• Updated Ren'Py engine from version 7.4.11 to version 8.2.0 and implemented "Deferred Translation Loading". The game should now run smoother, take less time loading, and have all the latest engine features/improvements. For exhaustive details, see https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/changelog.html
  
• Fixed some minor text issues in the Russian translation.
  

Hey everyone!

For the STEAM Winter Sale Maid Mansion will be 20% off. :)

Those of you who are reading this are probably more interested in finally getting an update on the DLC for the game, so I'll get right into that. Some of this information you may already know, but wanted to share with any of our newer customers.

[h2]Script[/h2]
As has been mentioned before, the script is fully done and has been for some time. I hope to go through that here over the holidays, add in my notes, and finally pass off to our programmer.

[h2]Sprites + CGs[/h2]
These have been updated and the newest (7) CGs to be added with the DLC are also ready. Mild spoiler warning on which characters will get more screen-time... ;)

CG60 - Akemi
CG61 - Makoto
CG62 - Romana
CG63 - Chisato
CG64 - Cheryl
CG65 - Mutsumi
CG66 - *secret happy ending*

[h2]Animations[/h2]
With my holiday time off, I'm definitely hoping to get caught up on this work as well, and will be in contact with our awesome animator to keep moving forward on it.

[h2]Voice Acting[/h2]
As of right now, I have approximately 9 of 14 voice actors work completely done and ready (all lines are approved and "split" for programming). 2-3 more I expect to have done within the next couple days. The remaining are in various stages of completion.

Takako - delivered, checking files this weekend to begin line splitting (Saturday)
Narumi - completed
Umeko - delayed, still waiting
Kaori - completed
Misaki - delayed, needs modifying
Reiko - audio files need modifying + line splitting tomorrow (Friday)
Pa Zong - completed
Sarana - completed
Akemi - completed
Chisato - completed
Cheryl - working on today to finish line splitting (Thursday)
Makoto - completed
Romana - completed
Mutsumi - completed

*line splitting - means cutting up delivered audio files into their separate lines*

[h2]DLC Release Date[/h2]
Given the current speed of things, my hope would be to release the DLC in time for the Steam Spring Sale (on or before March 16th 2023). Honestly, that might be a bit too ambitious at this stage, but that would be my goal. And as its been mentioned before, I still plan for the DLC to be FREE once it's ready.

Thank you all to those who have purchased Maid Mansion before, or those that will purchase it in the future. Your help goes towards this DLC and my next upcoming project. Stay tuned. ;)

[h2]Happy Holidays!![/h2]

• Fixed a typo in the French translation that would cause an error.
  
• Made the keyboard appear for text input when naming the protagonist on a Steam Deck.
  

This is a minor update that fixes some lines in the Simplified Chinese translation.

[h2]Major News Today!!
[/h2]
As of writing this, version 1.0.3 of Maid Mansion has been uploaded to STEAM. This new updated version of the base game will add the following changes:

- Maid Mansion will now be running version 7.4.11 of Ren'py, the visual novel engine.
- Simplified Chinese has been added to the game.
- French has been added to the game.
- Russian has been added to the game.

I thank you all for the long wait on this update. I'd especially like to thank my friend Belgerum for working the last few days to implement these changes on my behalf, and am very excited to share all of this with you. It means a lot to be able to showcase these new languages with you all during the Winter Sale! If you'd like our future games to include more languages, your support and purchase of Maid Mansion now means more than ever to help make this happen!!

For those of you that wanted to learn more about the news regarding the delayed DLC, I'm still hoping to launch this during the Spring of 2022. It will still include voice acting during the CG scenes, the script has been completed and should also be translated soon, the animations are being updated, and things are looking positive there. I hope to have great news for you all shortly into the bright new year!!

If there are any major problems, concerns, or general questions regarding a specific translation, please let let us know privately or via Twitter @CrazyCactusEnt OR through the discussion board here on STEAM and we'll do our best to address everything as best we can. Thank you all for your continued patience and support for Maid Mansion during these tough times, and I'll be counting on and depending on your patronage in 2022!!

