Found and fixed several bugs preventing the contact form from working. Hopefully, members and guests alike will be able to contact us via the form now. If it fails, the email address is listed on the contact page under the form pop-up for logged-in members.

When we first started this site, the intention was always to be free, but the reality of maintaining a website is that there are costs associated with both maintenance and content production. In order to offset those costs, the site needs to generate revenue.

The first way we did this was with non-invasive banner ads. No pop-ups, pop-unders, redirects, just simple banner ads above and below the main content. However, the technology of ad-blocking software and the popularity of its use in order to protect users from those extremely invasive ad-spamming sites resulted in our ads being blocked pretty much all the time. As a result, revenue from ads was literally non-existent. So we implemented the paid membership, that unlocks additional content and provides an ad-free experience.

Part of the problem of that was that the people who weren't subscribing still got an ad-free experience thanks to their ad-blocking software. So, we've now implemented an ad-blocking detection script that will literally replace page content with an error page indicating that an ad-blocker was detected and requests that the user either disable their blocker for our site or subscribe. We tested this method and it only works if the ads on our site are actually blocked and has no effect if a user is logged-in with an active paid subscription.

While we'd rather not have to resort to this tactic, we feel fully justified in our actions and hope that our readers will understand why we went this route.

We also fixed 2 bugs: the first a missing endtag that prevented the Ad-blocker warning from appearing on the news page and causing other issues associated with the page, and secondly fixing a broken link to the contact form that was displayed on the main page. (About Us)

I wanted to take the opportunity to use this update as a reflection on the previous year. One year ago, I took the website cyoea.com which has always been my passion project - a place to find erotic stories but with a focus on choose-your-own adventure style stories. Since it was always a hobby and not a job, the project had always been shelved whenever other work came along. I wanted to take some time out and give it some proper focus and improve on it. I was also getting more into Adult Visual Novels and thought the concept would translate well. I started coming up with an engine design to make web-based AVNs. I also knew that without dedicated funding, the project would just end up being shelved again like usual. So I decided to seek funding to justify the time commitment. While working on the game engine and simultaneously revamping the website, I started two funding campaigns: Kickstarter and Patreon. I also started to try and market the campaigns through various message boards and social media to get exposure for the campaigns. In the end, the Kickstarter campaign was moderately successful while the Patreon campaign was a complete bust.

As part of the requirements to use Patreon, we created a patreon-only section and provided bonus content for it. After it was clear that Patreon was a bust, we cancelled that campaign and converted the patreon section into a section available to platinum-level subscribers. The section is host to a handful of behind-the-scenes images of concept art and early programming as well as a section that reviews other AVNs created and playable on the Android OS. These other free games are available to download through various third-parties but typically laced with ad mazes to get to the actual download. So we've made it easy with an ad-free method to download the latest version of the games along with a review. The games themselves have been updated a couple times along the way and we try to replace the current version we have with the latest version available every so often. A part of today's update includes an update to this list with a couple new entries as well.

The Kickstarter campaign came to a close just as the world was being rocked by COVID-19. At this time, the game engine was in final stages of completion the story outline was created, work was started on the story dialog and the main characters were being modelled all while more and more 3D assets were being collected. Everything was on-track and looking great. Then, as mentioned, we were hit with a global pandemic. Now, for the sake of transparency, I have, on occasion, had help and contributions from others but the site and this project is about 99% completed all by myself, so the success of the project relies heavily on the time I have to devote to it. When I began the project, I was self-employed and had significant down-time that I could devote to working on this and other projects. When the pandemic hit, my business was effected. At first, it was actually a good thing. Being forcibly closed, I had a lot of spare time to devote to the project. Government subsidies allowed for hardware upgrades that lead to faster render times and everything seemed to be fine. Then two things happened. First, a hard-drive failure caused all the previous character models to be lost. This meant the loss of several months worth of work and an anticipated set-back of about 3 months. Eventually, we caught back up and put safeguards in place to prevent a repeat of the situation. Then the bad news. My business was closed. Not because it was forced to close, but because the clients never came back, rent was going up, and all the savings were used up while we were shut-down. After having closed the business, I was forced to find a new day-job and the jobs available required a lot more time and the time available to work on the project was significantly reduced.

That said, significant progress was made. After several rewrites to get a better feel for the pace, a switch back to writing the 4 storylines in parallel was made and currently the first two days are dialog-complete for each character. On the rendering front, the first scene is complete and work has begun on the second scene. Issues that came up have been resolved and a lot of lessons learned. A focus was switched to complete character modelling and, as of today, all the characters have their AI scripts written, are fully modelled and rigged. That's a total of 98 Characters currently. Keep in mind, that most AVNs usually have around 10 characters total. That should give you an idea of the sheer scale of the project. Now that the character creation process is complete, a shift of focus will begin to get the scenes created and rendered and start adding the visual elements to the story. As for the story itself, here's a brief synopsis:

There are 4 planned scenarios. Each scenario is essentially telling the story from the perspective of a different family within the same overarching storyline. Within each Scenario, we have the option to choose the main character that the story is being told from their perspective. The scenarios will be done one at a time and the initial scenario will focus on the Baker Family. The character options include the Father, Mother, Son, and Middle-Daughter. The family has two other children, the eldest and youngest children, both daughters. The father is a massage therapist and his storyline revolves around running a high-end spa. The eldest daughter is out of school and looking for a job. Her storyline mostly revolves around working at the local mall. The mother is a teacher and the son is a student. Their storylines revolve around the school and are closely intertwined. The stories are designed to allow for a wide variety of options and sexual fetishes. There will be some options that will allow for more negative gameplay, but those will typically come at a steep price that may lead to characters spiraling towards a game-over scenario. The story

takes place over the course of a semester of school, starting just before the beginning of the term in mid-September and ending at new-years. This seemed to be a good amount of time for the desired pace and the number of different scenarios we wanted to subject the characters to. Since the family is the focus, there are a lot of opportunities to engage in incestual activities, but we did want to make sure that most subjects were optional, so there's usually a way to avoid everything, including incest and if you evade a fetish enough, the options for it will disappear and the focus will shift more towards themes you've been more open to. The focus is on you being able to CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE, after all.

I hope the take-a-way you get form this is that, although progress has often seemed slow, progress is steadily being made and work will continue despite the things going on in the outside world. I want to thank you all for your support through this project and look forward to the new year and continued progression.