h0eding0

New Member
Sep 30, 2024
4
9

Moedoe

Newbie
Jul 13, 2019
81
477
Development results for 2024

vor 4 Stunden

Hello, Wizards and Witches!

As 2024 draws to a close, we wanted to reflect on an eventful year in the world of Innocent Witches. Together with you, we’ve achieved quite a lot (considering the circumstances), even though it was not as much as we wanted to. Let’s take a moment to look back on the major new additions and other game-related events!

This year we released several new game updates, including a major release and two themed ones for Halloween and Christmas. Players were treated to funny and whimsical stories, new costumes, and other delightful additions that made these events engaging and memorable.

Interactive events were a big highlight of the year.

In our D&D (interactive adventure) event, the fans managed to reach one "normal" and two bad endings. Unfortunately, those voting via VK fell just short of victory, but their involvement made the event thrilling and fun.

The Miss Hogwarts 2024 contest was another great moment, sparking lots of excitement. The winner, Luna Lovegood, charmed players with her delightful personality and earned their admiration.

We also launched a regular speedpaint series, sharing the creative process behind the visual elements of the game crafted by our talented artists. Over the year, we released 18 speedpaints in total showcasing art such as new character costumes and miniatures for locations, potion-making items, additions to the abandoned toilet, and even a Chocolate Frog.

This year also included a lot of attention to music. Numerous new tracks were composed for new and existing locations and characters with love and attention to details. We also released the game’s official soundtrack, so that you could enjoy its magical melodies anytime.

And of course, we focused heavily on enhancing the game in general. We squashed dozens of bugs, updated some of the elements for the game’s interface, refined the screenshot mechanics, and improved performance. Special attention went to the Android version, making it more stable and user-friendly for mobile players.

We also understand and acknowledge the frustration the players experience, which was caused by the lack of content, as well as quite a slowdown in the frequency of the game’s updates. We share this frustration with you and do everything we can to mitigate all the internal (and external) problems that inevitably lead to the state we are now. However, we’re not planning to stop. We take each new problem as yet another challenge and a reason to continue working on the game, especially considering your enormous love for it, which we also share with you. As a result, we will try to push for more releases in 2025 by planning the whole process better. We want to optimize the size of the major patches in such a way that they are released more frequently. In order to achieve it we will have some of the art ready ahead of the next release so that there’s always something to work with already before the patch is released. We will also need to optimize the text side of the new chapters so that it’s more concise and less bulky. Finally, we still have a lot of unused content from the old plot, which will also help in filling the release with content.

A massive thank you to everyone who supports us on this journey. Your feedback, help, and enthusiasm continue to inspire us to achieve even more. We can’t wait for 2025 to dive back into this magical adventure together with you. New year will bring more content with your beloved witches, as well as new chapters in the story and other juicy stuff. Stay tuned for more!

See you next year in the enchanting world of Innocent Witches.

Happy New Year! ❄

Yours truly,
The Sad Crabs ✨
 
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paragan

Newbie
Feb 18, 2018
61
64
Development results for 2024

vor 4 Stunden

Hello, Wizards and Witches!

As 2024 draws to a close, we wanted to reflect on an eventful year in the world of Innocent Witches. Together with you, we’ve achieved quite a lot (considering the circumstances), even though it was not as much as we wanted to. Let’s take a moment to look back on the major new additions and other game-related events!

This year we released several new game updates, including a major release and two themed ones for Halloween and Christmas. Players were treated to funny and whimsical stories, new costumes, and other delightful additions that made these events engaging and memorable.

Interactive events were a big highlight of the year.

In our D&D (interactive adventure) event, the fans managed to reach one "normal" and two bad endings. Unfortunately, those voting via VK fell just short of victory, but their involvement made the event thrilling and fun.

The Miss Hogwarts 2024 contest was another great moment, sparking lots of excitement. The winner, Luna Lovegood, charmed players with her delightful personality and earned their admiration.

We also launched a regular speedpaint series, sharing the creative process behind the visual elements of the game crafted by our talented artists. Over the year, we released 18 speedpaints in total showcasing art such as new character costumes and miniatures for locations, potion-making items, additions to the abandoned toilet, and even a Chocolate Frog.

This year also included a lot of attention to music. Numerous new tracks were composed for new and existing locations and characters with love and attention to details. We also released the game’s official soundtrack, so that you could enjoy its magical melodies anytime.

And of course, we focused heavily on enhancing the game in general. We squashed dozens of bugs, updated some of the elements for the game’s interface, refined the screenshot mechanics, and improved performance. Special attention went to the Android version, making it more stable and user-friendly for mobile players.

