- A Shot in the Dark: June 23rd, 2025 Dev Log - 23 June 2025
This news was also posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on June 23rd, 2025. We have some news to share for A Shot in the Dark. We're not going to make any promises or guarantees (not that we could anyways) but we may have a potential solution for the game development to make progress again. However, we really won't know with certainty until the end of the year or early next year if it will be possible. More details will be released at that point if we have the answer we're hoping for. I'm sorry we don't have more details we can share at the moment. But, we wanted to let you know that something is potentially in the works. If you missed why this is currently going on with A Shot in the Dark please check out an earlier post below.https://www.patreon.com/posts/january-30th-dev-120902569 As a reminder, Chapter 4 is the halfway point of the story. After deliberation we decided it will be call…
- A Shot in the Dark: January 30th, 2025 Dev Log - 30 January 2025
This dev log was also posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on January 30th, 2025. Hey everyone! First off, we apologize for neglecting to communicate more frequently on the other platforms like Steam and Itch over the past several months. We hope this update clears up questions that many of you have been asking. A Shot in the Dark Development We wanted to wait and see how things were going to be on our end before communicating exactly what was going on with A Shot in the Dark. Now we have a pretty good idea as to what at least the short term future is going to be like for us and feel like we can communicate it to our fans. If you didn't already know, we have a kiddo. Over the past year and some our kid has been dealing with some major health issues. It reached the point a where we had to pull them out of school for the foreseeable future. All in all, the recovery process has been a lot m…
- A Shot in the Dark: September 13, 2024 Dev Log - 17 September 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on September 13, 2024. Since the last dev log, Josselyn has been focused on renders and creating the remaining assets for Chapter 5 and the Murder Mystery Game. Sprites for all of the characters are now complete, and Josselyn is now working on the renders needed for the cut scenes. We'll include previews of all the sprites in this post! Renders are also now complete for the Sara lewd scene, which means that her animations will be done next. TheOmega is currently putting the finishing touches on the Ashley animations, and then will get started on the animations for Sara. We'll include some NSFW previews in the next dev log! Josselyn also got a bit of writing done while renders were rendering, and is almost done with the writing for the Murder Mystery Game. All that is left now is the last scene where the actual murderer is r…
- A Shot in the Dark: August 16, 2024 Dev Log - 20 August 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on August 16, 2024. The past month has been a bit slower for us work-wise, which is pretty typical for us toward the end of the summer as we usually take our annual family vacation in late July or early August. This year we also welcomed a new baby nephew into our family, and had family staying with us for a while as a result. So, while that made it harder to get work done, it was wonderful and refreshing to spend time reconnecting and getting to know the newest member of our family! Since the last dev log, Josselyn has been doing a lot of writing for the second half of the Murder Mystery Game which has ended up taking far longer to write than anticipated. The good news is that it's definitely nearing the end! The current word count for Chapter 5 is 37K words, and we are likely more than ~50% complete with the writing as fa…
- A Shot in the Dark: July 20, 2024 Dev Log - 24 July 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on July 20, 2024. Same as last dev log, we've been plugging along on both the Murder Mystery Game and Chapter 5 content. And once again, our progress percentages are still rough estimates, since it's hard to say exactly how much work is left, especially in regards to the MMG. But it's all coming together even better than we expected, thanks to the hard work of m. (GUI) and CosmicMirage (coding)! Here are some previews of what they've been working on: Josselyn has been doing a lot of writing for the Murder Mystery Game and it's getting close to done at this point. The writing for the MMG is about 80% done, while the writing for the regular Chapter 5 content is probably more like 30% done. The MMG writing has taken longer since it's a new type of writing that we haven't done before, so once it's finished the remaining (more r…
- A Shot in the Dark: June 28, 2024 Dev Log - 2 July 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on June 28, 2024. A lot of work has been happening on Chapter 5 since the last dev log, but unfortunately a lot of it is not really well-captured by the progress percentages. Whereas we have "regular" development cycles basically down to a science now, we are doing many "new" things this update and that has made it hard to estimate how long things will take and what exactly is left to be done. The novelty of working on something new and a little unpredictable has been really refreshing, which is exactly why we wanted to do the Murder Mystery Game this chapter. We've definitely learned after doing this for many years that keeping things fresh and fun is key to maintaining the longterm stamina required to finished a multi-year project, even if it isn't always the most efficient way to do things. Most of the render work over t…
- A Shot in the Dark: June 7, 2024 Dev Log - 11 June 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on June 7, 2024. Since our last dev log we've been making progress on both the Murder Mystery Game and the regular Chapter 5 content. We sat down and did the more extensive planning of the lewd scenes that we need in order to start on animations. Lewd scenes for both Ashley and Sara have been fully written and are now waiting on renders/animations. The current word count is around ~19K. Implementation of the Murder Mystery Game is progressing nicely, and we decided to rework the art assets a bit after seeing a preliminary version of it all put together. So while the current render count is around ~450, that includes ~360 sprites (for Alexis and the MC, previews below) that Josselyn re-posed and re-rendered since the last dev log. She also posed ~180 brand new sprites (for Ashley's character) that are waiting to be rendered,…
