The final update post of Lewd Town Adventures. (Also the 4th and last anniversary post.)

It's so hard to say goodbye to this world, these characters... But after four years, we feel like we've made one of the largest adult games ever. Those who enjoy living vicariously in this fantasy world know how much love and dedication we have poured into every aspect of the characters, environments, and dialogue.

Have we stumbled? Yes, but we always got back up, tightened our shoe strings, and learned so much from every mistake. Four years ago, we knew so little about writing, rendering, and coding a sandbox visual novel. Today, we step back and look at what has come from our efforts.

Lewd Town Adventures may not appear - at first - to be something special, but once players get to know the MC and his love interests... Once you get those "feels" and either choke up or sneer at our attempts to trigger your emotions... That moment you are going along and suddenly everything changes... you're hooked.

We know from countless conversations with our thousands of fans how beloved certain women are, how eager you are to spend more time with one in particular... Even if the concept of LTA is to "catch 'em all"... To form a massive loving family harem or drug, seduce, and subdue a dozen or more sluts... Or even to lose everything to one of the most demented antagonists ever imagined.

The world of Lewd Town Adventures is filled with boundless little moments, unforgettable experiences, and we appreciate every single person who plays, whether they enjoy or despise the game. Thank you for 4 years of faith in us - or 4 years of constructive criticism that pushed us to make everything better.

TL;DR:
We made the largest adult game out there in a time span of 4 years.
4 years of work on our first game is more than enough.

We've made plenty of mistakes, learning from every instance, which turned us into better developers. The game is currently upgraded to the best state it has ever been before. It could be better though but it's time to move forward…

Why Stop Now?

First of all, Lewd Town Adventures can't be put on steam or the likes. If we kept going, we would be putting more energy and time into a legacy project that gains us just about enough financially, though not enough to validate the amount of time/work/energy it takes.

We want to start something completely different with all the knowledge gained. Starting over with a new story, new characters, with original artwork and animations we can monetize is key to our future as developers. It's not all about the money, but - in the end - it's about the money.

A message from Xo Mo:
I've always loved the written word. My mother taught me to read at a young age. I was writing my own name before my 4th birthday. Head start and kindergarten were a breeze for me. Over the years, I have collected and read loads of books.

Like Jamleng, life was going along, day by day, when rumor of a global virus arrived, followed by a tidal wave that wiped out my job, my hopes and dreams for a future of financial stability. COVID sent us all packing, straight to our bedrooms, our computers, our phones... For years, I had been trying to find time to write, and motivation to complete my epic novel. By September 2020, it was complete. By January 2021, two sequels were published alongside it online.

Now - for me - three years later, we have wrapped up the story. Together, we expanded the cast of love interests and side characters from 24 to over 60. Inspired by the similarity of MC's prologue-ending experience to my own, we drew from our own childhood and life experiences to build backstories for many characters. To add depth, relatability, and to inspire joy/compassion in our players.

Jamleng:
I've always had a huge passion for games and had always been tinkering with the idea of making my own games. When I started out, I tried building something using Unity and other programs.

Somewhere along the way I stumbled upon AVN's and started playing those for quite a while. When the COVID pandemic hit, I got laid off from my job and had not much to do.

Suddenly facing a future of isolation, I started the journey of making my own adult visual novel with not that much experience. It took about 6 months of some serious work before I released the first version of Lewd Town Adventures.

I've talked about that experience in the past in my weekly posts. If you're interested in reading more, here are direct links to the Anniversary public posts:

1-year Anniversary post: https://jamleng.itch.io/lewd-town-adventures/devlog/291696/lewd-town-adventures-...
2-year Anniversary post: https://jamleng.itch.io/lewd-town-adventures/devlog/424478/lewd-town-adventures-...
3-year Anniversary post: https://jamleng.itch.io/lewd-town-adventures/devlog/586812/lewd-town-adventures-3rd-year-anniversary-post

Long story short, Everything I made at the time looked great in my eyes... Even if it was full of bad engrish, glitchy, poorly made images/animations and overall it kinda sucked.

Luckily for me (and the game) we received quite the backing on here and the other site that's been purging adult game devs recently... This pleasant surprise told me I must be doing something right. It motivated me to continue working on the game, to disregard the controversy happening over NTR, the trolls harassing me online, because for every negative comment, I received many more supportive encouragements.

I paid very close attention to all the bugs, inconsistencies, and constructive criticisms, then I went about fixing everything mentioned. This included making certain things more obviously optional, even though they kinda already were.

Being cooped up during a global pandemic, I worked on the game for 10 hours a day, every day and did monthly updates. Not being a native-English speaker, I always hoped to find someone who was to fix the grammar and spelling in the script. In my quest to seek someone that could fix my Engrish, I received a private message from someone named Xo Mo about a year into development. He gave examples of things that would improve the readability of the dialogue.