[h2]DLC? Yes!
[/h2]As you all found out in our previous major news update, Maid Mansion will be receiving a FREE DLC I've been calling the 'Maid Mania' epilogue. For those of you that missed it, that means that completing the game with at least one happy/good ending will unlock this additional content for you to enjoy. And as mentioned before, this DLC will include 7 extra CGs, 12,000 + words worth of content, and will give you that extra bit of sweet time with the supporting cast, that many of our players wanted to have more time with. And yeah, it's free.

[h2]More Languages? Yes!
[/h2]We currently have English, Spanish, and Portuguese. French is being worked on. Russian is being worked on. We can now officially confirm that Simplified Chinese is ALSO being worked on and WILL be added to Maid Mansion by the end of this year. I hope our fans in China are looking forward to this release! More specifically, your wishlists, general interest, and support in Maid Mansion will be a crucial test for our future visual novels. Basically, if you want to see more visual novels from us in Simplified Chinese, please consider buying when it becomes available! This is a huge investment/risk for us but we hope the fans will be there for us!!

[h2]Voice Acting for Maid Mansion? Yes!
[/h2]Have you been reading up to this point? Good. We just finished recently casting all the female leads and supporting cast for the game. Maid Mansion will be updated later this year to include English voice acting for ALL the CG scenes. All these candidates were chosen because they were awesome and amazing and I felt were the best fit for this wonderfully varied cast of ladies. I'm excited to work with them and hope you're all looking forward to hearing their work!

[h2]Adult Scenes Animated? Yes!
[/h2]Are you still there? Still reading? Have I GOT your full, undivided attention? Fan-tastic. Because we're gonna be implementing some nice animation for all the adult CG scenes in Maid Mansion as well. I'm hoping that people will like and appreciate this extra surprise, to make those moments really come-to-life! We're going to be taking our 2D scenes and animating them. If you follow our Twitter, Patreon, or Discord, we'll be keeping you all updated with some sneak-peeks at what we have in store for you and how these will look...

[h2]What about Sinful Sisters??
[/h2]For those of you that somehow manage to stick around all the way down to this part of the news, rest assured that Sinful Sisters (our next major game) is still coming along. We've recently had to shuffle some people around and will be looking out for some new members to join our team, but worry not. I'm confident in taking the time needed to have the best people available, and sometimes hard decisions have to be made in order to do what's necessary to fine tune various elements to realize my vision for this next game. Please stay tuned for more information on that game in the future and hopefully wishlist it when our STEAM page goes live!

Once I have all this done (these current translations, the voice acting, animated adult scenes, etc.), I will be "closing the book" on Maid Mansion and looking to the future. It's highly unlikely there will be any more additions to the game after this Fall.

[h3]Thank you all for your continued support!![/h3]

[h2]Maid Mansion - Maid Mania Epilogue DLC[/h2]

This DLC, which I've been referring to as my "Maid Mania" epilogue DLC, will take place over the course of a single day, and is unlockable once you have beaten the game at least once with one of the happy/good endings. Yup, that's it. Do that, and you get a chance to spend a little bit more "quality time," (and see a special scene), with each of the following supporting maids:

1) Akemi
2) Makoto
3) Romana
4) Chisato
5) Cheryl
6) Mutsumi

There will be about 12,000+ words in this DLC, so I hope you enjoy it. Oh yeah, and there's some choices during the events of this special day, and if you choose wisely, you might get a special treat of seeing one additional art piece of three of those maids having been "blessed" with your... well, you know.

A little more time with the supporting cast, 12,000+ words, 7 extra CGs to unlock, and it's free.

Free. That's because you guys have been great and your support means more to me than I could ever fully describe. Right now the goal is to have this ready to release in time for the first anniversary of Maid Mansion's in mid-November. I truly hope we can make that date and right now, we've already got two CGs nearly done, and 9,000+ words written, so I'm confident we can do it.

[h2]Russian Translation[/h2]

To our Russian fans out there, I thank you () for buying Maid Mansion up till now. This message I say directly to you, here and now: I just paid the first half to have the game translated into Russian. I hope to have this ready in three months time, to hopefully also coincide right before the first anniversary.

That means, later this year, we'll have FIVE languages available with Maid Mansion:
1) English
2) Spanish - Latin America
3) Portuguese - Brazilian
4) French
5) Russian

I'll always leave the door open to the possibility of adding more translations. I'm hopeful about adding Chinese one day, but I feel I still need to find the right person for this.

