Working as a solo dev

Some random ball working on a video game (2023 - pixelized)

Hello again everyone! Before I make the post talking about the upcoming gallery for MKM, I'd like to talk about working as a solo dev and why I continue to work alone instead of teaming up with someone to help me. I bring up this topic now because as you know, recently I had an annoying creative slump (which I've already recovered from) and among the many kind words that I've received, some people have suggested that I either hire or collaborate with someone to help spread out my workload. Actualy even before this, others had also graciously made the same suggestion or offer, so I figure this is the best opportunity to talk about this topic with everyone. The first issue with hiring someone is of course the managerial side. Which hours will they work? How much are they getting paid? Do we have a contract? Which payment channels are accessible for me to deliver money to them? Are they productive? Do they have good work efficiency? Etc etc... For any kind of serious work environment and collaboration (and also to avoid any big headaches and confusion in the future) this type of management is really the bare minimum. But it is a huge can-of-worms and it requires this extra administrative work that, honestly, I'm not really up to engaging with at this moment. Now with that said, I've received some offers where they offered to work for free, or as a gesture of goodwill with no strings attached. But even with free collaboration, a handful of new issues arise: 1) Scheduling. I have my own work hours and other people have theirs, and quite often those might not match at all (different time-zones, different work preferences, etc). It is frustrating to be "tied down" because you're waiting for someone else to finish their side of the work, in order for you to be able to continue your own side of things or make a release. 2) Art consistency. They key area where it would really help to have someone else working with me is the drawing and animation departments. But every artist has their own style and by this point I have done so many enemies and animations, that either we would have some serious art mismatch for enemies (which is always jarring to see), or the new artist would have to redo all of the enemies and animations, which is just an insane amount of work to do at this point. 3) Range of fetishes. As you know, in my games I've done a crazy range of different fetishes and perhaps the biggest issue of all to me is finding someone else to work with me on MKM and that has the same range of fetishes as I do. Everyone I've talked to have their own preferences and dislikes, and obviously I won't force anyone to draw or work on something that puts them off (as I would not like to work drawing dislikes either), so this drastically reduces the number of people could work with me in the current project of MKM. Since the start of my game dev journey in 2018, I've been keeping up with some fellow game devs and communities, and when you're there you get to hear a lot of "backstage" stories, and the majority of those stories relate to bad experiences with teammates. Whether it be someone disappears out of nowhere and you can't get in contact with them at all (leaves the work hanging), or someone creates some drama or unnecessary trouble, or an artist begins to slow down their work output (for many reasons, some valid, others not so much), programmers that can't properly fix bugs, etc. And this is just the work side of things, to not speak of the administrative side: Issue with contracts because teammates are foreigners and each country has their own rules for taxes and stuff, issue with payment provides and not being able to pay/receive their salary, language barriers, time-zone issues, etc. I could go into even more issues and details, but I think by now you'll get the point I'm trying to make: that getting some work help would indeed be amazing, but is not just a simple matter; at the very least not for an ongoing project such as MKM that is in an advanced stage of development. And I might as well take this chance to clarify: it is not like I'm opposed to ever collaborating with someone else or even working as a team. In fact I do daydream sometimes about having a small but focused team of same-minded individuals to create some awesome games with bigger scope. So yeah I'd love to delegate some of my workload to somebody else as it would take a huge weight off my shoulders, but the key takeaway here is that trying to fit someone into MKM at this stage of development seems to be more trouble than it is worth, so for now I'll just have to continue working alone until I complete its development. And then in the future, I might be able to collaborate with an artist to create some smaller projects. That would be really fun actualy, to start fresh on some cool ideas with someone who's as hyped as I'am to work on the same game. So I appreciate all of the offers for help and such, but for now I'll have to just keep doing my best and am to finish MKM this year, so that I may take on new projects and opportunities in the future. Thank you for your time, and I'll see you soon to talk about the new gallery mode! Best Regards, Mega

Thank you to fans of MKM and Animation Gifs!!

 

Hello Everyone!

As the development of the game continues to move along nicely, I must make a confession: I'm very bad at marketing the game lol.

When I talk with fellow adult game developers, they are unanimous in saying that proper marketing is very important and vital for a game's success and of course that I can objectivity understand that notion, but... the truth is that I'm not really into it, and also I'm a solo developer so in order to dedicate time to make good marketing I have to stop coding/drawing and divert my time from these tasks that actually advance the development, in order to go around the web promoting the game.

It honestly surprised me how much time and effort it takes to do good marketing and draw attention back to your game without coming off as spam, annoying or pushy. I'll be honest, before making games I used to dislike marketeers in general and used to think that it must be easiest most effortless job in the word... well, I stand corrected and take back my words, and give a shout-out to marketing people because I personally don't have the energy for that task hahaha :-)

This is why the previous (and only) round of marketing postings that I did for MKM was more than a year ago, and even then they were mostly me posting a few gifs on reddit on their appropriate sub-reddits.