- A Shot in the Dark: May 17, 2024 Dev Log - 21 May 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on May 17, 2024. Chapter 5 Development Last week Josselyn and our coder, Cosmic Mirage, had a productive voice call going over plans for the Murder Mystery Game we'll be integrating into Chapter 5. We have enough assets made (backgrounds, sprites, GUI) and enough dialogue written to start playing around with implementation. We also hope to get m. (who recently remade the GUI for both of our games) involved with some new GUI elements to give the Murder Mystery Game a unique feel, separate from the main story of the game. We'll include some previews of how it's all coming together in future dev logs! To get a taste of what it will look like, you can check out our previous dev log for previews of the backgrounds and look for the outfit polls we'll be doing this month and next. Other than that, Josselyn has been slowly chipping…
- A Shot in the Dark: May 3, 2024 Dev Log - 7 May 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on May 3, 2024. Chapter 4 Official Release Chapter 4 has now officially been released on all platforms, including Steam and Itch! The official release went smoothly and we are now working on getting Chapter 4 translated on Crowdin so that we can finally release some translated builds of the game! If you are interested in helping improve translations for any of the following languages, check out our Crowdin page and reach out via the #translation-help channel on our Discord server! Chapter 5 Development As mentioned in previous dev logs, Chapter 5 has been in development for a while now. We've also mentioned before that we are going to be doing something totally new and different with Chapter 5 that we can't wait to tell you about! We're excited to announce that Chapter 5 will have a 1920s themed Murder Mystery Game within i…
- Chapter 4 update now available for A Shot in the Dark - 24 April 2024
Chapter 4 Official Release Official Public Release for players who own the game on Steam and Itch is here! This final version of Chapter 4 includes achievements for players on all platforms, not just Steam. THIS IS A SAVE-BREAKING UPDATE! WARNING!!! SAVES WILL BE BROKEN THIS UPDATE! Opening old saves will introduce bugs. Please plan to start a new game or use the Entry Points feature to avoid opening old saves. To be safe, please consider deleting your old saves. We know broken saves are a huge inconvenience for players, but unfortunately we made too many changes to the foundation of the codebase for it to be avoided. Verify Integrity of Game Files If you run into issues with downloading or accessing the Chapter 4 update, please try the "Verify integrity of game files" option in the Steam settings, in the Installed Files tab. Please report any bugs or issues If you encounter any bugs or…
- Chapter 4 update coming in April - 25 March 2024
Chapter 4 BETA & Steam Release The BETA/Early Release schedule for Patreon and SubscribeStar is now available on those platforms. Official Public Release for players who own the game on Steam and Itch will happen in mid to late April, once we have had time to add Steam achievements and do further testing once those are added. THIS WILL BE A SAVE-BREAKING UPDATE! WARNING!!! SAVES WILL BE BROKEN THIS UPDATE! Opening old saves will introduce bugs. Please plan to start a new game or use the Entry Points feature to avoid opening old saves. To be safe, please consider deleting your old save files: https://savelocation.net/renpy We know broken saves are a huge inconvenience for players, but unfortunately we made too many changes to the foundation of the codebase for it to be avoided. What's new in Chapter 4? With this update we are adding: 16 scenes, 9 lewd ~55K+ words 2,226 renders 97 animati…
- A Shot in the Dark: Dev Log 08-Mar-2024 - 14 March 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on March 8, 2024. Cue the hallelujah choir! The end of the development cycle is near! All of the animations for Chapter 4 are posed and now we just have to wait for the remaining ones to finish rendering. Let's kick this celebratory dev log off with some animation previews from the ones that have already rendered: The last two scenes of Chapter 4 are in the process of being implemented into the code. We still have a lot of little polishing tasks and basic testing before we can hand things off to our testers, but the bulk of the coding is done. This update was by far our most efficient in terms of coding implementation, and we have been happy with how quickly and smoothly that part has gone. Not only have we learned quite a bit from previous updates on how to "touch things once" and not duplicate work (which is harder than i…
- A Shot in the Dark: Dev Log 24-Feb-2024 - 29 February 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on February 24, 2024. All writing and renders for Chapter 4 are now complete! As we've mentioned in previous dev logs, we won't know the actual dialogue word count until we prep the chapter for translation, but our estimate is around 55K words. The final render count is 2,240. Our original plan had been to work on translated/localized builds during the Chapter 4 update cycle and then to update the GUI with the Chapter 5 cycle. However, the GUI update was completed faster than we anticipated and those changes had to be integrated into the code while they were still relatively "fresh" (and therefore also improved and tested during this update cycle). That is why we switched priorities to updating the GUI with the Chapter 4 update and we will be working on released translated versions once we are working on Chapter 5. TheOmega…
- A Shot in the Dark: Dev Log 11-Feb-2024 - 14 February 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on February 11, 2024. Things are moving pretty quickly with the Chapter 4 update now that we have a second set of hands helping with the coding! We have plowed through about half of the scenes that had been waiting for a while to be coded, and we are also mostly done with tweaking and testing the new GUI. Josselyn is working on the very last scene of renders and only a handful of renders are left to make for the update, so we should have a final render count soon. She has also been working on outlining the Chapter 5 update in preparation for writing it. There are no more lewd scenes to preview, so here are some previews of a non-lewd story scene!
