One year State of the Game

Hey everybody! Better strap in, because this is going to be a long one!

June is going to be the one-year anniversary of Come Home. I made my first Patreon post on June 3rd 2020, and I released the 1st version of the game on June 13th. It seems like a good time to sort of take everything in and examine the state of it all. I feel like the game, and me as a developer, has come SO far since then and I wanted to talk to you all about the journey a bit, plus what my plans for the future are, and some changes I’m planning on making.

A Short History

That label is kind of a lie. This isn’t going to be short. If you’re not interested in my rambling backstory, just skip on to the next section.

A few patrons have asked me about how and why I started the game and what was going on with me before I started working on the game, so let’s tell a bit of a story here. I guess we’ll start about 10 years ago.

Ten years ago, I don’t think I would be recognizable as the same person I am today. Ten-year ago, if you told me what I would be doing now, would scoff and say “No way Jose.”

See, ten years ago, I was married (to a man), I was working managing a pawn shop, and I went to church every Sunday. I was a completely different person than who I am now. And I was SO unhappy. Everything I was doing at the time was leading towards disaster, and I knew it. I hated my job. I didn’t like being married. I felt like I was just doing what everybody else wanted me to do, and I didn’t have a real say in any of it.

When my Dad died, everything sort of blew up. I spiraled big-time. Made a lot of bad decisions, did things I regret, lost a lot of friends and family. But at the time, I just didn’t know what to do. I knew things had to change, but didn’t know how to make them change. In the end, I lost my job, I got divorced, and I sank into a huge depression.

Then I met my partner. I think she’s the main reason I’m still alive today. I bumped into her exactly when I needed her and she’s been there for me ever since. We moved in with each other and have been together nearly 8 years now. When we moved in together, she told me that I didn’t have to get a job, I didn’t have to pay rent, I just had to try to find productive things that made me happy.

I’d been writing stories since I was in Kindergarten. I’d written novels in my teenage years and had hoped to one day become a published author. While I was working, I had a very hard time writing, but now that I didn’t have to worry about paying bills, I turned my focus to it entirely. From that point up until I started working on this game at the beginning of 2020, I wrote as a full time job.

Over those 7 years or so, I’ve written 10 novels. I sent several to agents, trying to get published in the traditional way, but never had any luck. It’s hard to get an agent, any writer will tell you. You have to not only be an extremely good writer, you have to get lucky and have the right agent see your story at the right time. It’s hard. So, I started publishing my novels on Amazon. I published 4 of them – one of which did fairly well upon release. For a couple years, that’s what I thought I would do – just keep publishing novels and hoping that would build up enough that I could make a living off of it. But after a while, I just felt like it wasn’t going anywhere. That 4th novel I published barely made a dent. I’d spent a year on it, and to this day have probably made about $75 in royalties. It kind of felt like a slap to the face. After all these years without making any money, I started feeling like I was just mooching off my partner. We were just hanging in there financially, and I never felt like I was really contributing anything.

So, I wanted to rethink things. I wanted to do something that would make more money. I started to think about writing erotica. I’ve always been interested in it – reading it, watching porn, playing erotic games… but I had this hang-up about actually writing it. Largely because of my family and my church-going upbringing. I didn’t want my family to read my erotic stories. I didn’t want to have to deal with the judgment. I’d cut off a lot of family through those years. They’re all southern Christians and they never really accepted my divorce, much less that I was now dating and living with another woman. But I still have a close relationship with my Mom and my sister and I didn’t want them to know I was writing erotica.

So that’s when I created the RJ Rhodes penname. Yes, that’s not my real name. No, I’m not going to share what my real name is. The plan was to write erotic stories and publish them on Amazon, aiming to release one every month. This was WAY faster than I’d released my previous novels, and would mean less editing and polish, but it’s what I felt like I needed to do to start making money, so I started working on that.

During all this time, as sort of a hobby, I’d gotten into making games a bit. In Unity mostly. I put together a couple of small games that I thought maybe could turn into something one day, but I never finished any of them or took them past the prototype stage. The thing I found that was holding me back the most was art assets. I have a tiny bit of artistic ability, but it’s never been enough to feel comfortable drawing or 3d sculpting my own images. And I just didn’t have the money to pay another artist to do it.