Anyway, thank you maid lovers for reading this update! I look forward to welcoming more of you during the upcoming Steam Summer sale!!

[h2]MAID MANSION - PORTUGUESE TRANSLATION[/h2]

Maid Mansion v1.0.2
This update will be coming out this evening, or at the latest, tomorrow. It will not be "live" at the time of this posting...

• Portuguese translation added to Maid Mansion. This is considered Brazilian Portugues and will be classified as such here on STEAM.
  
• Please note - Maid Mansion has been updated to utilize the current Ren'Py version (7.4.5)
  
• Small update - as with previous translation update, this should take less than a minute to download.
  
• The next translation for the game will be in French, releasing later this year.
  
• No additional translations are being negotiated at this time, but I'm always open and willing to discuss other possible languages if there's enough support and/or the price-is-right.
  

[h2]MAID MANSION - SPANISH TRANSLATION[/h2]

Maid Mansion v1.0.1
This update will be coming out later today. It will not be "live" at the time of this posting...

• Spanish translation added to Maid Mansion. This is considered Latin-American Spanish and will be classified as such here on STEAM.
  
• Please note - Maid Mansion has been updated to run on Ren'Py latest version (7.4.4)
  
• Small update - should take less than a minute to download.
  
• Working on a Portuguese translation, releasing later this year.
  
• Currently negotiating possible French translation, which would also release later this year.
  

Hey all (maids lovers and everyone else),

The first week of release of Maid Mansion has been really amazing. Really great feedback, both positive and negative. I'll address some of those comments and criticisms a little later in this post...

[h2]STEAM Release Info
[/h2]For those of you that purchased on STEAM, I thank you soooooo much!! We were on the front page of STEAM in New and Trending from Friday, Until about late Tuesday/sometime Wednesday, then we popped back up into the Top 10 again later that day for another good chunk of the day. Our highest peak of people playing was 253 on Sunday, and as of writing this right now, there are a 69 people playing. (69 haha, but seriously that's true)

Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/562350/

[h2]Next Project...[/h2]
So, as of right now, the next project I have in the pipeline is titled Sinful Sisters.

This project started earlier this year, around the time I learned some information that may cause a delay in the next game I wanted to do, if you followers of mine remember Flame Academy... That WAS my original plan, but I feel that my second game should also be a STEAM release.

Flame Academy is NOT abandoned, however, I will have to keep it on hiatus for some time. For those of you in the dark about that project, you can still view the Kickstarter preview at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/crazycactus/246239660?ref=dkextb&token=9df0...

[h2]Sinful Sisters[/h2]



Sinful Sisters Main Cast - ((Subject to Change)

Right now I have the main cast ready, but I have plans to make some changes to one of the characters, Demona, (the drill-hair red-head), will have her skin tone darkened, as I think it would be nice to have a darker skinned lady in the main group. I haven't discussed this bit yet with my artist but I will soon.

The sprites are actually all done, all outfits and layers... The backgrounds are being worked on. The soundtrack is being created. Our GUI artist has already made several assets we needed. I went wayyyy overboard and already got the emotes and badges for it done (for STEAM), and I also plan to be writing this game myself. I may possibly hire other writers to work with me, since I suspect this will be a large worded game similar to Maid Mansion (at 140,000+ words), but we'll see.


[h2]How will Sinful Sisters Improve Upon Maid Mansion??
[/h2]Okay, so here's where I'm going to outline what critiques were given to me (about Maid Mansion) and what I'd like to publicly state are my goals for how to improve with Sinful Sisters:

SINFUL SISTERS' GOALS
--partial voice acting (for the CG scenes)

--test/experiment with animated CG scenes (not all CGs animated, but maybe 1-2 for each for players to try and "unlock" with each of the main cast)

--fewer endings (currently planning for 7 good endings, 6 bad endings, no neutral endings next time)

--"harem ending" (this was a big letdown for many that Maid Mansion didn't have this -- Sinful Sisters will have one 3-way ending, and a 4-way ending as well, if I stick to my current story outline)

--bad endings will mostly impact you (as the MC) next time, with 4/6 only effecting the MC

--our next walkthrough ending guide will also include notes about which are BAD/GOOD endings (still with spoiler alert tags)

--smaller cast (currently at 8, not including MC, with 5 as main characters, 3 with more of a support role)

--characters developed more (flesh out backgrounds, get to "know them" more, etc...)

