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[nomaxart]

Your one post today that isn't an april fools joke. It's an actual update! #11 to be precise, called Clouds on the horizon!

It's the first update after our first timeskip, so we'll be jumping right to day 12 of the journey, several hundred nautical miles further south and, well, perhaps a little cloudy judging by the name? Only one way to find out! If you like to have more info you can read the devlog over here: https://nomaxart.itch.io/conway/devlog/707731/conway-update-11-is-now-available You can play it for free over here: https://nomaxart.itch.io/conway

[nomaxart]

Color sketch for necropupper

Timelapse on my Patreon 👁️👁️

[nomaxart]

Getting really close to April 1st and the public release of Conway's Update 11. Know another neat new thing that'll come with said Update? Samuel's v2 redesign! I actually quite liked the v1 design, but as I went on to try and sort it out it became clear that it needed a more thorough rework. So here we are, good ol' Sam with the complete makeover. I guess it was bound to happen given that the sprite was the very first one that was finished, and with a story like this it's just difficult to immediately know a character inside and out. So perhaps it was inevitable that the other one wouldn't quite work out anymore, but oh well.

I hope you all enjoy the new look though!

[nomaxart]

One of the illustrated scenes of the Conway Visual Novel. For those of you who just really want to see this guy shirtless, we of course got ways to see exactly that. Even if it may or may not be via the path of lying about your ability to mend his shirt.

Also included are three of our Martime Menagerie Supporters! In clockwise fashion we have: Rubric getting up the shrouds, Tuuwa's Connal underneath that, and then to the left it's Arch's possum character. Massive thank you to all of them, and everyone else who generously supports this project! :) Update 11 is set to release on April 1st! (No, it's not going to be a joke update.)

[nomaxart]

Character artwork for the cook of the Conway, and one of the support characters in the story, Bandile.

Who wouldn't love a bunny as their cook! I'm sure he's doing great work! What? What do you mean, It's been nothing but carrots for 3 weeks in a row?!

[nomaxart]

And next up in the design evolution series we got Julian. Who clearly never managed to even get close to the heights of his pre-release placeholder. But you know, some of us just peak really early. Can't hold it against Jules.

And yeah, he also had an intermediate step between version 1 and 2, so the template broke and I was too lazy to sort it out. But yeah, a design where I knew very early that I wasn't quite happy with it, and it only continued on as I got to know the character better and developed a better feel for him as he became the kind of playfully bratty lizard that he is now. So yeah, A redesign was most certainly in order and he's one of the ones that that probably had the biggest glow-up between v1 and v2.

[nomaxart]

The whole sleeping situation in the game is actually way more organized than it likely would have been during that time period. More likely the common sailors would just find a place to sleep wherever there was space.

So after someone stumbled over a pitch-black Wolf one too many times during the night, the crew took it upon themselves to mark the danger zone.

[nomaxart]

Happy Birthday, Conway!

Happy 1st Birthday to Conway!

Yep! It is the 1 year anniversary of the release of version 0.01 (or whatever the versions were called back then) Let's have a talk, shall we? February 8th is when I uploaded and released it on itch. Why February 8th you may ask? Well, I had only planned January as an experimental month for myself, with the oil painting and the VN test. So I'd release it on february 1st... And then it, naturally, took longer. But I guess it works out so that we don't have the anniversary right on update release days.

The past 

And yeah, what a year it's been! Thank you to all of you first of all for making this possible. Quite simply it wouldn't be possible without the support of all you generous peeps here. As it turns out, developing a game is a fuckton of work, and if I would need to pay the bills through commission work or what have you there would be no way I'd find the time and energy to work on Conway on the side. And I've mentioned it before in a few places, but for a while around May, June-ish it did look really dicey. The first half of the year I was bleeding about 500-700 bucks a month of my savings. The game didn't really pick up and a good amount of my walks were spent contemplating just when I'd have to see a sign before pulling the plug. End of June? Maybe it's worth to stretch it to July? At the lowest point, we were about a month away from pulling the plug on Conway. But right around that time, the trend in people subbing here started to pick up. While it's only in the past month or two that I've reached the point where I'm not actively bleeding money each month, the trend was the bit I needed to see that maybe people are interested after all!

