April 2025 Update: What A Month!
Happy April, everyone! The weather is finally pretty again! I went to our local cherry blossom festival this weekend and it was lovely! I got an okonomiyaki and watched some taiko drumming! Let’s get into the update!
Monstrous Liberation Launch Update
Let’s start by answering the question that I’m sure is at the forefront of everyone’s minds: how did the Monstrous Liberation launch go? The answer: pretty darn well! In terms of gross sales, MonLib performed about THREE TIMES as well as Opportunity did in its first 30 days! The launch went especially well on Itch, where the game spent several full days at the top of all of the storefront’s porn-game-oriented charts. I’d like to shout out a few people:
Our publisher, TinyHat, for working as hard as they did to make sure everything about the launch went as well as possible!
Fellow TinyHat-published developer BBBen for agreeing to bundle his game, Lord Goblin, up with MonLib!
Tasha over at Itch for her speedy response to some early technical issues we were having!
The game performing well at launch is obviously enormously relieving and highly encouraging - as an indie developer, you’re often toiling away for years at a time in the desperate hope that what you’re making will be well-received, and it’s always nice to get material positive reinforcement. Beyond that, the significant influx of cash from the launch can now be turned around into better compensation for Pacha and myself, as well as bringing on other contributors to reduce workload and improve the final quality of Monstrous Liberation! Here’s what we’ve currently got in the works on that front:
As promised, Pacha is now being paid significantly more, a 50% increase from her previous monthly rate.
I’m also now paying myself a modest monthly stipend, which is a very nice change of pace.
While the demands of Julian’s day job unfortunately won’t allow them to come on and help with CGs like we were hoping, I’m happy to announce that I’ve managed to secure the services of ANOTHER wonderful artist (more details about who it is in a later update). This artist will be taking some of the art work off of Pacha’s eternally-overloaded plate, which will come as a tremendous relief to her. Julian will still be working on UI art as needed!
We’ve also brought on another talented artist, Gil Rodrigo, to replace all of MonLib’s blurred-photo backgrounds with hand-drawn art! You can see one such example above!
Another artist, who Opportunity fans might recognize as the creator of that game’s UI art, has been contracted to build out some marketing-ready art assets for us to use in the future!
Finally, I’ve been communicating with an excellent musician about creating original music for the game! While MonLib will still rely heavily on royalty-free and off-the-shelf tracks, I’m very much looking forward to the game having a small selection of bespoke compositions that can be deployed at especially impactful moments. Looking forward to bringing you more updates about this!
All in all, it was an extremely promising launch, and we’re looking forward to filling out the game with even more content! Which brings us to…
Monstrous Liberation Work
Our target for the first major content update to Monstrous Liberation is July 2025. Of course, we might not MAKE this date (the challenges of game development being what they are), but that’s our goal. The update will grant players access to the Garrison District and three new monsters to liberate, along with an advancement to the main story and a bunch of new side content! Finally, we’ll be adding a CG gallery feature, as it’s been requested by several players.
Over on my end, a lot of what I’ve done this month was related to the launch - there was a lot of promotional work to be done in the first week, lots of posting and reposting links, lots of keeping up with forums and e-mails, that kind of thing. And then there was also a lot of communication to be done with new collaborators, as detailed above! Every new person who comes on to the project needs their own set of documentation and reference, after all. Between all that, I’ve also managed to do some writing for the update’s script, which now stands at about 6,000 words (about 15% of the projected count). The introduction to the Garrison District has been completed, and I’ve moved on to Regla’s storyline.
Pacha’s been busy this month! Firstly, she polished off the final sprites for our last new character: Willowswitch, the blacksmith! He’s an elf! Definitely an elf! He SAYS he’s an elf, so an elf he has to be!
But that’s not all! Pacha also completed the first of the update’s new full-length sex scenes, the first panel of which you can see above! We’re off to the races!
Adult Analysis Anthology Fundraiser
Monstrous Liberation wasn’t the only thing that launched in the last month! We’re now halfway through the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to produce the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology! The campaign has been going well so far - we’re currently at 63% of our goal! That being said, it’s been several days since we’ve received any new contributions, so if you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality long-form writing about adult games and adult game culture, please head on over to the campaign page and pitch in! Every little bit helps!
Personal Health Update
There’s nothing new on the blog this month apart from announcement posts about the Monstrous Liberation and AAA3 fundraiser launches, and the main reason for that is that I had to get my gall bladder removed as an emergency procedure in early April. I’d been scheduled to have it removed in a couple of months, but my symptoms took a turn for the terrible over the course of the first week of April and the folks at the hospital opted to yank it out without delay. While I’m very relieved to finally have the wretched thing out of me at last (it had been giving me grief for over a year), surgery is still surgery and I’m very much still recovering and will be for the next few weeks. I really dislike sitting around doing nothing and am anxious to get back up to speed, so hopefully by the next update I’ll have a lot more to report blog-wise!
The Consumption Stumption
Watching: Along with a gang of rowdy friends via Discord, I’ve started making my way through Sunrise Studios’ seminal work, Visions of Escaflowne! This shit RIPS. The bulky, weirdly organic mechs? The arresting Yoko Kanno soundtrack? The world’s shittiest little villain? The brotherly tension? The angel wings? Merle, the greatest catgirl in existence? We used to make REAL anime, man.
Reading: I spent about 21 hours in the hospital emergency department waiting to find out if and when my gall bladder was going to be taken out, but at least I brought along Becky Chambers’s The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet, one of my all-time favorite books. TLWTASAP is kind of like a book-length episode of several of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation you’ve ever seen, if Star Trek: The Next Generation was about a modestly-dysfunctional interstellar road crew. There are very few universes that feel like they work as seamlessly as Chambers’s, and my only gripe with this book every time I re-read it is that it isn’t longer.
Wrapping Up
That does it for April’s update! Also, I guess I’ve been doing this newsletter for over a year at this point! When I started, Cohost was still alive (RIP) and now a lot of things are different! If you haven’t yet, please check out Monstrous Liberation on Steam or Itch, and once again, please show some love to the AAA3 fundraiser! As always, thank you so much for following BP Games and enjoying the things we create! See you next month!