--prop style system for finding items needed for story parts, including items to use in an animated scene

[h2]Patreon[/h2]
I have already scheduled 4 posts for this month, and am going to try to keep adding spoilers for Sinful Sisters there over the next several months. So if you would like to support me there and see little teasers and such ahead of time, Patreon is the best place to be.

https://www.patreon.com/crazycactus

[h2]Discord[/h2]
I also screwed up my Discord channel invite in the last post, so this updated link should work now: https://discord.gg/J2bzw6jaQ8

I'm still a bit of a nub with Discord, so please be patient with me. My discord is just more of a place to chat and connect with me and best place to stay the most updated on things, and I will post some spoilers in certain chat channels too. So if you do want to support me on Patreon, it's very much appreciated - but you may also find some nice little sneak peaks if you join Discord too.

[h2]Sleepy-time now...[/h2]
Like the header says, I need sleep now. Thank you all for your continued support in buying Maid Mansion. Even those who didn't like it, I've learned much from their criticism, and hope to use all that information to make Sinful Sisters an even bigger success. If I can somehow manage it, I'd like to try and aim for a November 2021 release for it, so we'll see. :D

Take care all and be safe,

Cactus Lord

Creative Director

Crazy Cactus Entertainment LLC

[h2]MAID MANSION HAS LAUNCHED!![/h2]

The day has come. The game is out. I'm happy to announce that you can now purchase Maid Mansion here on STEAM. Right now. I'll give you a minute to do that...



..You good?

Excellent!

For those of you that would like to reach out to us if you find any bugs, glitches, etc... Please use one of the following methods. You can also use these links to share any other feedback or if you have questions for us:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrazyCactusEnt (my DMs should be open or Tweet @ me directly)
Discord: https://discord.gg/kw5CEXMX (invite link)
Steam Forums: https://steamcommunity.com/app/562350/discussions (direct link)

We hope you enjoy the game and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you all for your support and hope you enjoy Maid Mansion!!

Matt
Creative Director
Crazy Cactus Entertainment LLC

Well, well, my stalkers of maids. The time has come. As in, here, right now, is the time to pay attention. Are you paying attention? You are? Good.

[h2]Maid Mansion Release Date - November 13th, 2020
[/h2]You'll be entering the mansion on November 13th. We plan to go live sometime around 9pm EST / 6pm PST that evening. Critical Bliss, our publisher, has given us their complete support in that release date, and will be helping us ramp up excitement as we get closer to that date.

Right now, Belgerum is working really hard on getting everything done for the final release, and he should be right on time. I've been able to keep testing builds as he goes, and am loving it (obviously). He's done fantastic work, and I'm truly grateful for how well it's looking.

Hope you guys are all excited to see it!!

[h2]Maid Mansion Trailer[/h2]
We should also have a brand new trailer ready to go by the end of this week, so it'll definitely be ready in time for release before the 13th. WhiteCharisma has done a great job so far, and he'll be working the next couple days to iron out the last few details and requests we had for the video. It's a great little 56 second trailer to get you in the proper maid mood.

[h2]Final Thank You[/h2]
For all the hundreds of people that supported us years ago on Kickstarter and have waited all this time, thank you. To all of you thousands out there that have added Maid Mansion to your WISHLIST here on STEAM, thank you for that as well! We have updated our STEAM page to reflect our release date, and welcome you to join us when we launch. If you drag some other people along with you to buy up some of that maid action, I won't say no to that... Honestly, it would really help us on launch, as well as any (hopefully) positive reviews too, if you like the game, would be super awesome too.

After launch, please be sure to bring us anything you find and we will of course try our best to fix it as quickly as possible! Belgerum already has several games out so this release probably feels kinda standard for him, but I can be a bit of a nervous wreck. But I want to do my best for our CrazyCactus fans, so we're making Maid Mansion to be something I hope you'll enjoy.

Okay so this update was a HUGE wall of text. But I hope you enjoyed it. Perhaps my next update will be shorter and sweeter with just sharing our trailer video. :D

See you soon!