The present

I've attached the itch stats of the past year. So those of you who would like to have a peek can do so. As you can see, Update 10 was a massive success at least in terms of numbers for the game. Update 9 was already the first one to break the record for downloads that the release day set, but Update 10 got picked up by the algorithms and sat in the most popular furry games for a while. Soooo, yeah, quite chuffed with that spike! We'll see what the long-term effects are, but for now I just enjoy the aesthetic of -BIG SPIKE-. And yeah, the game as a whole is just sitting in a good spot. We've had about 12k downloads in total, around 80k page visits, and a rating of 4.8/5 with 127 ratings (which btw, easy way to help, is to leave a juicy 5* rating on itch. Does wonders for the placement of the game in the different categories on the site, plus it gives me a fuzzy feeling in my tum tum.) It's also been such a joy to see that all characters end up having their share of fans judging by comments and that nobody is left in the dry. Of course, some of them have a bit of an easier time, like Samuel and Julian being the more sociable lot they are, and just the screen time they've had so far. While others like Raj or Arthur are slower burns and even they get some mentions as the favorites of some people, and that just makes me chuffed. Naturally, they're designed to cover different interests and preferences, but I'm always nervous if the characters are good, resonate with people and hope that they can be fun to be around. So any time someone mentions a character it just makes me so goddamn giddy. Some of them will be difficult to handle with grace, and I'm not perfect, so I'm sure for at least one of the main cast what I've planned will fall flat, or I mess it up in some fashion. But fuck it, I'll try. Not everything has been peaches and roses recently though, so I have to admit Updates 10 and 11 have been/are a bit of a struggle. I just messed up planning for my support writers, and it's been more or less just me handling everything for both updates 10 and 11. That's why art has been a bit sparse... Because most of my time is just taken up doing writing duty, and I'm not the fastest writer, unfortunately. Like, at this point, with the game having all the branches and 125k in total word count, the story for the characters and how they've interacted on the two initial days. It makes it a bit more difficult to actually get people on board in a timely manner. I can't just go and say, "Hey, write me a scene where this character and that character are involved, and they do that." Since a new writer knows absolutely zero about all the stuff that's been there before, all the stuff that's planned for the characters and all that jazz. So if one support writer is busy or just has writing block or whatever, it may be, my solution so far has just been going, "Well, shit." :') Not the fault of my writing buddies, of course. They've been absolutely invaluable and I can't offer nearly enough to expect to be the highest priority for them. I'm just happy they want to help out AT ALL for what I can pay them in return. I should have planned contingencies but didn't. Simple as that. So, I've made the decision to bring on another writer in Televassi, and also want to hopefully integrate Robert Baird more again going forward. With more of them willing to help out I will be able to assign things to people as they're available. Which hopefully will avoid me having to do whole updates on my own and take the pressure off of wonderful peeps like Rubric. So yeah, I learned my lesson there, but since it just takes time for people to get familiar with the Conway world and characters, it ended up with me being a bit swamped with EVERYTHING for Updates 10 and 11.

The future

Speaking of what's planned, then? Update 10 closes out day 2, and Update 11 starts after our first time skip. I don't know if you've ever looked at how slow these ships were, but if we ever want to make it to Cape Town, then we'll need those time skips. Not only that, but it also allows for characters to just develop in the meantime, and also their relationship towards the player character. While Characters like Nomax and Julian ended up having some raunchy scenes right away, it wouldn't exactly fit to have others throw themselves at you on day 2. So skipping ahead just keeps things moving, keeps things interesting because we can focus on specific parts more, and just show the development of characters at a more natural pace.

So the next sections are this first post-time skip section that subbed patrons already get a taste of in the WIP update, and then next up on the itinerary will be Morocco. Both sections I'm really stoked about! And I hope you are too. :)

Stretch goals? Patreon did away with them a while back, but we'll just make our own stretch goals, with blackjack and hookers. Just instead of blackjack and hookers, how about we talk Animations?! Hell yeah! I'm no animator, and it's not really a discipline I particularly enjoy either from the times I tried. So, since Patreon is currently about break-even, we can start thinking ahead a little, and I think the first point I want to tackle is some simple animations. Stuff like moving tails, ears, and eyes. Stuff like that.

So how about that, we're currently floating at around 1250 USD a month, and if we're crossing the 1500 USD mark, I'll be holding out my feelers to get these small animations into the game. If you like to contribute to making animations possible, consider supporting the Patreon over here: https://www.patreon.com/Nomax

Possibly animations, an exciting new section of the story, some more v2 character art, some more maritime menagerie characters. Sounds good for a year 2 plan?

