The Good Ending, aka Pre-Alpha 3.6. (Preview only, mind.)

Hi, folks. As promised, there's no release this week if you're part of the public. This is because I spent two weeks creating and refining the 'good' ending, and I need to make sure my patrons remain ahead of the game. I can, however, give a taste of what you'll get if you become a patron.

The big thing is... the good ending! It has been a long time coming, and it's easily the most expansive of the endings, including the following:

- The resolution of the Soo Cubus story (such as it is)

- Three more boss battles, all of them ridiculous

- A shit-ton of dialogue

- The coming-together of the lovers in a final scene where Soo can have a twosome or a threesome with characters who have definitely never met before

- A sweet scrolling Final Fantasy-esque boss background, and a few references to one game in particular

- Jizz

In addition there's plenty of other goodies crammed in, including a few bug fixes, another ending, another boss (making for a grand total of four new fights in this build), another achievement to go with the ending, new animations for Soo's attacks, and other things I don't remember. I've been working for a good thirteen hours by now so my brain is on the fritz.

The Future

Now I believe is a good time to talk upon the future of the Cubus games. You may have noticed that there is a poll to the right, concluded a while ago, on who should star in the next game. Rest assured that, yes, Mindy is going to be the star of the sequel, and, yes, I'm going to start working on it pretty soon. It'll be bigger, more detailed, and, hopefully, even better than Soo Cubus, a game for which, despite its failings, I have a lot of pride.

Here's the thing, though. In order to provide better builds each release I need more time, and in order to have more time I need to not release a build every danged week. This is especially true since I plan on making the next game higher-res, which will require more drawing time. Here, then, is what's gonna happen:

- I plan on release the first build of the next game, whatever it's gonna be called, on December 2. This build will be for patrons only, because I wanna reward them for being so awesome to me.

- One month after that build (early January) I'll release that build to the public. From that point on I'll start releasing builds every two weeks. Consequently you'll get two builds per month rather than four. This may make many of you frown, but by the end of Soo Cubus people were starting to complain that the builds didn't seem all that different from one another, and this way you'll get more new stuff with each iteration.

- During this time I'll keep releasing builds of Soo Cubus. For all of November I'll continue to polish and refine it while working on the new game, kicking out the bugs and getting everything nice and neat and tidy. It still needs a lot of work, and I want to add more endings / animations / other stuff on top. Once I hit December Soo Cubus builds will come every other week, like the builds of the new game, and I'll probably do one game one week and the other game the next.

Subsequent builds of Soo Cubus are not likely to be substantially different, I'll warn you now. I'm gonna add stuff, yes, but what you see now is what you get, for the most part. Don't come back in three months expecting a different experience.

Soooo yeah, tl;dr: New game starting in December / January, Soo Cubus will keep getting little updates here and there, check out Patreon if you just can't stand not seeing the ending right this moment. You know you can't, you just know.

Pre-Alpha 3.5 / Week off

Howdy doo, fellows. New release ahoy.

The major addition this week was that of the rest of the ability animations, which you can locate most easily via the (now fixed) gallery selections in each of the hooking locations. The new animations are as follows:

- Alley - Chr

- Gas Station - Str and Chr

- Club - Str

- Library - Str

- Jail - Int

Pretty sure that's all of 'em. Let me know if I missed one.

I have also (finally) rejigged how Int affects ability animations. Your chances of getting these scenes doesn't get any higher once your Int moves past 100, which is more than high enough for the average game of Soo Cubus. This should prevent the ability animations from completely eclipsing the other, normal-tier animations.

I also ALSO balanced some of the ability bonuses. They're less game-shattering than they used to be. The result is a slightly less easy street, but still relatively fair, gaming experience. Also made sure they were all accurate to what was being said on the screen, as I know at least one of them simply didn't take away Stamina. (Feel free to correct me on that.)

Other changes:

- Added a New Game Plus mode! Of sorts. I said I wouldn't before, but I came up with a way to make it work that satisfies me. The idea is simple enough: beating the game once will allow you, during stat allocation on your next playthrough, to access an extra menu where you can give Soo bonuses. Each ending provides a unique bonus that makes playing through the game the next time at least a bit easier. Yes, even the 'bad' endings give you bonuses. I'll probably expand on it a bit in the future by adding additional animations unlocked by the endings..

... not to mention more endings period. There are two on there which cannot be unlocked yet (they're 'good' ending endings) so don't worry about it. Right now you can unlock... eleven, off the top of my head...? Pretty sure it's eleven. Will probably try and fill in the entire last row before I finish with Soo Cubus, bringing the total up to eighteen.

Please note that, at the moment, choosing a New Game from the main menu will wipe out the endings you've unlocked. I'm looking into ways to force the game to permanently save those variables without simply reloading the full game each time you open it up. Until I figure that out I suggest you choose Load Game unless you want to start over from scratch.

I've also noticed that the New Game Plus screen is a teensy bit laggy at times. No clue why, but I'll tinker. 

- Finally, FINALLY finished the 'fail' animations. The two added ones aren't amazingly amazing, but hell, they're there. I've also added all of the fail animations to the gallery modes.

- Added a few more cumshots. Ayup.

- Tinkered with assorted bugs that needed to be fixed. You won't get to simply date anyone you like upon restarting immediately, for example, and Sid / Su's cycling animations work again. (Assuming they were broken. Was that this week? I can't even remember anymore...)

