of renders and their variations.
- Communicate clearer with players. I had no feedback from you, which was bad for my work motivation. I also had zero day to day responsibility before you all which was horrible for my work ethic too.
- I also, paradoxically, shouldn't think what other people would think if I release update as-is. Ever.
- No finite time limits (like Red Room's 100-day). If I want to add events later, people shouldn't have to replay the whole game or miss content entirely.
- Have backups. Always. Do one every week. Have two backups if possible. Don’t be an idiot.
- And lastly, If I ever make another game I should focus on my foundations, so I should never have to go back and redo a scene or an image I did a year ago. Ever. And if I still ever have that thought – I should never act on it. Focus on what's ahead, not what is already behind me.
I sat with this list for a long time, unsure of what to do with it. I genuinely thought my time with game development was over. But the more distance I got from the burnout, the more I found myself thinking about creating again: I missed the act of building something. I also still play porn games a lot, and see that those rarely scratch an itch I have. Sadly, not a lot of futanari-centric Netorare games out there. New ideas started surfacing, refusing to leave me alone. At that time, I was gestating a new idea for a game. Where you and your domineering mother would fight for your girlfriend's body and mind. A basic idea I really-really like. I was also thinking that Holy Slaves was a great idea on paper that didn't work out because of my inexperience in game development and it would be cool if it had another chance. Not in the same way, but spiritually.
So less than a year ago, I started developing that idea in my spare time outside work. It's grown into a mature vision I genuinely believe in. I've taken the core tropes you know me for and mixed them with a reimagining of Holy Slaves basic concept. And for the first time in years, I feel like I've got solid foundations, built specifically to stop me from falling into same traps. I reduced my working hours on my job to start working on the new title faster.
So, please, let me sell on Holy Slaves: Convent. Be aware that it is a work-in-progress title, which I will very likely change.
Story:
After her older sister Lilith's death, the main character – a young noblewoman – returns from exile to her ancestral home. Her mother, Lysandra, the powerful head of the Crimson Mother cult, is devastated by the loss of her beloved daughter and heir.
Lysandra offers the returning heroine a deal: serve in a monastery under her watchful eye, atone for her guilt, and regain her rights as heiress. But shortly after the funeral, something inexplicable happens: Lilith's body miraculously appears in the monastery, showing signs of incorruptibility. Lysandra takes this as divine sign. Her beloved daughter can be brought back. Dreams from the goddess reveal the plan: Lilith must be reborn, conceived in the womb of Seren – the heroine's childhood sweetheart, now a knight-vestal and Lysandra's personal bodyguard.
However, Seren is bound by a sacred pact of purity that magically prevents conception. Lysandra gives the heroine an impossible task: to break this pact. To overcome it, however, requires not just physical intimacy, but a complete moral decay, transforming the noble knight into a sex-obsessed pervert. Oh, and naturally, the heroine still has her monastery duties to handle.
But the delicate order in the monastery begins to crumble. A dark, corrupting force affects its inhabitants. Lysandra's obsession rapidly slides into madness. Each day she grows more willing to do anything: twist ancient foundations, manipulate loved ones, even fight for Seren's body and heart herself. Anything to accelerate her daughter's return.
Features:
- Management gameplay. Balance various stats using limited daily actions. But instead of managing some sort of location like in similar games, you're responsible for the heroine's psyche and relationships – which changes how she sees the world, what sexual content you encounter, and even the ending.
- Choices at the forefront. Low self-esteem? Bad for stress, great for new money-making opportunities and getting dominated. Not into vanilla? Push Lysandra's madness higher – just don't overdo it unless you want to get killed. Made your girlfriend into a slut but neglected her affection? Watch someone else take her away.
- Dual control. Although you directly control only the main character, you also have indirect ways of influencing the heroine's partner, Seren, by choosing her intentions for the day and spending time with her at night.
- Mother Lysandra is a force of nature. You must intelligently play around her needs and fascinations, never disappointing her, but also never becoming her plaything.
- Slow, logical and gradual corruption. Every part of the heroine's sexuality depends on your decisions. Corruption is also not just a number that arbitrarily changes character's idea of sex. It's a currency you yourself use to alter the way one of the main characters sees the world, what they'll find arousing, or even buy a new feature/trait.
- Intelligent Netorare. No smash-cut POV switches. No rivals winning just because their dick is bigger. No neutered MC who can't do anything. No constant blue balling. The heroine might be helpless sometimes – but that'll be a product of your choices first and foremost.
- Fetishized, diverse cast. Secondary and tertiary characters have their own stats and corruption arcs, and characters themselves interact with each other, not just with main character.
How is this different from The Red Room? Why should I believe, it won't happen again?
