Heya, how are you doing? Asking about you yourself and the game.
Hangin' in there. Will be doing an update on Chapter 3 toward the end of the month: this first section of development has been a bit slow in part due to sickness, but I am making some progress, and I'll have at least a little to show that I think you guys'll like.
Potentially. There isn't a ton of that to go through though, and I tend to keep it fairly close to the chest just because there's always the chance old stuff gets repurposed down the line (has already happened in a few cases). Also I tend to talk about a lot of that here and there in devlogs before and after. But certainly worth considering.
A good opportunity to point out people can certainly link their stories like this as well, doesn't have to be visual art. Also, good to see but not a fan of that site. Any reason you didn't go with AO3? Or sofurry? Or hell, even rentry.org if you just need a place to dump formatted text and don't care about the community element?
Yup, definitely a trick to it. He looks like he has one special, but he actually has two, that act as fakeouts for each other. Pay attention to the icons, they're slightly different for each. Once you've got that figured out, it's just a question of figuring out the counter for each: there is a given counter for each special that works every time.
Ah that makes more sense, I can barely see the enemy buff icons half the time, so that explains why I missed it lol Appreciate you taking the time to reply!
Probably my monitor being small and my own vision being not great Though I did at one point have a glitch with a text box appearing at the top of the screen covering the icons on the 1.0.4 patch that I can’t recreate now on 1.0.7 Likely just a issue with me rather than the game lol
Figuring out the Mahir fight was fun. I was stumped too the first few times, and then I just experimented and tried something different and was like.... wait what??? oooh!
Thanks, same to you. Next update is planned for the end of this month; should have some fun stuff to show off :D.
Yay! :D I honestly always keep a tab open for this browser checking for updates! Something about this game series excites me like no other. Glad to see you are doing well. :) can't wait to see what comes next!
Any estimation as to if those scenes will be more intricate/longer than the boar scene in CS2, or play a major role in the ultimate outcome of chapter 3?
not to be that guy but my head won't let me not ask did you mean November of 2025 or literally November 2026
Ha, sorry I'm still thinking like it's 2024. Yes, should be November of THIS year now, 2025.
I'm really glad you like the idea! And I wasn't expecting anything to be added.
Honestly this comment was far less "a serious suggestion" and more of a "if I don't mention this I'm going to spend the next month learning rpgm in order to make a one minute long mod" kind of situation.
I know because I'm currently knee deep in twine due to something similar happening and I do not have the time or energy for another project like that.
There's one of the endings where you fight Khazeem and you use the luck charm where you worship Mahir's balls and I don't remember Major using the clicker and Mezz's eyes aren't glowing green, which kinda suggests he's not completely zonked for it. At least that's how I read it.
Well, yes and no. He's certainly aware and not drugged, but the implication is that he's been fully mentally re-arranged, "trained", so the drug is no longer needed. I think Dash was thinking more of a scenario where Mezz is REALLY drugged and just wants to stay like that, which probably wouldn't work because he'd be too out of it to be thinking in those terms. Still potentially interesting as a more general idea though.
I was more thinking the opposite tbh.
A scene where Mezz isn't drugged, but has been defeated and therefore trained so many times that the barrier between his hypnotized self and his regular self is very thin. So in his lucid state he asks Mahir, of his own will, to put his Hyena cock up his ass.
Because lucid Mezz must be able to tell what's happening at least a little. And it's scary to not know...but there's also a part of him that wants to know what it's actually like. Like...there's gotta be a reason why drugged up Mezz wants it so bad. So in a moment of vulnerability or being unsure in himself, he asks the only person who knows how he's conditioned (and therefore maybe knows how not to put him into the drugged up state) to, let's say "let him know what it's like".
Part of my mental image is: after asking Mahir pulls out the clicker to put Mezz into that state because they don't entirely get what the bunny is asking for her and Mezz goes "No wait! Not with that."
And after that the full implication of what Mezz wants sinks in and once they understand they begin teasing Mezz about it.
Ah, pardon then, misunderstood. But at that point then it would pretty much just be...ordinary sex.
Pardon me for going on a bit of a tangent here, but I think this is something a lot of people misunderstand about Mezz: He's not a slut. No, genuinely. He's a switch (though he'll never admit the sub side), but that's not the same thing. That's why it's hot. That's the crux of the whole thing. There's no hook, no humiliation, no exciting aspect to taking someone who's already a slut and...making them a slut. A lot of people seem to think the hypnosis angle is just about forcing him out of denial, and maybe I haven't helped that by joking about it. He has deep-seated subby tendencies, and those can be exploited to reforge him INTO a slut, or an obedient toy, or whatever. That's what the tape personality is tapping into. Yes, he has the POTENTIAL to become a cum junkie cocksleeve, but he isn't ALREADY that and just trying to pretend otherwise. He isn't encountering the boars or hyenas or whatever for the first time and going "man I wonder what's in their pants?" All of his brain space in those fights, at first, is just fight moves and trying to think of cheesy one-liners.