--Cactus a.k.a. The Paul Revere of "THE MAIDS ARE COMING, THE MAIDS ARE COMING!!" ;)

Thank you for checking out Maid Mansion! We hope you enjoy our demo and stick around to play the game when it releases.

Maid Mansion is a visual novel game in which you inherit the position of master at your grandfather's mansion. In your time at the mansion, you will learn about the history of the mansion, get intimate with it's many maids, and find the answers to a mystery hidden in the depths of these elegant halls.

Our free demo contains about 12,500 words of content, which is about 10% of the full game. This demo has been updated and refined since the original Kickstarter demo that was released 4 years ago, and we're extremely proud of how far it's come!

The full game is planned to release this November, featuring a cast of 14 girls, 59 base CGs, and 22 possible endings, both good and bad.

The game is being developed as a collaboration between Crazy Cactus Entertainment and Belgerum Games, with Critical Bliss as our publisher. We're all working hard to bring you a great experience with our first game of this scale, and we hope that you enjoy the time you spend with the fruit of our labor!

You can play the demo and wishlist the game here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/562350/

Thank you for your time, and have fun!

Come chat with two of the developers: CrazyCactus and Belgerum!

We'll be showing some footage of the game as we talk about the game, answer questions, and hang out with our fans!

Hey my upcoming masters of maids,

I'd like to take this opportunity with this update to get straight to the point.

Shifted Release Date
Right now we're looking at late November for the release of Maid Mansion. We were shifted back a couple weeks to make a little more room for other game releases that were already planned before us. So to be clear: we were on track for our initial release, but had to shift our timetable slightly.

If anything, this isn't a bad thing for us, and gives Belgerum a little more breathing room to add additional polish to the overall game, which is shaping up to be better and better with each passing day. As mentioned before, it's been great getting to test and play it along each step of the way. Which leads me to my next point...

Steam Games Festival
As of right now, Belgerum and I have made plans to participate in the Steam Games Festival with Maid Mansion. Since the game's demo is already completed, we will be showcasing that off during the event, and have made preliminary plans to have a date set for streaming where the two of us will chat about the game, likely with some game footage playing in the background. We don't have any plans to be on-camera at this time, but will be there for the full duration and would happily welcome anyone that should stop by. We plan for this streaming event to last about 3 hours and will let you know the exact date and time as we get closer to the event itself.

Some Final News
We've pretty much wrapped up with updating some CGs in the game, we've continuously made edits and proofread the script over and over, are planning some additional social media previews, AND are set to start development on our new full-blown trailer starting in a few days. I'm pretty excited for that last part myself, and am really looking forward to seeing the kind of new trailer Maid Mansion will have.

Stay tuned!

--Cactus, Prickly Lord

Well all you maestros of maids,

I have gotten your attention with this progress update. As it stands, Belgerum and I are on-track with development, and he's spot-on with his schedule for coding. He recently passed about the 25% mark a few days ago for the game, and I've continued to play-test as it all moves along, which has been great.

Once again I'd like to thank all players who played the most recent demo! As a reminder to all, if you could WISHLIST the game, that would mean a whole lot to us! Plus, it has the added benefit of letting you know exactly when the game has been released and is ready to be played (late October).

[h2]STEAM Assets
[/h2]For STEAM, we've finalized assets needed for the game, aside from badges, which I will get to in a moment. Trading cards are done, wallpapers are done (these will be included for all Kickstarter backers regardless of "progress" via STEAM), and the emotes look fantastic too.

[h2]Wallpapers[/h2]


Wallpaper Example 1 - Main Menu Style


Wallpaper Example 2 - The Main Cast


[h3]ADDITIONAL WALLPAPERS...
[/h3]
Aside from those examples, each of the main cast will have (2) of their own wallpapers, with one focusing on one of their CGs and the other focusing on the sprite set against one of the game's backgrounds.

[h2]EMOTES[/h2]







(Sorry for the bad formatting with these)... Anywho, the emotes are completely done and ready to be found/earned in the game. Honestly, I think they all came out pretty great and there's 10 for the game altogether (different rarities, of course). A lot of this stuff for STEAM was all new to me, but I'm learning and listening and taking lots of advice as I go.

