First, the most exciting news!

YES, I AM MAKING MORE CONTENT AS WE SPEAK! :D

Yes!  I am launching a public Discord!  Please join using this invite code, I would love to have you as I work at building up this community!
>>>  https://discord.gg/QzkrtdMQTz  <<<

And yes!  I am launching a Patreon! I have several tiers available with fun rewards and I hope you’ll consider supporting me.  Patrons will have a totally transparent view of the project every step of the way and will be able to help me cultivate and grow this game in ways I simply can’t by myself.  I am largely a one person show and your support means a whole lot to a small time dev like me.

Patrons are going to get first dibs on news regarding the developmental plans i have for TCM but I want to share my Vision for what this is going to look like, at least from this point.

(Keep in mind the future is far off and things are hazy, but as of this writing, this is what I’m thinking)

1. Overhaul the beta and release for free as the Beta+.  Beta+ will include new sprites, various polish upgrades, and overhauled endings with full 18+ sex scenes.
2. Similar in length to the Beta/Beta+, the next character, Amir, will get his first “episode”.
3. Once all 6 characters get their “Introduction” episode, I plan on building a much larger “Prologue” chapter.  This chapter will feature all 6 characters and cgs and will serve as the point where the player can choose which character’s route to pursue.
4. And from this point, full development will begin on each characters’ full story, tying them into the setting, their relationships with the demons, their goals, their pasts, and even how they interact with each other in some cases.
5. Right now I’m thinking that this will also have episodic development and alternate between characters in rotation until their endings.
6. I’m looking at platform releases on Steam/PC and mobile but I don’t have a time frame on mobile builds at this point.
7. My plan, right now, is to release all these parts: the Beta+, 5 Introductory Episodes for the rest of the characters, the Prologue, and each character’s full route for free.  I’m hoping to offset development costs with Patreon, merch sales, and low cost DLC side stories/episodes waaaayyyy later down the line.

But yea!  That’s basically where I’m at today: free core game with early release to Patrons, merch and bonus chapters somewhere later down the line.

OKAY anyway, on to the main point of this extremely long post:

After competing in Kenney Jam 2021 with a small prototype visual novel, I decided to enter the Spooktober VN Jam on a lark.

Contestants would be competing for cash prizes and have 1 month to develop a visual novel relating to a spooky/Halloween theme.  Mori’s been around as a transforming man-demon-cat for a while and thought his furry butt would make an interesting love interest so I decided to go for “grungy urban supernatural horror” with demons, demon cats, and punk rock.

Judges used the month of October to judge submissions and overall, here’s how Tri City Monsters fared:

Out of 113 entries, TCM finished at #25 with a score of 4.75 out of 5.

While the average number of ratings per game was 14.8, TCM received 32.  Our ratings distributions were surprisingly high with 81.3% being five stars, 12.5% being four stars, and 6.3% being three.  I’m very happy to report that TCM had no ratings lower than 3 stars :D

TCM didn’t place with the judges but were played on stream by Coda, Katy, and Tasty and that was seriously rad.

What’s most remarkable about TCM’s run in the month that it's been alive is how quickly it’s growing on itch.io.  Here’s TCM’s visibility starting on its submission to the jam on October 1.

By the end of the month TCM was at about 200 followers and in 250 separate collections.

So you can kinda tell what I was going through emotionally once this game went up.  I saw good traffic on the first day of the jam and despite some jankiness Ren’Py has in browser, by the 3rd I had uploaded a browser build anyway.

The first week+ of the jam was not good for me or TCM.  Middling numbers, low engagement…. It was hard not to be sad about it.  My friend Atlas had done amazing artwork on a tight schedule and I had busted my ass in getting the project built and sufficiently polished in time.  And for a large chunk of this, it simply didn’t seem to be paying off.

I’ve done several jams before.  I mentioned Kenney Jam 2021, but I’ve also done two Ludam Dares, 200 Word TTRPG Jam, and an odd-off NaNoWriMo.  In my experience, the jam itself is typically the marketing vehicle for early numbers.  Meaning that traffic in the jam itself is usually what causes an entry to get more non-jam eyes on them.  To be honest, I think that TCM’s bad luck was just kind of a freak occurrence for this jam.  I engaged with other devs, played a lot of great, SUPER high quality games, and was introduced to a lot of hardworking VNdev people.  I maintained high rating karma throughout the event but the numbers simply weren’t with me for that first chunk.

Then a bunch of things sort of happened at once.  I made some changes to the header and almost the same time high-tea(of Scary Gourmet) left some absolutely critical advice: add furry and gay tags and put Mori’s monster form on the cover image.  Barring some very embarrassing confusion between cover and header images, I did these things and the turnaround was almost instant.  You can see where the game starts climbing out of that big pit around October 14th.

I went into this game knowing very little about the codified visual novel genres and one of Tri City’s “features” is that it's… very cross-genre so I had a lot of uncertainty tagging it in the first place, especially since Itch only allows 10 tags.  Tri City is lgbta+ inclusive, the love interests are bi and always compatible with the main character no matter what pronouns they choose.  Mori’s monster form is very Furry adjacent but there’s going to be a bunch of different monster choices moving forwards.  The game could definitely appeal as a weird otome title as that subset of games has always scooped up straight women and is by and large lgbt+ friendly.

High-tea’s advice helped me connect with other people that were interested in the game. Then the game got featured on www.naughtylist.news and the article was cross posted on Reddit.  I joined the discord servers of FerSureGames, Furry Visual Novels, and Furry Paradise Visual Novels.  Each community was incredibly supportive and kind in letting me post links to TCM and talk about it with them.  I should note that Furry Paradise alone has over 2k members so the outreach was instant and wide reaching.  I’ve had comments asking for a Patreon and a Discord starting at around this point and it became obvious to me with this kind of reception that TCM deserved full investment and I decided to pursue my idea of a full game.

ANYWAY!! Stick around for part 2 sometime early next week where I go into more of the build and design process, including budget, schedule, and general plan of attack.