I went out on a limb with this unknown quantity, trying not to get my hopes up. To my surprise, Xo Mo agreed to help me out - without any mention of compensation! Unbelievable... From the moment he sent me a list of revisions, the whole game changed quite a lot. The writing and engrish disappeared in a single update.

After a surge in player downloads, positive feedback, and donations, I offered him a job to polish the script and even write new scenes. He took it. For the following year or so he wrote quite a lot of the game; I also wrote a lot and provided feedback and direction while doing all the renders and code for the rest of the game.

For the Christmas 2021 special, he made his own first scene (Chad's Holiday) which turned out pretty good at the time; from then on out he started working on the game full time: writing, rendering, and photoshopping.

I still couldn't believe my luck because I was getting pretty damn burned out from the crazy hours I was putting in with code, renders, and file management. Going from a one-man show to having a partner who has your back makes everything and anything possible.

What's In The Box?!
In some ways, I wanted Lewd Town Adventures to become bigger and better... but in other ways I was kind of okay with what it was at that time. That's true even now. Both of us feel we could do so much more with the world, these characters, and everything...

But the reality of it is that we need a true vacation from Lewd Town. We need to step away and start fresh with a new world, new characters, and a new art engine that will allow us to monetize the next game. We have many bills piling up. We made purchases that need to be paid off, and continuing to work on a game that can not be monetized is unrealistic.

This was the first game I ever started, the first game I put out to the public for play, for judgement, but mostly for fun... Mistakes were made and that's all perfectly natural.

We've both learned a lot from everything during the past 4 years. We would have loved to keep working on this game and keep perfecting it but it's not really worth the investment of time from this point onward.

The goal was never to get stuck for many years of my life working on the first game I ever made. In the life of every creative person, at some point it's smarter to leave the first project in a state they can be happy with and move on to the next project.

Reflecting on everything we have endured, put up with, and enjoyed during the development of LTA, it's important to recognize the critics. Some people think we are trying to milk our subscribers. Every time we have taken time off, we have disabled collection of member fees.

Atop that, our regular updates we're quite large with between 3-4k images/animations and hundreds of pages or written content. Compared to most developers who released updates at the same pace we have, the quality and quantity of work in LTA is significantly more. In fact, the latest release was one of the biggest adult visual novel releases to ever come out.

So yeah, work-ethic wise, we've been pretty nuts putting in way too many hours each week. Doubters will question efficiency, but every still image takes between a few minutes to 2 hours to set up and render depending on the amount of custom work, editing and so forth. Every animation is easily double that amount of time, doubled again for any additional characters within the field of view... Not to mention how many takes it requires to ensure the animation is glitch/clip-free, timing is just right, and it all flows smoothly.

It all comes down to how many hours with lots of sacrifice - versus - the potential to break even or even save up for a rainy day. In the end it's just not worth it: No monetization. No Patreon. So we've been kind of doing this as a work of passion. Passionate for the stories, the characters, and the fans who keep us motivated.

But passion doesn't buy groceries or keep the wifi on.
That's really as simple as it is.

Punch The Clock:
A little-known fact: I recently went back to my old job. With COVID more or less under control, working again is WAY more relaxed than game development. Still, game development is a passion. I'm not quitting. Just refocusing my life around financial stability.

I have to say this though, I never really felt that working on this game was a worthy job. Despite the near-fanatic devotion many players have for adult games, the "entitlement" from some players can be quite insane.
Disregarding the societal taboo of doing so, creating a fetish-based game guarantees the developer a lot of harassment. Seriously, some of the biggest nutters I've ever seen online are thanks to this game. The slightest hint of questioning their love for a fetish that some people either do not know exist or have never experienced triggers their ire. They take it deadly seriously and go out of their way to ensure everyone knows just how much it pisses them off.

And yet I must emphasize the fact that the vast majority of the players have been happy even when some scenes were outdated and whatnot. Most of you reading this now, nodding in agreement, can probably envision a moment when something felt off during a playthrough... Yet overall, you were not offended or distracted from the game's story or character arc. Imperfections are inherent in every creative project. Even the most astute, perceptive perfectionist looks back at what they thought was absolute flawlessness, only to notice the tiniest flaw...

I might be partially to blame for the controversy, having chosen to focus the game controversial subjects and on certain sexual 'flavors': using tags that some players just blacklist without any further consideration.

Then there's the "controversial" prologue (what the MC looked like) which got us loads of 1 star reviews. We have even offered to change the prologue several times, but every player poll we have taken results in keeping it the way it is.

It's all so confusing. Perplexing... I don't know. A part of me feels like I'm overlooking something so obvious... I kinda get it but I also always thought there's something different we're doing compared to similar games.

And yet, I've personally always found it hilarious that some people get all wound up over our insignificant free game... They take stuff way too seriously.

Sure, LTA isn't the best AVN out there. The prologue was created 4 years ago by some dude that was literally just starting out, tinkering around to see what worked and what didn't... The early game has been upgraded more and more over time, so what started out looking like amateur hour has become much better.