[h2]BADGES[/h2]
We had some original badges that didn't work out well for STEAM, so we decided to go a different route, and currently the WIP for the badges will be posted below... They're going to get a little more "polishing" up but these are what they will be for Maid Mansion.



[h2]Physical Rewards
[/h2]
For those that backed the Kickstarter campaign and pledged for physical rewards, I will be putting together a poll/survey (planned to be sent out later this month - September) for backers to check out what newer options have become available. For example, I know that we promised CDs for a certain tier, but was curious if seeing if the idea of a custom flash-drive was more attractive instead. Something like that would be more functional and valuable beyond having the game loaded on it. Aside from that, I'd have a few other questions, but need a little more time. As you can probably guess, physical rewards would have to wait longer to be fulfilled, likely worked on after the game's release in late October (so worked on in November and December) and hopefully delivered sometime early 2021.

Until next time...

--Cactus, Lord of Maids, Nuns, Cowgirls... whatever your crazy mind can imagine.

Well maid experts,

First off, obviously, I do very much apologize for the lack of any news since February of this year (2020). Development had stalled due to various setbacks, and there had been many months without any significant progress. Its been several years since the campaign launched and I came to the dire realization that a large change was needed to finalize and get this game out.

I reached out to Belgerum, the game's composer, for his help and to possibly bring him on-board to work on the programming for this game. Lo and behold, it almost seems like it was fate. Within the last month since our first discussion, I've worked out a new agreement with him as our programmer, and he introduced me to Critical Bliss; who will now be publishing our game. And we are planning to release in October. Yes, three months from now. And that's not all...

We have a new, updated and refreshed demo for you all to test out. It has the music that Belgerum created. It showcases the beautiful updated sprites that Shunkaku created. There's sound effects, character animations, additional CGs, sprite movements, animations, etc... Its an amazing improvement and been wonderful working with Belgerum as he works his magic to bring my maid vision to life, with his unparalleled attention to detail with all manner of programming things that just astonish me.

Please Wishlist and test out the demo here on Steam!! That way you'll get the alerts are we get closer to our full formal release.

Also, to make up for the lost time, I'd like to share as many examples of assets of what we're creating (some of which are even already outdated since Belgerum works quickly and is just as focused about high quality as I am). I do hope you enjoy the updated demo and would love to hear your thoughts, critiques, and general feedback on what you like or what you feel we could improve upon.

[h2]UPDATED ASSETS EXAMPLES / PREVIEWS / GOODIES[/h2]

Here are a couple examples showcasing the old sprites on the left, and the updated re-vamped sprites by Shunkaku on the right side. I know I've already shared many, if not all, of these sprite updates with you in the past, and you'll get the chance to see how much of an improvement they are in the new demo.


Old Takako Model on Left - - - - New Takako Model on Right (Play Demo)


Old Narumi Model on Left - - - - New Narumi Model on Right (Play Demo)

[h3]Updating CGs (What'chu Talking About?)[/h3]

Demo also has some increased variety in terms of our CGs. We're not going to add extra things to every CG since that would be lunacy, but I wanted to make some of the CGs more dynamic, so we've added some additional movement (like arm movement) and expression layers. For example, Umeko in the "special" moment with Yuu that you can unlock in the demo, will have extra facial expressions, so hope you enjoy those.


New faces created for Umeko for CG3 in the demo and in full-story.


[h3]Updating Sprites[/h3]

A few sprites needed an extra layer or two (like an extra outfit, or an outfit altered for... story reasons). What kind of story reason would make an outfit change like this one for Kaori necessary, I wonder??

I wonder why Kaori (formerly Miyuki) has that large preggo belly... Hmmmm?


[h3]In conclusion...[/h3]
I hope this was a pleasant surprise for you all this morning. I look forward to you all getting this chance to play the new and improved demo, and hope it whets your maid-ly and maidenly appetite for a few more months as we work our way to the finished game. You all have been incredibly patient and accepting of these delays and setbacks, and all this COVID-19 nonsense, but I hope this brings a new light to the darkness of these times.

Hope you all have a great day and enjoy the refreshed maids! :D

--Cactus Lord, Lord of Cactii, Maids and Ladies