4MinuteWarning

Trick Or Treat?

Happy Hallowe'en, a blessed Samhain, and Merry Spoopmas! Irrelevant Art has a special present for you all.

State Of The Realm: July

Hail, conquerors! I am learning from the last State Of The Realm post and getting this one in early, in the soothing wake of an update, before I am inevitably swept up in the riptide of pre-release activity.

This month I will be monomaniacally focused, alongside our lead writer Mattrex, in getting things in position for the upcoming major update - version 5.1.0. That means our remaining faction catchups, the rest of the court events, and (dependent on p...

State Of The Realm: May

Hail to all you draconic kings (and queens, and other assorted monarchs)! This month’s State Of The Realm is a little later than usual - I am still catching up from an extremely industrious couple of months in terms of getting releases done, and my administrative tasks are lagging behind. If you're waiting on a reply to any messages, please bear with me!

A lot of my other efforts this last month have been focused around sound. It has always been my ambition to have a fully an...

4MinuteWarning Has Left The Building

This weekend saw the very hefty release of version 5.0.5 (available through all our usual channels). We are now firmly outside the shadow of the Act V transition - and into the territory of all the exciting things we want to do with it. These next few months will feature more faction catchups, more appearances from minor characters, more Dreamweaver scenes, more new and revamped art, more voice acting, and ultimately our glorious close for Act V Chapter 1.

But...

State Of The Realm: March

It has been a month of intense ups and downs, back here in the smut factories. Our sound director and good friend Spam passed unexpectedly, and we’ve taken a short while to find our bearings again. He is succeeded by a kindly group of volunteers: HereToHelp as coordinator, Mokkel and GerdGenus as engineers, and GreyScale as SFX artist. Together, we will finish the work that he was so eager to complete.

State Of The Realm: January

We did it! A year’s background work, plus three months’ crunch, and we’ve turned the page into Act V. December’s build is the biggest update we’ve ever done, in word count and file size and technical scope, and I hope you’re enjoying the hunt for all its many possibilities. On my side, I have been catching up on sleep, and getting the team ready for our next major undertaking - which is to finish what we’ve now begun.

Our first priority is to deliver the content that we wa...

State Of The Realm: December

Ah, the curse of H-development! I’m not going to lie, it has been a rocky month or two for those of us tending the smut-engines. Both of my co-editors were struck down by multiple woes, which has squeezed our pipeline considerably. But if you’re thinking this is a preamble to announce a delay, you’d be wrong - we still plan to launch on the 29th December, assuming I can avoid whatever meteors are headed my way. Doing anything of note has always required making rude gest...

Background Art Preview: The Lairs

Our splash artist Undoodle, who you'll know from the amazing action art for Maelys's fight and Balthorne's showdown, has turned her hand to landscape art - a beautiful trifecta of backgrounds for our various potential lairs. You can enjoy these in our upcoming major update, due for release this weekend.

Art Preview: More Than A Mouthful

Another week, another magnificent sequence from Lubbio! We take a brief break from our upcoming content to see how Darja is getting on with the kobolds. Looks like she's doing just great!

Art Preview: Adoption

Today's art preview is just a little snippet of a much larger image, but I hope it showcases the amazing detail that Lubbio is putting into his work. You can look forward to (a lot) more of this, and of Marie-Anne, in our next update.

Art Preview: Blood Runs Thicker

Some of you will be excited to catch up with a certain obscure character, sometimes called Malice, in Act V. The good news is that she's excited to catch up with you, too. Thank you to Lubbio for this exceptional sixteen-image set, ready to go with Mattrex's multi-variant scene.

Scene Art Preview: Holiness

Our ongoing push to elevate our art takes many forms. Another is adding new images to our existing scenes - like this lovely pair for Chanwe, courtesy of Lubbio. They make a fine before and after, I think.

Splash Art WIP: Maelys's Showdown

In other great news, Undoodle is back! Her next big showpiece is going to be the confrontation with Maelys at the end of Act III. We don't normally share sketches from early in the development process, but there is such a cool variety of compositions that I figured you might like to see some of them. You can look forward to the finished version in the next couple of months!

Scene Art Preview: Redoubled Conviction

As if new scenes and old remasters aren't enough, Lubbio is also extending our repertoire of fate scenes! Here, Chanwe proves her faith after being despatched on a hol(e)y mission to the kobolds.

Scene Art Preview: Queenly Behaviour

Getting art lined up for Act V isn't just about putting big tummies on everyone. It's also an opportunity to remaster and unify our style, and that's an opportunity Lubbio has grasped with both hands.