We also understand and acknowledge the frustration the players experience, which was caused by the lack of content, as well as quite a slowdown in the frequency of the game’s updates. We share this frustration with you and do everything we can to mitigate all the internal (and external) problems that inevitably lead to the state we are now. However, we’re not planning to stop. We take each new problem as yet another challenge and a reason to continue working on the game, especially considering your enormous love for it, which we also share with you. As a result, we will try to push for more releases in 2025 by planning the whole process better. We want to optimize the size of the major patches in such a way that they are released more frequently. In order to achieve it we will have some of the art ready ahead of the next release so that there’s always something to work with already before the patch is released. We will also need to optimize the text side of the new chapters so that it’s more concise and less bulky. Finally, we still have a lot of unused content from the old plot, which will also help in filling the release with content.

A massive thank you to everyone who supports us on this journey. Your feedback, help, and enthusiasm continue to inspire us to achieve even more. We can’t wait for 2025 to dive back into this magical adventure together with you. New year will bring more content with your beloved witches, as well as new chapters in the story and other juicy stuff. Stay tuned for more!

See you next year in the enchanting world of Innocent Witches.

Happy New Year! ❄

Yours truly,
The Sad Crabs ✨
Long story short: we stuck in "development hell" but as long as we are paid - it does not really matter ...
 

anikon

Newbie
Dec 22, 2017
83
144
TBF, this is the first development update I can remember from them where they aknowledge that the progress has been really slow
 

Scorby

Newbie
Nov 12, 2022
18
100
TBF, this is the first development update I can remember from them where they acknowledge that the progress has been really slow
I'm pretty sure that slow progress has been the recurring theme with sad crab for years and this would be far from the first time they've acknowledged it directly. It's normally been followed up by the release of a new road map which they only manage to complete the first step or two, one-two years late.

I've followed this game since about 2017 (was even a patron for a couple years) and the criticism has largely been the same during that entire time, namely the lack of content and progression over very long development cycles. They've also revamped/reset the project at least three times now, actively taking steps back each time and normally replacing the old content with something on that's on par or worse.

What's worse is that a constant point of feedback from the audience has been "focus on, and progress the content for the main girls", but instead the majority of the limited amount of new content that has been released over the years has been on side characters, extending the cast, grindy side quests, holiday events and minigames. When they do actually release new content focused around the main cast, it's either underwhelming, leaves you with blue balls, forgotten about or dropped, or jumps all the way to end game content like sex with little or no narrative build up or anticipation. I don't think this merits being classified and progressive content as its skipping over the meat of what makes these games enjoyable in the first place. I think that latter was probably a new jerk reaction to the constant backlash about the lack of focus around the main cast, so they developed some scenes with a tepid acknowledgement that there needs to be a narrative reason to skip straight to something like sex when the character at hand is barely comfortable with accidental/partial nudity. It seems the new content is solely there justify claims of progress and pad out the game whilst failing to address the underlying criticism and problem. They're focused on the icing, not the cake.

The art has always been great, everyone recognizes that, and good art takes time. The long development cycles would be understandable were they just slowly pushing out content and progressing the narrative of the main cast. Where this game's development falls apart is with project management and writing. They keep focusing on side content no one seems to want (they seem to have a particular hard on for the house elf and Minerva) to pad out the game and redeveloping content that just served as a vehicle to get to the next step with the main cast in the first place.

The project has been going in circles for years now, occasionally making some progress and moving forward, but more often that not either circling in place with side content or taking a step back with resets. It been at least two-three years since the first implementation of the "new plot" was introduced (they changed direction with the new plot at least once since then), and we're still haven't' caught up to where we were in terms of progression with the main cast. This even after considering that the old plot seemed to be taking inspiration from AWAM and dragged progression on at a snails pace to begin with, (we had only just started to get nudity after hours of quest text and multiple years of development before the axed the old plot).

Like most developers who struggle in this space I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt. I don't think they're intentionally milking or trying to screw over their audience, I think they're probably just struggling with basic aspects of project management, and in their defense project management is hard. Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance. I think it's more likely they've just bitten off more than they can they chew and haven't learned or managed to adapt yet. I genuinely hope they do, because the base elements of this game, namely the art and presentation, are amongst the best in this space, but given it's been years of this now, I don't hold out much confidence anymore.
 
Last edited:

GlaFo

Member
Aug 27, 2017
153
142
Doubt it, wouldn't be the first creator(s) that have 'milking their patreons' as a business model instead of 'making games'.
 
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3.00 star(s) 331 Votes