Stormside v0.22 release! (Oh thank god...)

Ha, I bet you were expecting a fancy graphic, well the jokes on you, because I made one! But then I realised it has tits in it, and that's not allowed for public posts. So instead here's a picture of a door, to represent the goods behind it or something. Yes.. Anyway.... (It's not a paywall joke I swear, but if it is, then it's not bad in my opinion.)

Magistrate tier release - Right now!

Professor tier release - Right now!

Student tier release - Right now!

Public tier release -  September 26th 2023

Download links

THERE'S A LOT IN THIS POST. AT VERY LEAST, READ THE KEY POINTS BEFORE YOU PLAY.

Ok, finally, it's done. I think. Fingers crossed no random gamebreaking bugs, or things I've totally forgotten to do that are really important and can't just be patched in later. Since my word doesn't really mean anything anymore when it comes to timeframes, I'll just ignore that and say good god this took longer than I thought it would. My bad lol. ("A few days" = 10 days apparently)

As always, download links in another post, but with a slight twist this time. I'm also releasing the absolutely clapped version of the game that I almost released before deciding to delay. (Only the PC version though because I never actually built the other versions.) I'm doing this just for fun, so that anyone who's curious can try it if they want, and see why I delayed the release.

I'm probably going to be releasing a 0.22.0.1 or something in the next couple of weeks just to clear up any issues that get reported, and hopefully to complete the filesize crunch some of you may have read about. I didn't get time to complete it on this version, but it's partially done. It's worth noting that as a result of how this crunch works, you may find some of your saves load in with only a character's face visible or something. This does not mean the save is broken. Either roll back until it fixes itself and then play on, or keep playing until it fixes itself. Unless I screwed up, either should work.

Here's some key points.

Key points...

• In game walkthrough. You can toggle it on in the menu, and it'll tell you how choices affect the route you're on, what sex scenes they lead to in the near future, and sometimes give you a very detailed description of what a choice does, as well as the effect it might have in future updates. Using it will cause the screen to dim on all choices, and changes the font colour of the choice screen to orange for the sake of readability. If a choice doesn't have any tooltips, it means it doesn't matter what you pick at all. It's WIP though, so if you find any points where it's inaccurate or just doesn't make sense due to the wording or something, please do reach out to me about it.
• See above regarding how the filesize crunch may affect saves.
• This update primarily features Riley, Hikari, Akemi and Cassie. If you don't like those characters, then errr... Well you're out of luck because that's over half of them lol. All the girls do show up in some capacity though. Taliya was gonna get some stuff finally, but I had to cut it for the sake of time. She'll get stuff in the next update probably.
• One change has been made that might mean that saves from before the start of the 0.22 content will throw an error when you try to open the profile screen. To fix this, either make a new save, or just progress that one to the start of the 0.22 content, and it'll sort itself out. (Hell, if you have the console enabled you can type call v0_22 and that'll fix it too. It'll do some other weird stuff too though, so probably best to not do that.)
• There's a scene right near the end of the game where there's thunder and lightning outside. Don't save during this. There was an issue that would cause any saves made there to not load properly and crash. I think I'm close to fixing it, but not in this version. You'll have a chance to save afterwards. (Feel free once the camera moves outside. That'll make sense at the time.)

Anyway, actual changelog below. It's just from memory though, so there's probably some stuff missing from it that I forgot I'd done.

New content.

• 22 new sex scenes scattered across the various routes and choices.
• 5400+ new renders
• 430+ new animations
• I have no idea how many hours of content, but probably between 2 and 3 to complete it once without going back to get all the content. Depends on your choices and how fast you read I guess. If any of you are the type to just make loads of saves so you can get all the content without just using a gallery unlocker, imma guess maybe 5 hours. Not sure. Lemme know.
• A bunch of new sound effects, but I don't keep track of that stuff.
• Same with lines of code or dialogue lines. Obviously I've added a whole bunch of them, but I have no idea how many.
• I suppose this isn't really a metric, but 10 brand new characters who haven't shown up in the game before.
• A VN version of the ghost hunt, so now people who don't wanna do sandbox stuff can still get spooked. (Assuming my shitty jumpscares work on them)
• 1 new main menu animation. It doesn't matter really, but I did it.. It's an animated version of the 4th of July thing you may have seen. (Though with bikinis as not to give away the goods instantly to new players)
• 2 new onions. (Not many this time. But 22 sex scenes cmooon)
• 3 new phone images.

Quality of life stuff.

