Game Updates
The Lilith Device, the Lost Chapter, and Project Sigil
This is going to be a very long post so buckle up. I'll include a tl;dr at the bottom.
This is the post I think everybody expected at a certain point despite my best efforts. I'll rip the bandage off up front, there's not going to be any more content for The Lilith Device. I know this must come as a real shock after so many years with no updates.
I never truly walked away from TLD, it was always my intention to finish it and I was honest whenever I said it was still being worked on. I'm very proud of the game I made and I'm blown away by its reception both on its release and even to this day. There have been dozens of iterations of final chapters, some made it to testers, most did not. For a variety of reasons things just didn't quite come together, sometimes the scope was too limited for a grand finale, sometimes the puzzles felt contrived (even more than usual), the narrative unsatisfying.
It was a creative wall I kept running into, and as the years there was more and more working against it as RAGS was deprecated not long after TLD's final release. It was a struggle to get it working each year as it required a subscription for a game of TLD's size and obviously with no official website that became increasingly difficult. And at the same time I was pushing the bounds of what RAGS was capable of, both technically and creatively. It'd lag increasingly more, struggle to handle the voiced dialogue, and objects would start to go missing. And at the same time my ambition for what I wanted from the finale was limited by the verbs and actions the engine was capable of.
As this was happening I also grew both as a person and as a developer. I was a college student when I first released TLD and since then my attitudes on elements of it have evolved. Put simply, I realized there was a point I was no longer comfortable using images of models for the game without their permission. It felt fine when I was a young student just throwing together a quick game for fun. But as the game grew in size and audience it began to gnaw at me a bit. As the game grew it required more images, more models, and for major characters I had to delve deep to find pictures I could fit into the game.
In making the Lilith Device I discovered a love of game development and design. Making the game slowly shifted from something I threw together based on two passions- mind control erotica and obtuse old-school adventure games, to something I thought I might actually want to do for a living. Looking back, I think that was the first real concern I had about all these images I was editing and using. As a silly little game dev exercise I had no issue using pictures I found online, but as a product made by a game dev it was wrong both morally and legally. I don't judge people who have the same process I once did, I had to go on a journey to get to this place where I can evaluate my own personal morals, but it's simply not something I'm comfortable with any longer for my own projects.
So for all of these reasons, the Lilith Device is not going to be completed. I understand this is obviously a disappointment to the few who may have still been holding out hope. I'm disappointed too. I considered finishing the game but with no images but I think we all know the game loses a lot of ahem charm if it's only in text.
HoweverThere is one section of the final chapter that is completely finished.
Long ago when working on the game Dollmistress was kind enough to collaborate by making some images for the game. It was actually one of the first things I tackled when making the final chapter and it's fully complete. One of my biggest regrets of not finishing is that her hard work didn't see the light of day.
So I've also extracted that section specifically. In the story it takes place after the hospital puzzle and before the rescue player arc. I'll post the full story of the final chapter and the entire game and setting in a few days for anyone curious.
So please enjoy
The Lilith Device: The Lost Chapter.
If you enjoy it please remember to give some love to Dollmistress.
And with that, that's the end of The Lilith Device.
What's Next?
Though my development on TLD is truly at an end, for the last two years I've continued to tinker around with various game ideas. Don't worry, none of them are in RAGS. Many of these projects were dead ends, or simple little things I made to teach myself how to code. Some of them received more attention than others and eventually I began to focus on the one I really liked.
I know that any promise of a new game will be met with justified skepticism so I elected to keep my cards close to my chest until I had a real game. So I set my goal to be a full vertical slice before I announced anything and that way anyone can actually play through a solid chunk of gameplay.
And today is that day.
The Supervillain Simulator
When I started working on it the game was going to be a fantasy setting so its codename is "Project Sigil." I'm still deciding on the final name but currently it's Supervillain Simulator.
Supervillain Simulator is a narrative and strategy card game where you play as a supervillainess aiming for world domination. Your empire starts small at the beginning you have only an abandoned arcade you bought for pennies and your own two hands.