And again this is key, because you have to have that separation for the kink to work. You can't have a fall if there's nothing to fall TO.
Fundamentally, CS is a series about changing into something, either good or "bad" as time goes on. But lucid "old" Mezz is never going to volunteer to wrap his lips around a bad guy, even under duress. It goes against the whole way he sees himself. Remember even in the center path and the host club the plan was always to just pretend. Is there something else under that? Of course, but he can't consciously choose to access it. Which is why all the mindfuckery is needed.
Not at all an attack on you though Dash, and I actually appreciate the chance to clarify this a bit. And I don't want to be too absolute about any of this; we've still got many games to go, and things often shift in my head as I work with them. But at least right now, this is the way I see the setup.
I don't feel attacked at all. In fact I really like this kind of in depth character analysis. This does make the section where you need to sneak past hyenas make more sense to me character wise.
It seems to me like Mezz can tell that he's just a few words away from just "giving in" but he's still so determined to complete his mission. So even under what amount to extreme danger and a high likelihood of falling he's still not giving in and it takes drugs and implanted conditioning to make him do so.
I do want to say that the original idea is more like "how much the conditioning and repeated fucking is affecting him and wants to indulge even for a moment" than "he's an inherent slut wanting to let loose."
But understanding his character more makes that not work more in my brain now. I get why he wouldn't do that. It's interesting that I often see a lot of character depth and porn games like this. There are obviously games where that's the whole point but I often see it emerge seemingly as a side consequence as well. I think because it brings out things that are crying out to be explored creatively but don't get explored in a lot of media.
"I do want to say that the original idea is more like "how much the conditioning and repeated fucking is affecting him and wants to indulge even for a moment" than "he's an inherent slut wanting to let loose.""
Fair enough, and that is a different thing. But for the most part I've settled into the path of normal, gradual corruption/loss of control, and then if it goes on long enough, "new" Mezz, altered in how he sees the world (Not needing the ear clips with the boars in GT, normal eyes at the end of GT when serving Mahir etc). Again, the engine of the whole thing is the tension between "old" Mezz and the "new" version that's gradually eating away at him in each scenario. If the old version willingly gives in, then that destroys the tension. And if you mean the point at which the new version gains enough control that "he" starts doing things "voluntarily", then...again, that's pretty much the Mahir scene at the end. Sorry for being so difficult, but in my mind at least it snaps to one of those two binaries: either he's being slutty (which doesn't fit), or he's been fully trained/corrupted, which is awesome, but already in the games. For me, the point at which he starts "willingly" giving in/asking for it/going along with it/submitting is the point where "new" Mezz crosses the threshold into having more control than not. So there's never really space for "old" Mezz to do that.
Glad you're not annoyed though, I do enjoy the chance to be forced to actually explicitly think through why I'm doing certain character or story things sometimes, though it can be a little like trying to consciously remember the steps of tying shoelaces.
I did check everything out the first time I had it loaded, then I deleted the game and reinstalled it and finally it allowed me to progress.
Of all the villains in the series so far, Mahir is definitely the hottest one. His genteel sadism is like a scalpel while Khazeem and Diesel are more like a sledgehammer. They all can break Mezz easily but Mahir is way more precise about it.
Yeah that's why I ship them so hard for now, Mahir could have just broken Mezz so easily but he gave Mezz chances to serve him in both ways lol. He fully used Mezz both physical and mental strength and the line "lucky you have me" from Mahir when Mezz lost to the mobs made me blush so much. >//////<
Ha, glad people enjoy him. I think I kind of seized on Mahir as a chance to have someone with a little more depth now that I was going all-in and spending more time. It gets trickier not to repeat myself the more games in I get, but hopefully the new "friends" will be fresh enough to be their own thing too.
Oh, did that last Mahir scene genuinely sneak up on you? That was the intent, but I feel like most people just miss it and then go back and get it with the walkthrough when they're trying to 100% the gallery. Very happy if you managed to landmine yourself with it as intended :D.
Sadly I wasn't achieved that scene myself but with the help of the scene guides. I was like normally doing slut run and pure run like the Chapter 1 then come to see more contents and saw that last Mahir scene.
The funny thing is I yeet-ed myself 3 times with the Adder's stuff just to get in the slut mode asap. Mahir must be disappointed that he would yap "Huh? Bunbun isn't you just won our battle a couple of minutes ago?" :C
A good question. First, if you're ever curious about lore, be sure to read the stuff on Scratch's computer, lots of basic stuff covered there. But to be fair, I didn't touch on this directly, it's more implied. There are two "areas" in the city, the normal ruins and the barrens, the desert-ish areas. The normal ruins are further divided into four types of areas: Haven, Gutter, Tower, and everywhere else. The hyenas more or less stick to the Gutter normally, their post-apocalyptic Los Vegas/redlight district. The Boars roam around that "everywhere else. The Hyenas have nothing inherently against them, they'll let anyone in with money or goods, but the boars tend to be too chaotic and destructive, which is why there aren't any in the Gutter we see in GT: they're bad for business.
