This game has a fairly sizeable audience on here (although it feels like half of you hate the game haha) so I'm going to elaborate on what's happening with it for people who don't really follow me closely.
So, Naked Ambition has always been a game with a specific goal in mind, to portray the feeling and emotion of being a close friend/parent to someone and trying to help them get through a tying time. But you don't control that person, they make their own decisions, they're their own person. The card system has some flaws that I'm changing for Clothed Ambition, but it's a fairly good way of abstracting that. However, Naked Ambition always had one major flaw...
This is a TERRIBLE basis for a porn game. In general, porn is something people want maximum agency over. Waiting to get to the good stuff is one thing, but having the base mechanics of the game make it so some scenes just won't happen because the Princess doesn't feel like it? Well, let's just say not ideal. So why did I do this system? Well frankly because I cared more about the feeling and story then the ease of getting off to it.
That brings us to why I put Naked Ambition on hold. I'll be honest, the storm of negativity about this game makes it hard to get motivation to work on it but that's not really the fundamental reason. The reason is that working on it feels kind of like a waste now that Clothed Ambition is basically a certainty. I wouldn't call the TF Card Battle -> The Monster Within conversion a huge financial success, but it wasn't a failure (and it's not out of early access until the end of the month, maybe it will make lots of money in the end). But it's way more of a success then it would have been if I had just made the SFW game first with no association to the porn one. So here I am with a game that has lots of writing, art, and a unique gameplay system that fulfills my goals fairly well but is anathema to the pornographic element.
So... just take the porn out, right? It'll take lots of rewrites, lots of new and changed content, but it should work. But it does make working on the sexy content feel redundant, because I'm going to remove it anyway. But wait, there's a solution to that lack of motivation. Financial incentive. See, if I really want the Naked Ambition audience to give Clothed Ambition a big boost, I can't leave the game lingering in limbo, otherwise people might forget about it. I need to finish it for that sweet, sweet, synergy. At least that's the plan anyway. I'll be honest, making games is a huge slog. There's endless work to do, and as much as I enjoy the process making sure I finish them involves a lot of finding new ways to motivate myself. So here's to hoping this one works.
To everyone who loves Naked Ambition, I 100% intend to finish it and I have plans for Clothed Ambition that should make it a much better game in the end. For everyone who hates Naked Ambition, man you people sure are good at killing my motivation to work on it but I'll overcome it. No promises on timelines, but I want Clothed Ambition to be done by the end of 2023, so Naked Ambition should be complete sometime before that.