• New gallery system which now includes a filter so you can filter scenes by content type and involved characters. There are also now symbols on most of the scenes in the gallery to tell you whether a scene is exclusive to one or more character route.
• The new system should also fix that problem where the gallery said you'd unlocked 25/17 images or whatever.
• New route system which forms the basis of how the game works going forward. Each of the main girls now has a romance, submission and slave route.
• Toggleable in game walkthrough applied to the entire game, which sort of functions as a directors commentary type thing. This is a work in progress, and may not be completely accurate at the moment. If you find anything that doesn't make sense, or that you feel can be improved in the walkthrough, please do let me know.
• You can now set your phone background to any of the pictures the girls have sent you, or that you've taken with your phone. (Except the landscape ones.)
• Replaced all of the outfit animations on the profile screen with new higher resolution ones that in my opinion look waaaaay better.
• Added text animation in various places. Mostly the use of a small shake effect on the "Ahhh" and "Ehhhh" moans and stuff. Can be disabled in options if people want.
• Added a scrollbar to the texts on the phone which makes it easier to scroll back to the start if you wanted to do that for some reason, but also it just kinda looks nice in my opinion.
• Added a variable that tracks whether you've seen the dumb "You're on hold for 30 minutes" joke earlier in the game, and will let you skip it if you get to that point again on another save. (Untested however, so please let me know)
• Changed how choices work during phonecalls and texts. Now, the options will appear to the side of the phone as not to obscure the texts, or just be hard to read.
• Also changed how the phone looks during phonecalls, to make the bottom part slightly transparent. This just makes it easier to read the dialogue.
• Changed the way the translation effect works so it should be a bit less laggy now on potato PC. Still lags quite a bit if you hold the skip button through it though, simply because of how it works.
• Started using a new method of filesize reduction which is quite effective, but slow to implement. I haven't finished applying it to the whole game yet, but as it says above, I'm hoping to do that in the next 2 weeks. (If I forget to edit this line, hopefully I did it.)
• The gallery unlocker now gives you the option to unlock onions and still images as well.
• Changed the tutorial at the start a bit to explain the new route system, and also added some graphics to it.
• That terrible pool dive animation with a bitrate of 10 has been remade and now looks quite a lot less shite.

Profile screen changes

• The girls have new icons which I think look a lot better.
• The majority of the text has been changed to be more readable.
• There's now an indicator on the profile screen to tell you what route you're on with a girl, and generally what her relationship to you is.
• There's now an indicator on the character icons to tell you whether a girl is collared or not.
• New function allowing you to see what a girl has consented to, as well as any rules applied to her. (This might have been in 0.21, I actually can't remember. The rules thing is new though, and gets unlocked part way through the update.
• New pages in the profile screen. There's now a page for side characters, as well as "Other" characters, the latter being mostly characters like Kellin or Logan. The page switch buttons are the white bars just below the word "Characters".
• Outfit animations for all the side girls too. The new outfit animations aren't counted as part of that 430. If we're counting those, then there's over 500 animations total. (79 outfits)
• I've scrapped the journal thing where the profile screen keeps a note of basically everything you do relating to a character, simply because it was a pain in the ass to update, and it was only gonna become more complicated to maintain as development went on. So now each character just has a general description of who they are, which may be updated in future. Not as frequently as previously though.
• New scrollbars wooo. this doesn't matter, but I think it looks nice.

Options menu changes.

• Removed the "skip transitions" option, because all it did was make the game automatically skip things like dissolve between renders, and if you turn that off the whole game pretty much goes to shit. Stoopid option.
• Added the option to toggle text animation on or off. This affects the translation effect, as well as most other text animation in the game. The translation effect just swaps to the line being in English, with a note to say what language they're actually speaking. Lame, but good for those with potato PC.
• Added the ability to toggle named saves on or off, so you can make it stop asking you if you want.
• Added the ability to disable the animations in the scene gallery that play when you hover the mouse over a scene. The gallery is still slightly laggy, but I'm not gonna deal with that just yet.
• Added an audio slider to allow you to control the volume of the girls' moans. This actually required a full rework of their audio in general, so all sex scenes have been rebalanced so that the default 50% should be perfect.

Bug fixes.

• Various typos fixed, mostly things like saying Dad instead of dad, or having American characters say realise instead of realize and stuff.
• I'm fairly sure I've finally fixed the issue with the nicknames, so you won't have characters just calling you "False" anymore. I thought I'd fixed that last time though, so I guess we'll see.
• Fixed that issue with "sayer waitress not found".
• A bunch of others I'm sure. Been working on it for 6 months, and I haven't written down every bug I fixed, so I have no idea.
• Probably added a bunch of new ones, but hopefully not.

Misc changes.

• Made a change to Cassie's hookup event. Now, after you hook up at your house, you actually get to choose whether or not to enter the friends with benefits arrangement with her. The lack of that specific choice kinda clashes with the new route system, but don't worry if you did end up in the fwb arrangement but don't really want to. I'll be putting some sort of system to deal with this for existing saves when Cassie's stuff becomes more important.
• Removed the ability to just stay silent and let Olivia walk off after she takes a phonecall in class. This is for two reasons. Firstly, it's fairly important that you speak to her father there, and secondly I don't think I'm gonna be doing an Olivia femdom route as it turns out, so the choice was actually completely pointless.
• Added some new icons to the main menu because apparently I love clutter. (Twitter logo still there though because X look dumb)