#game dev log

Locomotive Transfer

Some of the new levels in Train Misconductor feature more than one locomotive. We're particularly pleased with how this system has been implemented into skeuomorphic u.i.

Hi everyone! 

A little late, but here’s an update on what I’ve been up to in April! My time has been a little bit divided between CT:OS and Merry Crisis (and my day job/work trip), but progress is steady on both.

TLDR: I hope to have an update for Merry Crisis by End-Mar (and some bug fixes + half-chapter content for CT:OS too, if I can swing it)! 

5/22/2026

Hey y'all! I've decided to start posting logs of my game development journey in hopes it helps to keep me on track and motivated in finishing my project.

Background

To give a bit of background before I start with this: I'm 24 years old and an independent game developer. I have an associates in game programming, a bachelors and masters in software engineering, and over a decade of experience as a hobbyist artist. I also work full-time as a game programming professor at a college.

Up until recently, I've had no experience working on shipping a game. Back in February of this year, I completed development on my first shipped title--a small, indie visual novel where my main (and arguably sole) contribution was as a programmer.

That project taught me a lot about scope, the importance of creating modular, scalable systems, and overall game design/player feedback. After development finished on it, I was inspired to take what I learned and try again. This time, I'm going to attempt to make my own story and characters into a game that combines the visual novel system I've built (and since improved on) and a strategy RPG system similar to that of Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics.

Thus, this development log will serve as a record of my progress on this project. My development so far has resulted in a playable prototype, but my goal is to have a completed demo by the end of August, 2026.

So, with that background out of the way, let's talk about progress!

What I've done so far

I've already been working on this project for about 2 months. My consistency has been off and on (as I've been finishing up my masters at the same time), but these are the core systems in development:

Modular Visual Novel System

First, the visual novel system. After the completion of my last title, I realized just how much goes into crafting a modular visual novel system. My main goals were to create a system that:

a) reads dialogue, asset names, and game event calls from a JSON file

b) adapts to new game events easily

These two features were non-negotiable. In a dialogue heavy game such as this, having an external file where the dialogue can be easily edited or changed (both for current development and for potential future localization) was mandatory. Additionally, as most of the game events in a visual novel are tied to specific lines of dialogue (such as camera shakes, social point additions/deductions, etc.), being able to call functions through triggers in my dialogue file was also important.

I'm happy to say this has been accomplished! My current system reads JSON to parse class names and instantiate objects of their type. These objects track subsequently invoke events when the dialogue they're attached to is read by the system.

If you'd like to learn more about the actual code written to do this, I may share details in a future post.

SRPG Battle System

The next part that I've been working on is the battle system. The visual novel system and the battle system together make up pretty much the entire game, so getting these done early was integral to actually completing this project.

This battle system has been something I've worked on for several years now. Inspired by a combination of Fire Emblem Fates, Heroes, and Three Houses, I crafted my third-person SRPG battle system by starting with the movement algorithm.

I'm going to be honest. A* pathfinding drives me absolutely nuts.

I started trying to implement A* back during my second semester of my associates degree. Mind you, this was in 2021... Approximately 5 years ago.

After 5 years, however, I've finally got it working the way I need. Building on top of that movement, I've implemented a unit super-class, player and enemy unit sub-classes, a battle manager, a battle HUD manager, and a finite state machine.

The overall behavior of my system works about as you'd expect:

During the player turn, all units become active

When a unit is selected, their available actions change depending on their destination

They can move to a location, use items, attack enemy units, or support ally units

A short animation (which I have dubbed "combat theater") plays to provide visual attack feedback

The unit classes are not particularly impressive. Actually, they turned out really messy at first. It's been quite a while since I've implemented any kind of turn-based system or any sort of unit stat tracking, so I ended up creating a huge, monolithic mess. A single unit class handled stats, movement, states, etc. Seriously, it was bad.

Since then, I've refactored. Now, I have separate classes for unit movement, data, actions, and states. The most important change, however, is that unit state is now handled on the battle manager instead of on individual units. This way, we're only tracking a single state instead of several individual. This fixed a lot of the problems I was having with HUD elements appearing at the wrong time and unit states overwriting one another.

Overall, the battle system works pretty cleanly! Units can swap between states, once all player units have acted, we swap to the enemy turn, enemy units can move towards players and attack, and basic battle completion conditions are in. I've still got some work to do on the item usage/trading system, and I need to add more/different types of win and lose conditions, but a functioning battle system is in place.

Free-time Menu and Shop system

Next we move into more of the incomplete territory. In order to transition between story scenes and battle, I need "free-time" scenes. Essentially, throughout the story, the player needs time to rest, visit markets, craft restoratives, and save the game. Rather than attempt to implement a save system in the middle of story events or battle, I instead wanted to give the player designated time to save.

