Upcoming release previews! | Dev Diary for September 2026

It's been a while since I updated you here on what's coming. If you're anxious to hear more frequent updates on progress we're always active on Discord (the link's in the game's main menu, and at the bottom of this post) but bigger update posts are really quite time consuming and it takes away from my development time, so I don't like to get too caught up in them!

Anyway, we've got a new patch coming soon and I also now know what will be in the one after that, and some of the ways we're taking the game in the months beyond that one too, so I can talk a bit about the future and what to expect.

October patch: Bathing

It's about time Lord Goblin had a proper bath! Fortunately, there are four lovely ladies in the castle available to lend a hand when he does. Upgrading the bath will unlock the bathing option, with an attendant of your choice. There is an animated scene for each different lady (and the system will be expanded in the future for combinations, as the characters' positions in the bath don't overlap and we can just add them in). Az'ea is unlocked from the start, while Beth, Cliona and Delia require >=50 obedience. There are also eight new short bath scenes, which trigger the first time you have a bath with each of the ladies, then once she has >=75 lust you get a more enthusiastic scene.

There's a couple of other stand-alone scenes for Beth, and this patch is going to have a bunch of bug fixes, of course, (hopefully we've caught the bugs that the new content has introduced, too!) and some significant balance tweaks. A lot of events have been revised to increase the danger of the portal, room actions are more logical in whether or not they spend time, lust potions cost more alcohol, the barracks is more useful, a bunch of other smaller tweaks have been made, and the game has been set up to future-proof for a new "enemy faction strength" system we're rolling out in the future, and which I'll talk about below.

Future patch: Delia romance

The Delia romance is almost but not quite done. Mostly we're polishing things up and getting the voice acting finished. We could add a couple of the early scenes into the next patch, but we feel that players will enjoy the romance more if it all comes in one big release together, so you can play from start to finish in one sitting if you want to.

That will be the main feature of the release after next, which I can't put a date on yet but would probably be a few months (roughly) after the next one. Also included will be a new enemy faction strength system, which will now let you keep track of and influence the power of the different enemy forces that can besiege the castle.

We felt that the siege/battle system in the game was pretty good, but players were hardly ever interacting with it, as it only really triggered as an alternative to game over screens. Therefore, we've been exploring ways to trigger battles voluntarily through holding court events, and we'll be adding more through the plot (which was always the plan, but we've increased that a bit).

There's also going to be the potential for bandit attacks, along with a new tutorial to the battle system (not that it needs all that much tutorialising) and we're laying the groundwork to make some other factions out of existing art assets.

Beyond: Lots of progress

We've got a lot of art and scenes ready to go, with the main plot and the Cliona romance both mostly written and illustrated, and a lot of other sex scenes to roll out; both animated one-on-one scenes like the existing ones, and special new combination scenes (mostly using splash-screen art) that you can discover by picking romanced ladies to observe the ritual with other romanced ladies. We've been holding back on that last point mostly because it makes sense to get the romances done first, so you can actually unlock the scenes.

Queen Fina's romance isn't quite ready to go just yet; we've got a lot of it done, but only two of her sex scenes are animated and while we have art for some of the rest of it finished, I'd like to get some more. The writing's in a decent state; maybe two-thirds done. Fina's also an important ingredient in the main plot. I don't want to give huge spoilers here, but you can expect that if you gain enough favour with Fina, and at the same time you rebuild the castle to a good enough state, you could get a royal visit from the King himself! That's got to be good... right?

Oh, incidentally, the gif I posted above was just a test sketch, but that particular scene is fully illustrated and animated now, just waiting on all the other work we have to do to get Cliona's romance into the game.

Jealousy system

A particular feature we're planning to implement quite soon is a jealousy system for the ladies once they've been romanced, and I wanted to point it out to illustrate how useful it is to get constructive player feedback on the game. We got some feedback that after the ladies are romanced the gameplay becomes too easy (the plot will make things a little more challenging, but not enough), because the early game challenges had mostly been solved and the game just gets simpler.

Fortunately, in my other current game project Pervert Action: Timelapse, I've already developed a system that causes jealousy to build up when you don't pay a particular woman enough attention. In Lord Goblin, you'll be able to reduce jealousy by picking her for the ritual, or giving her gifts or outfits. If you ignore this and jealousy gets up to 10, an argument will break out between her and the least jealous lady, and you'll have to waste the evening mediating the argument, not being able to do the ritual or anything else.

Initially I hadn't planned to translate this idea into Lord Goblin as the point of the game is that the ladies aren't interested in him at first, but as we plan for the gameplay to progress past the romances, it makes a lot of sense to introduce it later. Having another relationship stat will also give us new options to play with in events and maybe in other ways we haven't thought of yet.

And a reminder: if you want to chat about what's coming, check out our Discord server! https://discord.gg/nn9G3ZB