Now, as time goes on a variety of different groups may end up settling into Haven, first secretly, then more openly depending on player choice. And yes, this will mean both boars and hyenas being there. For the most part though, this won't be an issue, as they'll be operating in different areas and staying subtle at first. Eventually, the final stage in each of their sub-quests will be domination of the area, which will probably mean the other just disappears, but I haven't worked out the details yet.
Also, that's an interesting way you have of spelling. Not ragging on it, I'm just curious where it comes from. It almost seems like you're trying to deliberately phonetically reproduce some kind of dialect. Which is interesting, because most people don't "type with an accent", outside of fiction.
Interesting, now I'm even more curios for what future updates will have in store. Hope to see more old world ruins, technology and what not.
About my spelling; I'm not english native speaker, I'm Italian, most, if not all my knowledge about english come from YT and internet in general, probably sound strange because it is a melting pot of a lot of culture, dialects and etc. Add the fact that I'm not that good write in it, and you got your answer
Interesting. Like I said, certainly not giving you a hard time. It was just such a unique way of writing I wanted to know the story behind it. Plenty of people make mistakes, native speakers and not, but mistakes are usually random and sporadic, whereas the way you write has a kind of predictable feel to it. It's neat! And hey, your English is far better than my Italian.
Generally the idea in both the games is that if the hypnosis/conditioning/mindfuckery goes deep enough, it becomes internalized. It becomes MEZZ, so there's no need for the hypnosis itself, just a trigger to turn off the fake confident hero bunny he used to be and flip on who he really is now. That's why there's no glow: no need for dragon's breath any more. The conditioning is complete. Same reason the boars don't need the clips when you meet them again. Now, his eyes DO glow for the boar scene, but that's because of the different nature of the boar control vs the hyena one. Hyena one is about learning to be of service, so once that's internalized, the scaffolding of training can be removed completely, and no more glow. Boar control is just about being OUT of control, being puppeted and light and floaty and helpless. So he still has that altered state, he just goes into it by himself when they trigger him, no need for the clips any more.
this is super interesting because, if the boar control is all about puppetry and the hyena control is about enforced servitude, then what could chapter 3's premise be? maybe something to do with savagery/losing his ability for coherent thought... and the other possibilities for chapters 4 & 5, along with the red eyes are interesting too!
also, another question if you don't mind, i noticed that there are only 3 endings where the credits show up along with only 2 that have the "CRUEL SERENADE" title in the ending monologue. the 3 are the slut mode ending where mezz wins against kazeem with the good luck charm, where mezz wins either in or out of slut mode without the charm and mezz losing the kazeem in normal mode (the two with the "CRUEL SERNADE" title at the end are bolded). do you think any of these will be significant in the next chapter?
(also super sorry if i sound rude or passive-aggressive in these comments, i promise i'm not it's just i am LOVING this game and it is my new favourite thing to obsess over)
Oh no worries, I enjoy people taking the time to think these through. I think I've discussed theming for 3 a bit in the dev logs though, definitely recommend reading those if you haven't.
As for the endings, not sure what you mean by significant. The credits indicate a "full" or "real" end, ie that you've gone all the way through the story for the episode and concluded it one way or another. Lack of credits is meant to imply that things got cut short part of the way through, and there's a lot more to see. My memory's a little blurry: did I do credits after the normal loss? If so I guess credits don't indicate a scenario that could carry over to the next game, but title drop then credits probably do. I think that was the intention.
And yes, as discussed, various things that happen in GT have the potential to be reflected in 3, just like stuff from 1 was reflected in gt.
Yes and no. Or...yes and eventually yes. They're familiar because he's in a loop (remember delta in the notebook). There IS an explanation, but I haven't given it yet. We'll be getting there...probably mostly in 4, as 3 is a bit of an odd, but fun, detour (and important in its own way).
Aw, thanks, glad you like them! The pony stuff was what pulled me into finally focusing, finishing, and getting stuff out, it was a moment in time that did that for a lot of people; a lot of shared enthusiasm and creativity. And the designs are fairly simple and easy to work with, which also helps. That said, it's unlikely I'll do a game with that setting or those characters. Mezz and Cruel Serenade weren't even originally created as a game, but just as an exercise in character design, an initial test case for growing beyond pony stuff, because I knew I'd have to eventually. For three reasons: the fandom, while still around, is pretty small at this point. I want to do something original, so there's absolutely no nonsense to deal with when it comes to copyright takedowns. And it's just fun and more flexible to work in your own setting. Exercises the mind more too.
Thanks! Should have a progress update at the end of this, nothing too crazy, but some neat maps to show off at the very least.
Well first, the game prefers dinner (hurr hurr). Second though, what do you mean by launch? If you're running it via some secondary framework, don't. Just run the exe directly, specifically Game.exe.