Now thankfully and despite my weak marketing, the fanbase and support for the game has grown beyond my wildest expectations, mostly due to organic growth via word-of-mouth; fans of the game make posts and comment on places and forums relevant to hentai game discussion. Some fans even have showed to me some of those, but a good portion of the growth comes from places that I don't even know about!

My dream is to become a full fledged indie game developer, working on it full-time 6 days of the week and to do that your support continues to be amazing as it leads me closer and closer to that goal, as currently I'm making games as a side-job, part-time hobby if you  will.

So I want to thank you very much to all of the anonymous (and otherwise) supporters who not only lend me their direct patronage, but also indirect by talking and posting about the game to help spread awareness of it. Your support, constructive criticism, suggestion and nice words of encouragement are the fuel that keeps my motivation burning at maximum capacity!

And finally as an answer to folks who send me nice messages saying that they love the game but unfortunately they can support me directly monetarily but they wish they could, a super helpful alternative is to help spread awareness of the game in the same way as the other fans do: simply by posting and commenting in discord, sites, forums and threads around the web you're helping spread the game around!

But please, only do it if you feel in your heart and if you genuinely like the game and want to help spread awareness of it. I really don't want to force people to be my marketeers when I myself I'm not doing it as I should.

With all of that said, I will link some animation gifs that I made of some of the scenes from the game, some of which I'm also using to do a 2nd round of marketing myself for a short while, so don't be surprised if you see a couple of them in the wild hehe and if you wish to use them as well or simply want to save them, it is all good!

• Animation Gifs (original quality for download):
  •  https://mega.nz/folder/O4YlUIgC#nYLi7aogcPblgV8yFBIR7A
• Animation Gifs (can be linked directly, but lower quality):
  
  • https://www.redgifs.com/users/laekaugustus

Well this about wraps it up. Thank you again for your time, and I give you my best regards!
Laek

Mystic Knight Maya v0.2a

The batgirl that inhabits the caves

 

You can choose to download the game from my itch.io page or from the mega links bellow:

WINDOWS: zip / rar

LINUX: zip

MAC: zip

It's been a long time since I did a public release, so it's finally here again!

Compared to the previous public version quite a lot has been added, but as I forget to keep a on-going change-log (I do change-logs only for the individual private releases that I do on patreon) I'm unable to list all the changes here, but no worries because the game is currently decently linear so I'm sure that by normal exploration you'll eventually manage to find all the new stuff :-)

I always welcome feedback so feel free to comment or offer constructive criticism.

 

Now I'll return to work on the game, as there are way more stuff that I want to add so for now, please enjoy the early version and until next time!

Cheers!

The story about my vore videos - Summary

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The story about my vore videos - part 3 conclusion

 Scene from the 3rd video, "Memorable Meal"

Unfinished 3rd Video

Despite my motivation being cut in half after having the 2nd video being removed while it was becoming very popular, I still had plenty of energy left so I started work on a 3rd video to continue the series.

I released a small video teasing this 3rd part and it had a bit of world building in order to start fleshing out the lore. With the experience that I gained from the previous videos, this 3rd one was shaping up nicely; it fleshes out the main character's motivations while introducing new ones and it's longer and with more scenes and animations, also with better dialogue to boot.

In the beginning my work was proceeding smoothly, but then overtime I was spending less and less hours working on the project. Where before I worked 2-3 days per week, soon I was only working once per week, then only working once or twice a month... and eventually it "fizzled" just like that.

The reason? Just everyday life itself really. Just the necessity of focusing on my day job, family and social life took my attention away from the vore videos project.

And to be clear, it's not like something bad happened in my life or anything; just the usual stuff that we all go through: having to taking care of family matters, having a social life, having to grind everyday for your day job, paying the bills, etc. 

To me at the time this wasn't even exactly a hobby per se, so the only time that I dedicated to it was on the spare-time of my spare-time, in a sense. So in my spare time I would do my normal hobbies, etc and if there was any spare time from then only then I would sit down and work on the videos.

So I guess that when I my 2nd video got killed, I lost the necessary motivation that would have made me keep pushing forward and finding time to work in it, despite the usual daily life demanding my full attention. So what happened is that as my motivation waned through the months, I slowly drifted away from this little project and eventually everyday life just took my full attention, eventually leading me to forget and essentially abandon the whole thing.

The crazy thing? The project file for this 3rd video sits comfortably on my HD to this day, being about 85% completed. Yep that's right, it's only missing a few final scenes that would wrap up the whole video, but otherwise I could release it right now because everything before those final scenes is completed and in its final state providing almost the full content.

On What Could Have Been

You see, back in 2013/2014 patreon wasn't a thing yet so the concept of being an artist and being supported and motivated by the people who directly enjoy your creations didn't really exist (or at least I wasn't aware of it) so the thought of taking the series seriously and dedicating serious time to it never even passed through my head.