Patreon: "Change it all!"
We've covered this in the past and in the in-game computer scene "Whatever happened to Patreon?"

Losing our primary (and most recognizable) source of donor financial support hurt a lot, but we switched over very quickly to this site. Growing pains aside, we have done okay. Nowhere near what we would likely have retained if we were still on that other site, but enough to keep us going...

Looking Back:
When reflecting on the past 4 years, our hearts ache from all the difficulties inherent in the life of an adult content producer. The long working hours and the stress that came with pleasing our supporters, feeling the need to deliver quantity and quality, pushing ourselves when we were exhausted or uninspired.

One thing people tend to majorly overestimate is how much work, time and effort it takes to create things like this. The mental drain, the fatigue, the reluctance to even press the power button on the work computer... I lived it full time and more. In the future I'll definitely be doing things differently.

Nonetheless, it has been pretty fun overall. I'm very proud of what we've made.

When I play Lewd Town Adventures myself, I'm still surprised how much really original stuff and very funny moments are wrapped up inside this thing that we created. The drama, the tears, the surprising twists, the Easter eggs, and all the nuances in every scene... I find myself smiling and laughing with a deep feeling of nostalgia.

Xo and I have literally made what we feel to be the largest adult game within that four year stretch, which is a crazy performance.

I feel like this final update is something to be proud of: the whole game, the characters, the stories, and the endings... Though some of them may feel abbreviated, a few of them will likely be controversial... But with multiple paths and 50+ characters, we also have to be realistic about it.

The update.... The game itself is absolutely massive. It's awesome but also a curse at the same time. Live and learn.
Knowing now what I did not know 4 years ago, would I have done things differently? Absolutely.
A LOT of things would have been completely different if I were to start fresh now. That's why I want to give it another go with a completely new game.

What's a bit different now though is that - thanks to our supporters - I've been able to build a small team out of the whole journey. But that also means I can't chill for too long as the bills are continuous.

It's a dream that came true and I'm truly thankful. I hope that the next game will be interesting enough.

Our Community:
We've met so many amazing people who made all this work a lot more fun. Every time someone wrote a nice comment or donated anything, it made me truly happy. Your feedback has always been a huge motivator to continue working on the game.

From the beginning of the game we've kept a close eye on comments, feedback, bug reports, and even complaints. We've literally fixed all of them as soon as they were pointed out in record times. While we have a solid bug-testing team, the only way the game can be perfect is to have everyone who encounters something strange, something wrong, or a game-breaking error to let us know so we can track it down and fix it.

If you find something out of order, a bug, something glitchy or anything else that's out of the ordinary, please send a screenshot or a small summary through a comment, message or Discord.

Sometimes we are instantly aware of such an issue, but if there is not enough detail in how it happened, we can't solve the problem. Knowledge is power. Sharing is caring.

Without all of you, we would not be here, 4 years later, releasing the final update.

Almost There:
Anyway, my almost final message is this:

Please be nice to small time game developers. Especially those who make content for free, just for your entertainment.
I mean, none of us are major game companies making scummy microtransaction games or charging $40+ a pop to play something you may not even like.

Lewd Town Adventures is a free game made by 2 people. Many games are made by solo devs working long hours for almost no recognition. It baffles us why someone would spend their time writing solely negative garbage out of anger or spite.

My Final Message:
Thank you very much everyone for playing the game. Thank you for all of the support you've given us, for the feedback, bug reports... We are so appreciative of being able to connect with you, sharing jokes, fixing problems, and enjoying the time we have spent together... and everything else.

It's all been quite the experience.

During this final release, the game is in a better state than it ever was. Basically everything I personally wasn't happy about has been visually upgraded, fixed, or improved.

I can now proudly say - for the first time ever - after all this time in development: Enjoy the game that Xo Mo and I fully stand behind.

Could the game be better? It can always be better, it can always be improved.
Will we ever come back to Lewd Town? Who knows? The future is always in motion. Plans change. Life is unpredictable.

Perhaps we'll expand on a few character stories in the game sometime in the future...

Nobody knows what the future holds. We can only hope it will be awesome so we can keep expanding and making games.

Thank you for everything, everyone. See you when we see you.

Lastly v1.0.1 will come out within a few days solving the following issues:

Bug fixes among others:
- Fixed a crash on one of the Good Path endings.
- The Madame du Barry scene was not working properly making her endings skip.
- A Good Path Sophia event could trigger on the Dark Path.
- An early game Sophia showed incorrect images, fixed.
- Dr. Charlotte showed an incorrect ending.
- The gallery now displays the correct name that the player chose.
Dozens of inconsistency fixes, typos, and other small stuff like missing music, photoshop etc.

So long, farewell, take care, and stay lewd!
P.S. the next post will be an announcement for the new game.
One spoiler though; the MC will never ever have a controversial look or start ever again.Stay tuned!

Jam & Xo