So, I decided to implement free-time menus where you can do all of those things. This also helps with story pacing, as returning to your inn room can serve as a natural end to a scene. It also allows me to implement area quests/battles and markets without having the additional strain of modeling entire cities. Overall, nice one-stop-shop for basic interactions outside of story.

As of right now, my free time menu exists and functions, but does not have keyboard input set up. The dialogue and the battle scenes operate solely via keyboard, but the free-time scene requires a mouse. An easy fix, truth be told, but I haven't bothered fighting with the event system to do it yet. Perhaps that's next on the to-do list.

What does work, however, is populating the free-time screen with data relevant to your current city. The shop populates with items unique to the city you're in and the city name changes accordingly. Additionally, the player can save their progress and load the game back to the same city/story event they were on.

Conclusion

So, that about sums up my progress as of yet. I've also begun writing some of the game story, but I'll share the details of that in a future dev log. As of right now, though, I have a playable prototype where the player can:

Play through dialogue/story events

Enter and complete a battle

Return to a story event after battle

Enter a free-time event (with city data unique to where they are in story)

Continue to the following story or battle event from the free-time screen

Save and load their progress

So, good progress so far! I look forward to continuing this project and updating my work here. Thank you for reading, and I hope to report back with more soon.

New week, and a look at some new mechanics… 👀🎮

Your arguments will come under fire from your potential scapegoats - but if you're armed with enough (false) evidence, the truth is yours to decide!

I was going to post up a video update, but editing videos is time consuming!!  ​So, written devlog it is! This devlog is a long time coming. There's been some trials and  tribulations leading up to this point. There was a situation of lost coding, lack of time, and even some health issues that kept it from coming out sooner! I was hoping to have it out in March around my birthday. That didn't work out. So it's late! However, no lie, this feels like the biggest update I've ever done for Camp Gash! So, sit tight and get a snack. This may take a minute to read! I feel guilty for not saying much until now.

​ However, I'm here to rectify that! Release date for this update will be placed at the  very end of this devlog! So, here's what is all coming to the:

1.04 BETA Consequences and Scenarios Update

First off: An Inventory System!

That's right! A working, real, inventory! WOOO! I thought it was just going to be a list for now, but I figured out a system! There will be 4 categories of  items:

Consumable Items

Dialog Items

Mission Items

& Special Items

Consumable Items can be clicked on and used in the inventory. Instantly. Consumable items can help with raising and lowering your horny meter, some can be shared to NPCs, and even help your HP. <More on that detail later!

​cigarettes

bottled water

beer

first aid kit

bandages

no-baby pill

​Dialog Items can only be used during interactions with NPC's or during certain situations. A dialog option will either appear or the MC with automatically use them. Each one has a limit to how much you can carry and use. Some dialog interactions won't be present without them!

lube

condoms

Mission and Special Items are items you pick up during missions as an objective. 

Special items are  found in secret, given, or found in select areas. These are considered non interactable.

You start WITH ONE STARTER ITEM that you can pick while in the car ride with Moxie. You can now find items in a stick pile during the tour. It's random chance.

New Artwork!

Another part of this major update is a few new changes to the games artwork! The bridge to the player's  cabin is updated! It is no longer a sketch! The player is getting a new design for their cabin. ...Isn't it delightful?(it's trash I know!) A few new NPC sketch buttons for Carrie, Lyle, Mars, Lucian, and Lucy! I hope to have some new buttons that are finished like Moxie's soon. But, it takes a while to do! I've also resized Moxie's tour buttons so she's not a giantess. She's closer to what she needs to look like compared to the other buttons! The original buttons I created by drawing with a mouse. That's why they looked so wonky! They now have a revamp!

There's a few new MC customization options for their face!

New hair! Long flowy and Mullet(because it's the ✨​80s~!✨​)​, tired eyes, and a new nose!

Added or Expanded Locations!

The nurses station, although mostly still basically a sketch, has a back room that you can go into. A side garden at the green house and a secret 'relief' spot for the green house! Now you can jack it in peace during your groundskeeper tour!

Let's get down to the nitty gritty!!

Game Play Additions and Changes!

There are new things to customize your character and change up player experience! Many of them aren't fully implemented, but will be added in with each bug fix update and future updates. These all include:

The requested virginity option. You can now start off, by choice, as a vcard holder. This means that you can lose that vcard to other NPC's, both counselors and monsters alike. This may change up scenes for sexy time. If you tell your RO that you are a vcard holder or not! Only a few Counselors have been added to this, the monsters for the most part have this implemented! Lyle, Barb, Mars, and Kyle have reactions to this(only certain scenes!). Moxie just knows you are since the two of you are besties. The twins and Carrie,  are unfinished for now. 