Next week will not have a new build, as I made the executive decision (with the help of a poll 'mongst my Patrons) to power through this week, skip a build, and have the ending done for next week. And by ending I mean, of course, the 'good' ending that I've been talking about for a while. It's coming along nicely as of this writing, with a heavy reference to an old SNES RPG, and should be ready on time.

So yeah. You public people are on par with the patrons right now. Only for a week, and you have to wait two weeks for the new release, but... hey. Hey. Don't worry about it, yah? Don't worry about it.

Pre-Alpha 3.4 / 3.5 Preview

There is now a sort of 'limited' gallery mode in the game, as you can cycle through the animations in the various locations. This is a much-requested feature which wound up being a bit easier to do than I anticipated, though it took a hella long time to fully implement. The details:

- For the hookin' spots this only gets unlocked whenever you reach the top tier animations. Look for a small arrow near the cum button. These don't currently include 'substitutions' (as in the three female lovers hopping in to take Soo's place) but they will soon enough.

- Ability-based animations are included, but only the animation for the ability you chose. To see a different ability animation you need to choose that ability in a different game. Any ability animations that don't yet exist currently have a placeholder which I'll remove once I get enough work done.

- You can cycle through the lover animations at their respective houses from the get-go, though two of the animations for each character (date- and item-unlocked animations) will not appear until you've done what needs to be done to make them show up in the first place. Please note that Sid and Su are (as I recall) broken in this regard, and have been fixed for the next update.

- You can also cycle through the landlord animations, including the end-date animations, once you've done something. It's not too difficult to figure out. This also includes the beast sleepover animations, though similar to the ability animations above you can only see one beast per playthrough.

- No cycling through the sewers animations yet. I'll either make a side area for that or leave it for a 'true' gallery mode.

Yep. Besides the limited gallery shiznit there are a few other things:

- For the moment I've removed the music. It made the game too damned big, and I don't think anybody cared anyway. I'll probably put it (or something else) back in once the game is completed. Again, I would like to make an 8-bit-ish soundtrack for the game personally, but that's gonna take a while. I have an ear for music, and can play the guitar, but very little experience actually composing tracks.

Though the .mp3s are gone, the placeholders where the music should be are not. I've simply replaced each track with about one second of silence, and it's looping harmlessly in the background. I've tested the game quite a bit and this doesn't seem to have any ill effects on overall performance, but let me know if things go wonky at all with your audio.

- The cum button cycles back to the beginning of an animation when clicked enough times. This may not work for every animation, keep in mind, and it obviously doesn't do anything for animations that do not have a cumshot animation. I haven't had enough time to fully mess with this so don't expect it to work for absolutely everything in the game, but I'd say 85% - 90% of the time it should work. 

- As more or less the sole graphical thing that got a significant update, the library now looks significantly different. I did this so I can add background peeps, though I didn't have time to make tiny sprites this week. Expect one or two such peoples next week.

- Added checkmarks to the store so you know which items you've already bought without needing to check the status screen.

- Assorted little bug fixes. Didn't have as much time as I would've liked to do this; will probably make more significant inroads next week. There are a fair few bugs I'd like to stomp out.

Pre-Alpha 3.5 fixes a few of the issues above and smooths out the gallery stuff, so if the bugs bother you, I suggest jumping on Patreon and snagging that. As for new content...

Ooo, is that another ability animation? Why, it is! The last of them are in the game! But that's not all...

Hmmm. Those look like... unlockables... almost... almost like... New Game Plus unlockables... (Yes, okay, they're mainly stat boosts for unlocking endings, but... that's pretty sweet, no...?)

Pre-Alpha 3.3.5 / 3.4 Preview

3.3 is a touchup on what I began last week with the dating stuff. The highlights of this update:

- The animations unlocked after successfully completing a date have all been implemented for the six characters. Knock yourselves out.

- The immediately post-date stuff has been completed as well. Those of you who dated the women probably saw some interesting animations with the landlord; you can see them for every NPC now, assuming the landlord is still kickin' it human-style.

- Along those same lines, Amelia has some extra animations with the landlord - though they come at a cost. Assuming the two are set up, have a look around the hookin' areas. (I might add more of these animations later. You'll see what I mean.)

- Fixed a few minor issues with dating. Actors should not go flying all over the place anymore near the end of the date, for example. Let me know if this issue persists for anyone.

- Added sounds to more of the pre-existing animations. Not all, but a fair amount. Should get them all sounded-up within the next week or two.

- Sew is still chopped off at the waist during the date. Just remembered I forgot to fix that. Dammit!

- Probably other stuff I've forgotten. Worked a bit on some sound bugs; not 100% sure if they've been resolved, but there should at least be fewer problems.

This brings us to the month of October, which will likely be the last month where you see any substantial content-related additions to Soo Cubus. The game is almost done in terms of gameplay, and just needs a lot of polishing. I'll continue to do this on a regular basis.

3.4? Patreon? Not too much new content, but there's substantially greater access to the old stuff. That's right, there's a form of limited gallery mode now, as you can cycle through the animations you've unlocked once you reach the top 'tier' of animations in the hookin' locations. Not EVERYTHING is plugged in - the sewers still need work - but for the most part, everything you wanna see, you can see. Y'know, if you throw money at me. Enjoy!