Nowadays there's a huge scene (or industry if you will) of 3D animated adult content, with many great and amazing artists creating animations for a wide array of fetishes and preferences, and almost all of them being supported by their fans which grows the scene and helps them to keep making this content that otherwise would not exist.

So every once in a while when someone brings this up to me in private online, I like to wonder if in different circumstances I would have also become a 3D creator making custom content and therefore continuing the video series. Maybe even expanding and covering other topics, migrating to different and better tools, etc. Just an entertaining thought that I have once in a while.

Conclusion

And that's about it really. No big mystery or anything... it's just that all of the circumstances at that time eventually lead to me moving on to other things. The videos required from me a certain amount of time and commitment that I simply wasn't able to justify for something that was supposed to be just a one-off thing, and so I moved on.

Will I ever go back to work on these types of videos again? I... don't know, but probably not. While I'm the type of person that believes in "never say never", if you were hoping for more videos in the series then I apologize but there won't be any more, or at the very least, not any time soon.

To me, making the videos was more of a "means to an end". That is to say, making the videos was simply a medium through which I materialized an idea that I had at the time. It's not even that I dislike creating videos, because I did enjoy creating them for a time, but the thing is that I didn't exactly grew up thinking "oh, one day I want to be a video editor/creator" so I never gave this path a more serious consideration.

Whereas making games is the kind of thing that I always wanted to do since childhood but where always too scared to commit because I thought it would be a waste of time because I had to be "realistic" and just focus on my safe day-job for the rest of my life. It's to the point that I make time out of thin air and excuses in order to find time to work on working on games.

What I mean to say is that now that I have truly found my "calling" if you will, I simply don't see much reason to move away from doing something that I absolutely love in order to go back and starting making videos again. I had some level of fun making videos for sure, but it just doesn't compare to the enjoyment that I'm having now.

And that's the pathway in life I'm in right now. I'm chasing the dream of making games, and I won't be stopping any time soon!

Best Regards,

Laek

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>>> Summary and Comments >>>

The story about my vore videos - part 2

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The story about my vore videos - part 1

 

Scene of "Unexpected Dinner" - A vore tale of lust and betrayal

Preface

What if I told you that way back in 2013, I uploaded an amateurish 3D vore video to youtube and it somehow has 2.3M views as of the time of this post? 

The video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NERFS5VEMgw

The Setup

The year is 2012 and I'm just your average internet user: perfectly anonymous.

One random day while I was fantasizing as usual about a certain vore scenario, I began looking for a vore video that had at least some resemblance to what I was fantasizing at the time, but... no such luck.

You see, vore videos at the time were (and still are to some extent) generally really short and only about the "swallowing" part itself, which is to say that they didn't have much plot or context behind them, and I was craving for a more "involved" scenario that better suited my tastes.

On a whim, I decided to try and create my own vore video materializing the fantasy that was stuck on my head.

Tools of the Craft

3D Sex Villa 2. A game where you can create customizable people and then see them fucking, either by using pre-built animations or creating your own by posing the 3D models in any way you like, thus creating unique scenarios.

Nowadays this concept is old news; from the dozens of japanese games such as Koikatsu, Custom Maid, Honey Select to even western tools like Valves's Source Filmmaker which single handedly opened the gates of 3D smut to the world... for the current deviant there's a plethora of tools that can be used to materialize one's fantasies.

But back then? 3D Sex Villa it was. This game is ancient (released in 2002 I think?!) and after I discovered it circa 2006, well, suffice to say that I've toyed with it on and off since then, creating poses and animations for my own leisure over the years. I have a great deal of nostalgia and fondness for it.

It's tricky because 3DSV does not lend itself well to creating vore at all because it's designed towards vanilla sex. But it was simply the only thing that I could use at the time because I had the familiarity with it and it was relatively easy to use. 

And so it was that around late 2012 I started working on that particular vore video project. I don't remember much of the details of the process, all I remember is that I had fun customizing the two characters, then posing them and taking the screenshots for the dialogues, and then animating the short clips that constitute the latter half of the video.

To summarize the process and tools that I used:

1. Create custom characters in 3DSV2.
2. Pose them and animate them to fit the scenario.
3. Take screenshots for the still images.
4. Capture the animations with Fraps for the short clips.
5. Gather relevant audio and music from around the internet, but mostly from freesound.com.
6. Put all those assets into a video editor (Sony Vegas in my case).
7. Edit the video with dialogue, transitions, etc in order to create the final product.

The 1st Video is Completed

After about a month or two of this work I had completed the full video entitled "Unexpected Dinner". While even at the time I knew that the final result was at best an amateurish piece, I was honestly very happy with it nonetheless because I managed to "quiet" the urge that I had to create it as it closely resembled what I had in mind.

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>>> Continued in part 2 >>>