The ability to choose if you have pubic hair, facial hair, and body hair. Will be implemented for scenes overtime. (facial hair not a selection for visual MC appearance yet! Still working on it!)

*Some requested that it should be an option for vagina havers (both intersex and lone vagina warriors included) to have an option to have their period during the camp week. (OPTIONAL) Not mentioned or implemented currently, but may open up more options for bloodplay. If this is selected, the game play may increase in difficulty. Monsters, not just the monstrous ROs, smell BLOOD. Attacks may increase and if hiding, yes that will be added later!,  it'll be harder to stay hidden. Survival is about to become more of a thing!

PREGNANCY. Yes, I said it. Pregnancy. Depending on the equipment your MC has - vagina, penis, or both. You are now able to become or make other NPCs pregnant. Will you know? Probably not. Only one NPC can tell you if you are. And it will only be said in passing! Practice safe sex~! Or don't. This doesn't change gameplay much, but will affect your ending. Make your game as MESSY as you want! There are items to prevent - or terminate - the pregnant variable. Condoms and the No baby pill(For MC only). If an NPC knocks you up or you knock another one up, you will gain a variable that will keep track of which one you got pregnant /got pregnant. Once the player is pregnant, unless terminated, you can not become pregnant by another. **Birth preventative items can be purchased in next update when the SHOP is implemented!

The ability to change what type of undies you wear! Briefs, Panties, and Boxers.

You can now be injured during the tour! It's random chance! 

Consequences on day 2 for fucking Barb on night one and NOT having a truce with her.

Lucian has a more complete Sleepover scene if you invite him over! This one has a story attached... I lost all of it for some reason. The coding just disappeared for some reason and I had to rewrite ALL of it. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. And I'm STILL writing it!! 😡 FUUUUUCK! You can be kinky with him or just do it vanilla! (interesting scene if you tell him of your virginity during sex~!🩸​​)

Lyle shower sex on night one (if invited to shower with him after shed sex)​

You can die during rough sex now! Yep. Keep an eye on your HP!  If your health is low during rough scenes you might die! There's consequences to your hoeing now! XD And you don't heal completely when you go to bed. You heal one notch when you sleep now. No more.  DON'T WORRY! I've placed a few first aid kits on the map on day two, if injured when you talk to Lucy on day two you she may heal you once,  and one of your starter items can be a first aid kit! Be safe! LUBE is recommended for rough sex and helps prevent injury. This can be useful for if you have a vagina and are going to have your first time roughly! Just a tip! ;)

There are new dialog options, scenarios, and sexy scenes! You can now KISS the monster at your cabin on night one! Nothing like rewarding your stalker with kiss. 💋

PROTECTIVE MONSTER is now a thing. On night one when you need saving at your cabin -if you know you know- only if your LOVE IS HIGH with the slasher or the swamp monster. (Eldritch horror has it's own idea of protection) They will come to your rescue! This unlocks a different wake up scene for day 2! ...With consequences.

NEW NPC(s)! Jackeline! She's a friend and bandmate of Lyle. This goth gal shall show up on day two after she is mentioned in Lyle and Carrie's day two conversation. She doesn't have much dialog for now but she will have MUCH MORE in the future. She will be... Helpful. Also, a serotonin boosting NPC you can find at the greenhouse on day two! Have fun with the little guy!

​

WOW THAT WAS A LOT! Phew! Do you all see why it took me so long? It has been a TRIAL! Let me tell you! Didn't mean to turn this into a safe sex class but here it is!

I hope to have the newest version of the game posted up here on 

MONDAY April 7th

Of which, if you like what I do so far feel free to become a patron or do a one-time purchase of the game! Every little bit helps.  Thank you all for playing and I do hope you're having fun with what I've created so far! Stay tuned, because there is more to come!

Until Next Time, Doves! Take initiative and game on!

- Pillow Princess Games

I improved the Hauler's legs and created a buddy for them- the Harvester! These Foundry Corporation drones work in tandem to tear down anything of value, one block at a time. The Harvester will fly to and from the target, slowly hauling back blocks one at time, and when sufficient numbers are gathered, the Hauler will retreat to safety. If attacked the Hauler will drop its cargo crate, allowing for a more rapid escape. Likewise the Harvester will drop whatever it is carrying and fly off to the safety/defense of Sentry and Sentinel drones. We have an official community discord server now; Come and let us know what you think, share ideas, and all the other fun stuff! https://discord.gg/ERYMQxNY