I certainly hope so and hope that you all will be along for the ride, as it's been an absolute blast, and I can't thank you enough for making it possible. I just want this thing to be the best it can be for all of you. :)

[nomaxart]

Simple fullbody for Dust 💙

Get early access to my art, sketches, uncensored versions, time-lapses, psd files and more! patreon.com/SafiruART

[nomaxart]

1st of february and with it I bring you the newest update to Conway!

It's a biggie, with it being our first 2-month update. So multiple new scenes, new art, all that good stuff, and with it we've also reached the end of Day 2. If you like to have more info you can read the devlog over here: https://nomaxart.itch.io/conway/devlog/675036/conway-update-10-is-now-available

Play here: https://nomaxart.itch.io/conway

The development of this game is made possible by our generous patrons. If you'd like to support our efforts then consider becoming one yourself.

[nomaxart]

Getting ready for the public release of update 10 on the 1st of february

So here, have another Patreon reward character, this time for Ferlynx on FA. He is one of my longest-running supporters of mine and I really can't thank him enough for his part in making all of this possible over the years.

He didn't quite make it in time for update 10, but what can ya do? Sometimes that's just how it is. No reason not to show him off though I think! Picked out his armadillo character as well to make it extra tricky for me, but I think I didn't do too badly. :)

[nomaxart]

Been following a while and (finally) read Conway, I loved reading Nomax's parts, he's so beautifully written

Ah thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed him! Was a bit on the fence about implementing him at first because the obvious self-insert. But just went eeeeeh fuck it, it's my project, who's gonna tell me what to do with it? So I'm glad that he's not just fancy window dressing but that people are genuinely enjoying him being part of it!

[nomaxart]

With the public release of Update #10 right around the corner on the 1st of February, I think it's time to present one of the changes in it. Julian! Our third v2 update and the most significant change yet. He probably was the one I liked the least, design-wise, from the original 6 main characters. So I'm glad I had the chance to sit down and work out some of that clumsiness of his original design.

So come Update 10, this will be his new look! Of course, Patrons knew about it and saw his new look in action for a good while already! So if you like to support the game, and get cool stuff along the way, then consider subbing to the patreon. :)

Play here:

[nomaxart]

💧

[nomaxart]

Another one of these character evolutions for Conway. This time for yours truly. I did have the time-saving advantage for him that I just had a bunch of artwork already, so for the sketch placeholder, I was able to cut some of my art as needed and plop it in. Other than that he underwent a little bit less of a redesign, and the v1 I was decently happy with already. But since the clothes for the non-game him have some more modern elements mixed in I felt it was a good idea to bring his getup more in line with the time period.

All in all, of course, he's the easiest character to get right, though, given how much experience I have painting him already.

[nomaxart]

Hey everyone! It is that time of the year when we sit down for this! In a new look this time around, and I've ditched the "favourite of the year" for this year because it's just too much of a mess for it to really make sense.

This year has been completely different than the previous ones due to the main project of mine being the Conway Visual Novel, soooooo it ended up making it a bit tricky to really choose for this in the first place. That is not to even mention the lead times from painting it to it being released in the game and then to me posting it online (IF I even post it online outside of the game, which doesn't happen for everything). So it's less of a science this year and more of a suggestion. The two oil paintings for example are in their public release month, even though they were painted in january. Reason for it being that I wanted to free up January since I wanted to pad things, and avoid half of the months just being character sprites.

Also got a comparison from the first build in february and the same scene in the newest version, which is pretty fun to see them next to one another.

This year of course has been dominated by Conway for me, and that doesn't look like it's changing. I know it's probably something not everyone of your enjoys, which is fair enough, but it's just way too fun to make to set it aside for my old routine. It feels like it's garnering a nice little fanbase by now and yeah, as long as I can I'll be working on this game, and on other projects like it afterwards. Thank you to every one of you who made an effort to support it. It's been truly amazing to see the support I have for it and read about people enjoying it and all that good stuff that one absorbs along the way.

Some months were tough, of course, and it really scraped past me having to call quits on it by a hair's breadth there around May and June, so thank you to everyone of you who ends up making this stuff possible. I can't thank you all enough!

Onwards to 2024 then and let's see where this ship is going. :D

[nomaxart]

I can FINALLY publish my art for "Прийдешній шторм" artzine! (Dragon Age theme)

Abyssal High Dragon and Gamordan Stormrider 🫰