Life Of A Scene

Much has changed since the early days, when it was just me tapping away on commutes and in hotel rooms. Nowadays, a sizeable team of professionals and volunteers are involved with almost every step of the process!

In some cases, this frees up my time to focus it where I need to. In many others, it allows us to push the bar of quality much higher: a scene is much stronger, for example, if you can pool the talents of many contributing writers.

If you'd like a look at the life cycl...

Scene Art Preview: Finish Him Off

Lubbio continues to expand our roster of illustrated fate scenes. Right now, our priority is making sure that every waifu and horde has at least one each - so you can look forward to ones for Chanwe, Naho, and the Proteans in the near future. And this one, for Issa!

State Of The Realm: May

It’s a beautiful time of year, where I am: the weather grows warm, the days grow longer, and my to-do lists grow shorter. Act V has ceased to seem such an insurmountable mountain, and new chunks of it fall into place each week. So how’s it all going?

We’ve finished our first phase of Act V playtesting, and we’re getting ready for our second. Over fifty thousand words (and a hundred new artworks) are in place, with more on the way every day. Those numbers will be...

Scene Art Preview: Purity

Our last update added the option to take Chanwe 'down a different path' during her conversion. Lubbio has been kind enough to oblige us with some beautiful new art variants to match! It's so very kind of the dragon to keep her maidenhood intact.

Character Art WIP: Guardsmen

The court herald is far from the only thing that Irrelevant Art has been working on. He's been redesigning the Realm's guards (and the royal Drakesgard) from the ground up. The finished result isn't quite ready to show just yet - but the design sketches are so good, I wanted to share them with you all.

Character Art Preview: The Herald

Thanks to Irrelevant Art, we now have art for everyone's most beloved* and highly-anticipated** character - the court herald! Seen here in both Act V and Act I incarnations. Spot the difference?

Art Preview: Down In One

Lubbio continues to furnish us with a glorious medley of remastered art, new variations, and - perhaps most excitingly - art for our upcoming scenes in Act V. Including this fabulous opportunity to catch up and down/insert a few pints with Cooch at the local tavern.

May I Offer You An Egg In This Trying Time

Happy Easter / blessed Ostara from Irrelevant Art, and all of us here in the team!

Character Art Preview: Cooch, Pregnant

Thanks to Irrelevant Art, we have the last waifu to experience the joys of pregnancy - Cooch! I say joys, but giving up the booze has clearly not been kind. I'm sure she'll have a lot to say about it when you catch up with her in Act V.

State Of The Realm: March

March is always an exciting month for us - a chance to look backwards, as well as forwards. Because three years ago, I posted our first demo (put together over various commutes and late nights) onto Itch. Two years ago, we had a small but devoted following, and the beginnings of a team. One year ago, I was able to finally shuck the day job and give development the full-time focus it deserves.

But back to the present! This last month saw the return of many team members we had (briefly) l...

Art Preview: Fit For A Countess

An eternal lament of working on a major update is that most of what we do can't be shared with you until it's complete - version 5.0.0 will be released once we have all the necessary waifu interactions and court events ready, and not a moment before.

But fortunately, I can show you some of the art we're getting ready for it! Like this delightful encounter with Mina, beautifully rendered by Lubbio. If you've seen some of the re...

Character Art Preview: Maelys, Knight

In other fantastic news, Irrelevant Art has recovered from the plague, and is back making beautiful illustrations! Such as this, one of Maelys's possible Act V incarnations. Isn't she a beaut?

Art Preview: The Blessings Of Dawn

Lubbio has finished up his first crusade of scene art retouches - the last of which will be included in the upcoming release. That means he's now free to work on the new art for Act V - such as for our newly-converted sun priestess Chanwe.

Character Art Preview: Zizeryx, Remastered

While our writers continue their work on Act V, our artists are continuing to make preparations... and improve on everything we've done before. To give you a little taste, this is a quick before-and-after of Zizeryx, seen here in its original animations - and in its upcoming ones. Kudos to Irrelevant Art for the amazing new character design, and Amon Ra for the step change in vectoring.

Character Art Preview: Malagar, Retouched

Rhyll isn't the only faction leader that's getting a makeover - Irrelevant Art has also been giving a fresh lick of paint to Malagar. Our favourite silver science fox is getting more expressive, more dynamic, and will soon receive an illustrated protean gauntlet as well!