I've taken my lessons and built them into the foundation. Holy Slaves: Convent will have fewer images, use sprites for basic conversations, and compensate with actual gameplay. I will also be making weekly/monthly progress reports, I'll describe those in more detail below, at the end of this post. In addition, I will be using Blender to render my images, which does increase forefront difficulty of making a new character, but recoups it with greater power over what I do. It will also mean that, hopefully, my sparser images will look better in the long run (I foresee some difficulties at the beginning, though), and who knows – maybe I'll do an animation here or there in the future now that I use Blender and not DAZ (but I don't plan it as of now).
Fetishes and Kinks.
Fetishes that are core focuses: Netorare/Netorase, Futanari, Believable Corruption, Religion, Female Domination, I*****, Impregnation. The game's moodier, more serious tone lets me include harder fetishes without compromising the story. You can expect those: bodily ****, r**, ***ity, n***lia.
I'm interested in different looking women, so expect a range of bodies in height, weight, etc. There will be no traditional male characters (maybe an episodic femboy), but there will be possible faceless men who can get to fuck your character or other characters in limited situations.
On the Netorare. You can't avoid all of it, but smart management mitigates most, especially the worst parts. Your girlfriend will be able to cheat on you mentally too, with three other characters who she can start a full-on relationship with. Engaging in Netorase will also make it harder for Netorare content to appear. I really dislike NTR games where the MC is just a passive observer who can't fuck anyone or steer things their way. The struggle to overcome NTR while still making concessions is much hotter. Your Heroine will be able to fuck every character and has agency over the what is going on.
Character-specific fetishes: musk, pee, uncleanliness for younger sister (possible scat if I feel like it); bullying and physical harm from a bully; younger loving cougar and nymphomania for grandmother-queen; raceplay for other grandmother; bimbo for queen's envoy; horror elements and fucked up stuff for demoness. And lastly there will be another fetish included I don't want to go into here.
So, what is already done?
- Story plan is 100% done and every one of more than 15 characters who will appear in-game and will have some actual gameplay content with them are already fully written with arcs, personality and even possible branching story paths described. It needs some polishing, and some rewrites (for some secondary and tertiary characters), but it's 90% done. Most episodic characters aren't written – they're not that important and can be skipped if I'll find this number of characters hard to juggle.
- Lore is fully written. Yeah, I'd groan too, but this setting and story needs consistent and believable religion, so I did write it and it's done in its entirety. I've tried to ride the line of a religion that could be believably corrupted with small threads to pull, but not going into pornographic version that has nuns walking around butt-naked from the beginning.
- My game design document is like 70% finished, it's already 70-word pages long (but it does include aforementioned characters and lore, so only smaller half of that is actual game design content). Game design part is done in its core, but half of mechanics are not fleshed out. For example: I know that game will have skill checks and I know what purpose they will have in-game, but I didn't describe them in detail, only that they happen, what purpose they have and a basic gist of them.
- I've already done models for the main trio of characters – Heroine, Her girlfriend, and a Mother. Mother needs some polishing with tattoos, scars and such, but they are almost done. I haven't done any other character model, but I'm also not interested in including most of them in the demo (I'm aiming at including 5 characters in demo). Also, I think those three are the hardest, because they need to be done in the best way possible because of their importance.
What I didn't do: I’ve written zero actual game code as of right now; I haven't made any locations; I haven't made any images or sprites for the game and I haven't done most of outfits for Mother and any for Heroine. I was really focused at making my foundations solid before proceeding to those – because I really am not fond of redoing those if anything in game-design or even worse, characters, will change.
What’s the cast?
Heroine (Alyssia), 22 years old. You play as her. A futanari noblewoman, exiled five years ago by her own mother. Crafty, feminine, and proud to a fault, she masks deep-seated insecurity and a desperate need for her mother's approval behind a facade of aristocratic composure. She's sexually naive.
Lysandra, 48 years old. The Archmother of the Crimson Mother cult, a futanari matriarch, and your mother. Stern, calculating, and grieving the death of her favorite daughter, Lilith, she sees the heroine as a necessary tool to resurrect her lost daughter. She is a sexual hedonist who cloaks her desires in duty and ritual, her fingers perpetually smelling of incense and semen. Her grief is driving her to increasingly desperate and depraved lengths.
Seren, 26 years old. A knightess, Lysandra's personal protector, and your childhood sweetheart and girlfriend. An honest, kind, and devout person, who belies a deep-seated insecurity about her common origin. Beneath her sacred vow of chastity lies an unnaturally high, repressed libido. She has her own agency in the story.
Asha, 18 years old. A teenage novice of the cult, a futanari, a pretty good mage, and your often-overlooked younger sister. She is considered the family's disgrace by Lysandra. Socially anxious and unhygienic, she also has unfulfilled feelings for Seren. A victim of constant bullying, she can swing wildly between pathetic self-degradation and a predatory dominance.
Beliana III, 70 years old. The Queen of the Kingdom, Lysandra's mother, and your grandmother. She is an authoritarian nymphomaniac monarch whose appetites have only grown with age. She looks great for her age, has a vulgar, plump body and takes a special interest in the heroine. Some naysayers in the kingdom say that she has a taste for things truly forbidden.