- A Shot in the Dark: Dev Log 26-Jan-2024 - 30 January 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on January 26, 2024. Josselyn has made a lot of progress with Chapter 4 renders the past two weeks. All of the renders for the Monica lewd scene as well as two non-lewd scenes are now rendered and ready to go. There are also currently 50 posed renders that will be rendering over the weekend to finish off another scene. The current render count is 2,060 (not including the ones that are posed but not yet rendered). Two more small scenes and Photogram renders are all that remains before still renders will be done for Chapter 4. If you're interested in learning more about our process for making 3D renders and animations, check out our latest podcast episode: TheOmega has been working on Sophie animations and coding the Paloma scene (which has a fun new feature we can't wait for our femdom fans to see!). We also have a second se…
- A Shot in the Dark: Dev Log 12-Jan-2024 - 17 January 2024
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on January 12, 2024. We hope everyone had a happy and healthy holiday season! We took some days off to celebrate Christmas with friends and family, and have returned refreshed and ready to work. If you haven't already, be sure to check out our annual year in review post: ViM Studios: 2023 Year in Review! That post also talks about our goals and priorities for 2024, most of which have to do with developing A Shot in the Dark. Since our last official dev log (A Shot in the Dark: Dev Log 18-Dec-2023), the last remaining scene that was left to be written was finished. All that's left to write is the chapter wrap up and Photogram content. The final word count for all the scripts written was between 60K-70K words, and we're estimating about 55K words of pure dialogue. We'll have the exact figure when we prepare the chapter for tr…
- A Shot in the Dark Dev Log 18-Dec-2023 - 21 December 2023
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on December 18, 2023. Don't forget to leave a review on Steam! Your reviews help other players like you find and enjoy our game. Steam Launch We are so excited with how the A Shot in the Dark launch has gone on Steam! This was our second major goal for the year, along with releasing V1.0 of Prince of Suburbia, and we are very proud for accomplishing both goals. It was a lot of work to get to this point, and we have a lot more work in front of us (particularly when it comes to releasing translated/localized versions). We still plan to a take some time this holiday season to reflect and celebrate all that we've accomplished so far! Chapter 4 Development As far as Chapter 4 development, the main writing tasks are done. There is one tiny scene left to write, some editing to do, and then some writing tasks that always happen tow…
- A Shot in the Dark and Walkthrough & Guide DLC released today! - 14 December 2023
We are excited to announce that A Shot in the Dark - Chapter 3 and the Walkthrough & Guide DLC are now available for purchase on Steam! Current version information The current version (Chapter 3) of A Shot in the Dark includes: 70+ scenes, 116K+ words, 5K+ renders, 275+ animations, 115 songs, and 34 sound effects. Future plans and pricing Development of Chapter 4 is currently in progress and planned to release in early 2024! You can find past dev logs and progress updates via our website. Future dev logs will be posted on Steam. The base price of both A Shot in the Dark and the Walkthrough & Guide DLC will NOT increase with the future Chapter 4 release. You can safely wait until Chapter 4 releases if you want more content before purchasing the game. (We will give players advance notice about any prices changes after that point.) We also have NO plans to split the game into Books or Seas…
- A Shot in the Dark releases Dec 14! - 13 December 2023
The day you've been waiting for is almost here! We are excited to announce that A Shot in the Dark - Chapter 3 and the Walkthrough & Guide DLC will release tomorrow, December 14, at 11:00 AM MST (GMT -7). The current version (Chapter 3) of A Shot in the Dark includes: 70+ scenes 116K+ words 5,000+ renders 275+ animations 115 songs 34 sound effectsDevelopment of Chapter 4 is currently in progress and planned to release in early 2024! We will be posting dev logs on Steam in the future, but you can find past dev logs and progress updates via our website. The Walkthrough & Guide DLC includes: Gallery and In-Game Hints for unlocking all the content Choice Highlighting to show you the best choice(s) based on stats. Love Interest Priority List to determine choice highlighting when a choice benefits multiple characters Official Player Guide PDF (currently 75 pages) with every detail you need to…
- Character Spotlight: Natalie - 6 December 2023
A Shot in the Dark Character Spotlight This week we're thrilled to introduce Natalie, the introspective and sensitive twin of Sophie. This is our last character spotlight before A Shot in the Dark releases on Steam! Introducing Natalie Natalie, a reserved and contemplative college junior, contrasts sharply with her vivacious twin sister, Sophie. Natalie finds solace in solitude and the serenity of nature, often preferring a quiet night with a book over a big college party. She joined the Zeta Omega Chi sorority, despite not fitting in, in order to stay close to Sophie, her anchor in life despite their stark differences. Natalie's journey is one of emotional depth and slow discovery. A true romantic, she aspires for a love that's deep and meaningful. Her cautious approach to relationships and intimacy reflects a deep desire to preserve parts of herself for someone truly special. If you a…
