Hello everyone.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season; the team wishes you all the best with your friends and family. I know we promised there would be news from us every Monday, but last week the team and I took a little vacation to enjoy the holidays with our families, and also to recharge our batteries so we can work hard on the game!

We know that the game may be missing NSFW content and that there are still many details to be polished to make the game more fun and hotter, but we truly believe that this new alpha already reflects our vision for the future of what we want the game to be.

This update is important to us because there are some announcements that we want to make public, but before we start with that topic, why don't we talk about what's new in Forbidden Den?

CHANGES LIST:

• We have expanded the building, now you can put in more services without feeling crowded.
• Kiiro has finished the artwork for Laura's scene in the Bar, although this was redone given the past controversy, Kiiro reworked the drawings and gave them a higher visual quality than they had previously.
• Chit-chat System, we have been working on a system that allows the player to chat with the main characters of the game. At the moment you can only access to some basic dialogues of Laura, but the intention is to extend this mechanism so you can have more interesting conversations with Diego's friends and even know anecdotes, preferences and hobbies.
• We have added some basic decisions to the existing scenes, we want the game to have a bit more interactivity during the scenes so we have added a few decisions that, at the moment, have no consequence beyond seeing a unique dialogue.
• We have tweaked the interface to give it a little more consistency, as well as added a sound to the targets to improve the feedback to the player.
• We have added a couple of decorations, we know that the decoration system is still very rudimentary, but we have added a few more that will help us to improve the system.
• TONS OF BUG FIXES.
• You can now skip dialogues quickly by left-clicking and moving the mouse, this thanks to the guys who work at Dialogic.
• We balanced the tycoon gameplay a bit.

After mentioning the changes in this update, I would like to announce something important for the project.

As you can probably imagine, the 3 of us involved in the development of Forbidden Den have a main job to be able to pay the rent, in the case of Kiiro, he makes commissions and drawings for other projects so he can only dedicate a few hours a day, sometimes none, to the project. Aleri  works as a developer at another studio, and I have 2 jobs to sustain this project and my life hehe. This obviously makes the speed at which we put out new content slow. Additionally, I sometimes don't have enough money to pay Aleri and Kiiro for their work and we find ourselves in the need to stop the progress of the project.

Given this situation we want to make public the roadmap that shows our intention to continue and expand the project. The roadmap art was made by me because Kiiro was busy, I am not a graphic designer.

I will begin to explain each of the points that I believe need to be explained.

We consider that $200 is enough for us to continue with the project using our free time as this amount shows that there is enough interest and support to continue. Our goal of raising $200 to continue with the game does not have a deadline per se, but I have saved enough resources to keep the project going for at least 5 more months (end of May). As we advance in our goal this supposed "deadline" can be modified since we really do this for passion and not for money (although nobody denies that making a living from this would be like a dream come true).

At $250 we want to create a system to add new floors and basements to the club to add additional space for the new services we already have planned (many of them NSFW but I will talk about that later).

At $300 we want to add an "affinity system" that allows the player to earn "affinity points" through dialogue decisions. This will give the player access to rewards such as new scenes, nudes, buffs or even unique services (the rewards are still being planned to be fun and worthwhile to improve the affinity with a character in the game so the latter may change in the future).

At $400 we will be able to hire Kiiro part time (4 hours per day from Monday to Friday) so he can move faster with the drawings and resources the game requires. 

At $550 we will be able to create an achievement system for the game. This system will be quite basic, players will unlock NSFW pictures by completing certain requirements. What we plan to do to give a twist to our achievement system (and so Kiiro can work on the game scenes) is to hire different artists to make NSFW pictures of the characters in the game, we think this way it will be fun and interesting to get these achievements.

If we manage to obtain more resources, the roadmap will change to add new rewards for the support obtained. We would love in the future to hire a native English speaker to help us to correct and/or write the dialogues, maybe a new artist to advance faster with the development of the game and someone with UI/UX experience so that the game has a better presentation and experience.

We don't want to make anyone feel obligated to support us, the game is and will remain free until we finish the development of it. So, if you don't have the possibility to help us financially, don't worry! Spreading the word is more than enough.

Since we have already talked about the roadmap, let's talk about what we have planned for the future.

I have finished writing the second draft of the main plot of the game so I will talk a little about it so you can get an idea of things to come in the future.  Note: All the new characters mentioned below will arrive in the game just by reaching $200.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Diego, with the help of Dominic, will meet a gang who can tell them who is behind his father's kidnapping. This group is led by Imani Muhire (new character, a tough woman of African origin). Imani will indicate who the kidnapper is until Diego performs favors for her to gain her trust. (We plan to add simple infiltration minigames and other things like that.).

In one of these infiltrations, he will rescue the younger sister of a leader of another gang of Korean origin. This girl's name is Hana and she will be important so that Diego can find the whereabouts of her father and rescue him.

While all this is happening, we want to continue with Laura's plot, we want her to focus completely on exploring her sexuality. Her plot will be our way to touch any fetish we have in mind. 

For Claire we have something more "artistic" planned, she is a more reserved and quieter girl. We would like to explore the world of artistic nudes with her, and at the same time have Diego spend a good time with her. Also, there is a new character that Diego will meet VERY SOON, her name is Lisa, and she is Claire's mother.

Dominic is a character that we will soon introduce to the game, he is the only male romantic interest that Diego can interact with (at least for now since we would like to add another of Korean origin).

Finally, Scarlett is a main character who has not yet appeared in the game but will be the girl who helps Diego and his friends to turn the place from a simple bar into a gentlemen's club full of perversions and promiscuity. I wanted to give it more time for that to happen but we believe that the game is pointless without Forbidden Den becoming a strip club so you will surely see this character in the coming months. (And if Patreon gets enough resources, we may add NSFW minigames related to masseuses, strippers, and more!)

Well, that's it. In short, new characters, new mechanics, new minigames and most importantly MORE NSFW CONTENT.

I really want to emphasize that we do this out of passion, but your support is very important so that we can continue dedicating our time and effort to this project.

If you have any questions or complaints, I am more than available to listen to them in the chitchat channel of our Discord.

Without anything else to add, I hope this update is to your liking. See you next week.

- Brkn Hvn