Ivya, 45 years old. A nun of the "Mother" rank of the cult, Lysandra's long-term mistress, and the biological mother of both the heroine and Asha. Kind and motherly, with her eyes permanently closed – a result of being blinded as punishment for her violent past. Heroine doesn’t consider her a parent, because of Ivya’s common origin.
Morgana, 22 years old. A nun of the "Sister" rank of the cult, sent here as punishment for her violent gang crimes. A futanari covered in scars, she rules a clique of terrified novices through intimidation. Her main targets of bullying are Asha and heroine. But her true obsession is Seren, whom she desires to break, humiliate, and sexually possess.
Lilith, 29 years old (deceased). Your revered older sister and Lysandra's designated heir. Her mysterious death is the catalyst for everything. Her body now lies incorruptible in the monastery's depths. In life, she was as brilliant as she was isolated, her entire world revolving around her mother, Lysandra.
I’ve skipped a few secondary, and almost all tertiary and episodic characters as I don’t want to get into them right now, either because I don’t want to spoil them or they are unimportant for the announcement of the game.
So, when will it release? What will be included?
Let me first answer in what way. I will not be releasing 0.1 update, instead I will be releasing demo first, hopefully by the end of the year (which I think is a conservative guess on my part). I will update that demo at least for 3-4 months, before ascending it to 0.1 game status.
So why not make a 0.1 first? Because I don't want to waste my time right now on making an intro, and I really want to see how the gameplay will feel to all of you, before fully committing to it. All the demo versions will be non-compatible in terms of saves. So, what will generally change from the demo status to Early Access 0.1? I will add save-compatibility, I will add intro, I will finalize the GUI. After releasing 0.1, I will start giving the game it's depth in terms of content.
So, what WILL be in the demo? In media res, vertical, 10-minute gameplay slice with most core gameplay elements included. It will have around 3 locations, 5 characters to have some interactions with and like 10 events to see. Also fully integrated stat system, even if most of those stats will be not used in the demo.
How will the game updates look like? Why should I donate, right now?
Game updates will be bi-monthly and monthly. Why two types? I'm foreseeing some bumps in the game development, like when I'm making a model for a new character and it takes longer than I expect, and I need more time. Other than that, I'm aiming at bi-monthly updates. Game updates themselves will be incremental, which means that I will be making MUCH smaller updates but they will be coming out regularly. You can expect something like they do in other games, where they'll add 1-2 small events, a new item, a bugfix or two etc.
Why should you donate now? Knowing my track record, you shouldn't. I know my working ethic before was lackluster and, well, really fucking bad. I'm acutely aware of that. My communications with all of you were even worse. I was even considering making another account for this game because of that, but decided against it for reasons of it being shitty and that you'd probably recognize my style of work eventually. Your donation right now goes to my food bill and security that will help me work on the game in more of a peace, and in the long run, if I have enough to live off of – working on it fulltime. If you find that promise enough – please donate, and don't do that if you don't.
About progress reports.
I've taken a habit of keeping track of my daily progress and even making a weekly summary of it. I will be posting those weekly reports on my Discord in a dedicated channel with monthly summaries of those on Patreon, SubsribeStar and Boosty. This will ensure two things – you will know that I work and I didn't vanish and I'll have a constant responsibility to do something for you all, not just a game. Weekly updates will generally be text-only and only for backers, while monthly summaries of those will be posted for everyone to see with some images of what I did.
I will begin posting them starting next week, so expect one on 13.03.2026, that is: next Friday (not this one). Again, you could see them in my Discord server, on a dedicated channel. My goal right now is to start the development of the game’s code, and to do a few pinups of my characters to post, and use as promo-material. I’m still not very comfortable with Blender so I expect some difficulties with those.
One last thing – I will be restructuring my Discord server and my Patreon/SStar/Boosty pages. This will entail deleting some channels from my Discord server (and wiping some other ones), minimizing info on my pages and redoing tiers of subscriptions in terms of content.
Afterword
I know I've fucked up, and I don't deserve your trust. I know that words are cheap, especially from me. I could sit here and promise you the moon and the stars, tell you that this time will be different, that I've learned my lesson, that I'll never let you down again. And you'd be right to be skeptical.
But I find myself at a crossroads. I can remain here, at what feels like rock bottom, and walk away from game development entirely. Or I can change – my priorities, my work ethic, and my approach, and hope that in doing so, I might gradually rebuild what I have lost.
I want very much for this to become a redemption story. Of course not because I deserve one, but because I believe, deep down, that I am capable of making something worthwhile. So I am asking, if you can find it within yourself, please consider forgiving me. Please consider giving me an opportunity to prove that I can do better, and to create the best game I am capable of.
Thank you if you read through everything I've written. And generally, thank you if you can find it in yourself to give me another chance. And even if you do not – I’m glad to let it off my chest.
Mitsukeru
It was a great game, it's a shame it turned out this way... But I'll be looking forward to your new game.
Mar 18 13:37 
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