All the while every crime you complete raises your heat level, summoning increasingly powerful enemies to your door. Not just the cops, not just superheroines, but the powerful factions and corporations that you'll eventually need to crush if you want to conquer the world. Battle against Coppelia Co's sleek doll army, steal their technology and make your own dolls. When professional hero agency SYREN sends a team kidnap the sidekick to reforge her into something that'll terrify her former allies. Send your minions to join the hypnotic women's wrestling league Rumble Girls to train them, learn their secrets, and maybe steal some of their strongest wrestlers.
This is a game of experimentation and resource management. You need resources to improve your minions but every crime you commit brings the law's attention toward you. Can you brainwash, robotize, dollify, bimboficate, endronen, bribe, and hypnotize an army strong enough to repel the superheroines coming to defeat you?
This game isn't nearly finished, it's in a place of what would be called a 'Vertical Slice', basically a complete gameplay loop. I know that folks will likely be skeptical this game will ever get completed given the ordeal with the Lilith Device. And so I wanted to give a somewhat complete experience up front.
The art isn't final, it's not as long as the final game is planned to be. But there's about an hour of gameplay here and you can play a complete arc where you do crimes and discover some prototype projects from Coppelia, eventually stealing their technology which attracts the attention of a powerful superheroine who will give you a run for your money as a final boss.
If you walk away after that, no problem and I hope you had a good time. If you want to see the game get developed and provide input on it, you can support me on my Subscribestar.
How to Support the Game
I'll be making regular updates on my subscribestar, offering polls for events and characters, showing concept art, and offering test builds. Whether you join to see the process, get early access to builds, or pester me endlessly about why there isn't more clown content or something, all are welcome.
I'd like to give as much of this away for free as possible but game development is expensive and anyone working in the industry knows it's an extremely volatile business with very little stability. One of the key reasons for this crowdfunding is to help ease the burden in case I get laid off. The other reason is to fund the game's art.
I'll be doing a lot of the game's art myself, a truly daunting amount (there are currently over a hundred and fifty cards.) But for major characters and events and scenes I'd like to hire people who are actually professionals and can deliver a higher quality than I'm capable of. I'll be doing the resources, locations, crimes, and minor characters. If you want an example of my quality of art you can currently see examples of my art for the cards Hoodlum for Hire, Goon, and Raucous Dive Bar. (As well as the UI).
So in the times when I have a job, the funds from the subscribestar will be going primarily toward the game's budget to fund paying artists. Hopefully I get to a point where I can use it to pay for voice acting as well.
The AI Disclaimer
In the interest of full transparency, AI was used to help code this game. I'm not a coder and while I learned a bit starting this project (and a lot of the game's core code is from me such as the card drag system), making this game the project I want it to be is something beyond my capability without the use of AI. Github's AI was initially used and then I later switched to Claude. In general I'm more comfortable with AI being used as a tool to learn and code, not something that generates assets. If AI being used in the coding process of the game is a red line for you I completely understand.
In terms of art, I did do some early tests with AI to see how it'd look. The Lilith Device was obviously photorealistic but as said before I didn't want to repeat that process. So there would be two options to recreate that, hire models and photographers or use AI. The former is basically a nonstarter due to the massive expense and overall impracticability. So I did generate some photos to try and see what the game would look like with AI.
I'll be honest, there were some elements I liked from those experiments. But at the same time I think it's disgusting when developers use AI for art instead of hiring artists. I see a lot of indie games making the excuse that since they're just a small operation the only way they can make their game is with AI art. It would be easy to use that excuse, it's an art style that can only be made by AI and I'm just one person.
Do I only feel it's wrong to use AI when you have the budget of a publisher and company? Is AI art immoral when it's convenient?
I want this to be a game I can be proud of and when I'm being honest with myself on what that would take the answer is obvious. Games release with unfinished art all the time, if you go play Slay the Spire 2 right now half the assets are doodles from the devs. I hope that if the game is good you will find your audience to help you fund it and pay artists. That's what I'm hoping for here.
And if not then I guess I'll just every card myself.
So there will be no AI assets in the final game. Every piece of art, sound, music, voice acting will be from humans. A few of the AI experiments are still in there but they're priority one to be replaced once I can afford it.
tl;dr
The Lilith Device isn't coming out.
Dollmistress helped create a chapter of The Lilith Device and I've released that as a standalone game 'The Lilith Device: The Lost Chapter' and you can download that here.
I've started a new game that is a card game about corrupting superheroines and women, you can download that here.
If you want to support me please do so on Subscribestar.