It was around this time I discovered Daz. This was the breakthrough. Daz gave me the ability to make the images I needed to tell my story. I started considering making a game instead of a series of novels. Something like Summertime Saga, or Harem Hotel, or House on the Rift, or Milfy City – these games that I’d played and felt like I understood how to program and how to tell that kind of story. I hadn’t gotten involved with the adult game community at that point. I had no idea what games were popular. I pretty much only even knew about these games from looking at Reddit occasionally.

If I could go back, I’d probably tell myself, “Make a smaller game. Don’t make a sandbox. Tell a smaller story for your first game.” But I didn’t. Went with a 20-character, 20-chapter sandbox that would take a couple years to finish minimum.

I learned how to use Daz. Spent that first stimulus check I got (which was pretty much the only money that was mine) on Daz assets. Then got to work learning Ren’py and putting the game together. I made a lot of mistakes at the beginning, but I got the game out there, and that’s what really matters, I think. Sometimes we get too bogged down in trying to make things perfect that we end up not making anything at all.

So that’s it. That’s how I got to where I am now. I’m really proud of what I’ve made with the game over the last year and I’m thankful that you all have supported me during this time.

Some Changes

So over the last year, I’ve learned a little bit about what people want, what works, and what doesn’t work. I definitely don’t know it all, but I know more than I did when I started at least. For the most part, I think that things have been going pretty good. But I am planning on making a few changes with the way things work on Patreon, starting next month.

Trickle-down Renders

I’m not sure what else to call this, so this will work.

For the past year or so, I’ve been making 5 bonus renders a week, plus custom renders for my $50 patrons. Some of these bonus renders are actually pretty complicated to make and overall they take a few days out of the month where I’m working on them instead of the game. So, I’m cutting back a bit.

Instead, I’m going to make 2 bonus renders a month for the $20 tier. And then every month after that, those renders will be given to the tier below, until they reach down to the $1 tier. This means that everybody is going to eventually get the same bonus renders, it’s just a matter of waiting for them.

Beta testing

I’ve changed the way I’m doing beta testing going forward (starting with Update 8). I’m going to have a small group of dedicated alpha testers who will see the update first and help me find and fix most of the issues. After that, I’m going to release the fixed beta build (which should be fairly bug-free) of the game to my $20 patrons. They’ll get the game for a week before I release publicly.

This is both to help find all the bugs ahead of time and to reward my higher tier patrons with an earlier release.

What’s Coming in the Future?

So what do I have planned for the future of the game? A lot, actually. More than I can even talk about here, but here’s some goals that I’m working towards.

Website

I’ve been working on a website in my spare time. http://www.rjrhodeswrites.com

Here, I’m planning on having the public downloads, a gallery with preview images and older bonus images, and a character roster. This is mostly to help bring in new people to the game by giving them an easy place to see everything about it.

Continue with Regular Updates

This last update has taken the longest, I believe. Part of that is because I allowed myself to slow down a bit, because I was getting tired. Not really burnt out, as I’ve never lost my enthusiasm for making the game, but just allowing other things in my life to fall behind because I’ve been so focused on the game. I’ve tried to use the last couple months to refocus a bit, come up with a better schedule for myself, and to take care of other things that needed done.

That said, I plan to continue releasing updates around every other month for the foreseeable future. Updates are getting bigger, and are requiring more work, so they’re just taking longer for me to make. Originally, I was doing one a month, but with the amount of content in these updates now, that’s just not feasible anymore. So expect a new update once every other month for now, and I’ll always keep you updated on the progress.

Adding Features

There’s a few features that I want to add to the game in the next few updates. First, in Update 8, the main feature I wanted to add was music. Next, in Update 9, I want to re-do the gallery (to allow you to replay entire scenes, instead of just seeing the images). Then, in update 10, I want to re-do the UI to make it cleaner and look nicer. There’s definitely going to be more features later, but these are the ones on my immediate horizon.

Steam

Another goal that I’m working towards, but will take a bit of time, is getting the game up on Steam. I’ve seen other adult games do very well after releasing on Steam, and I’m always looking for ways to get my game in front of more people. I plan to do this around Update 10, once I am satisfied with the way the game looks and plays.

Conclusion

This last year of making the game has been so much fun for me and I am SO grateful for all the support that you all have given me. I’m really looking forward to continuing to create Come Home, and other games in the future, and I hope that you all will stick around for the ride because there’s a lot to look forward to.

Let me know what you think about the changes that I’m planning. I’m always interested in hearing feedback from my patrons.

I love all of you and hope you have a fantastic week. Thank you for everything!