Hello epic steamers. It's me, the guy that makes this dumb game coming to you with some things to say. I will update the game with the Halloween event in a few days. But there won't be new Butts. I know it hurts! I'm sorry. Allow me to blurt out a lot of words to at least offer some explanations.
Because I didn't have the time, and I do sincerely apologize :(. My focus these months has been on Amarillo's Desktop Pets, the game I've been working on since last year, which was the main thing I was wanting to put up on Steam.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3094870/Amarillos_Desktop_Pets/
This doesn't mean that Butt Slapper will never get new content updates, but I'm not in a place where I can make promises. Time is precious, and besides Desktop Pets, there are many other things I'm working on! But there's something that a few people here might consider good news.
The petition for the plushie went through, and the Plushie campaign is now live. If the plushie reaches at least 50 pre-orders, production will be fully confirmed! Even though the page says 100, I've been told that it's possible to produce it with as few as 50. Otherwise, you'll get your money back, so pre-orders are risk free.
Click here to pre-order your Ada plushie!
As some of you know, Desktop Pets got a healthy amount of whishlists, even before Butt Slapper blew up, so naturally it is my most important game. One of the main features requests I got from the demo was better VRM support. For those not in the know, VRM is a format for 3D characters, which is very popular among vtubers and modders (in games like Desktop Mate or Desktop Kanojo).
Not only I've completely reworked Desktop Pets to fully accept VRMs hassle free, I've also decided that I will 100% adopt VRM support for all my following games. Here are some sneak peeks for the VRM support I've integrated into my other projects, featuring Bunny Boba, my first test subject.
VRM Boba loaded into Desktop Pets
CharacterBox: a VRM model tester for my games
VRM Boba in AmaMod VR: an exclusive VR sandbox I made for my supporters
Ragdoll physics in AmaMod VR with Boba
Once again, apologies for not coming up with new Butts for you guys ːsteamsadː
The 0.1.4 update brings a quality of life feature that may not be very exciting but comes much requested: manually loading saved games. You can now access all your saved games from the "Load" button on the main screen and play or delete them at will.
Additionally, resetting a campaign will continue to maintain your level progress but now will place you back into a starting sector rather than wherever you died, so that you don't have to fight through max level planets in an empty ship.
You can now manually load saved games in addition to continuing the last save.
Restarting a campaign now resets you to a low difficulty sector rather than into a challenging sector.
Added chaff canisters that can be fired to block sensors.
Increased level up XP requirements.
Removed XP gain for fuel usage.
Smoothed campaign difficulty curve.
New campaigns will temporarily no longer have Raid missions. This will not effect existing campaigns.
Increased cargo container attachments’ cargo size.
Make launched items (missiles, satellites, etc) not collidable while close to the launching ship to prevent accidental collisions.
Fixed issue preventing weapons from targeting missiles in certain circumstances.
Fixed issue causing some certain hardpoints to not be usable.
We've made a minor fix to the "Finish the game without fails" achievement, which was previously triggering for players who completed the game with some fails.
Greetings everyone!
A small update on what's going on currently:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/machinatorcorp/trinity-archetype
We’re getting ready to launch our Kickstarter campaign! As we mentioned in previous news, we are releasing the game in Q2 2026, so from now until then we’re in that last stretch of development.
Running a successful campaign would give us the Boost (get it?) we need to achieve some of the goals we have before and during the Early Access release, including:
Localizing the game into multiple languages.
Adding a bigger variety of characters, skills, enemies, events, etc.
Improved visuals for UI and skill effects.
Console ports.
Kickstarter campaign or not, we are committed to launching a very polished and fun game next year — but that extra push would help us go the extra mile!
You can join the waitlist to be notified when we launch.
We're happy to announce we'll be showcasing Trinity Archetype at the EVA Play in Buenos Aires on November 7th-8th! This is gonna be a very packed event, so it's a pretty big opportunity for us to interact with a lot of people and get more feedback on the game.
Come and say hi if you are in Buenos Aires!
Based on community feedback, we've been updating the demo build more regularly to fix bugs or add new content. However in doing so we quickly realized there's always the risk to break some more stuff!
Because of this, we've introduced a new Beta branch for the Demo, which we can update more often and test out new changes before bringing those to the default branch. So if you wanna check what's the newest and latest, play on the beta branch but expect things to (possibly!) be a bit more broken (and please let us know if you find any bugs!).
Since we are currently getting ready for both the Kickstarter Campaign and the EVA Play, dev progress is a bit slow at the moment. However, once that's done, we'll be back in full force with new and exciting changes! So keep an eye out for that.
As always, reach us here or in Discord.
Chains on Sand launches in 7 days — New Trailer!
Contenders, we’re one week from release.
A new trailer is here—showing arena carnage, crowd judgment, and brutal finishers.
What’s in the game
Procedurally generated opponents with varied behaviors
Many builds: allocate stats, skills, and traits
Tactical combat with facing/flanking, crippling injuries, and dismemberment
Maneuvers, stances, hit locations, and status effects (stunned, bleeding, poisoned)
Crowd Judgment: spare or execute—popularity has consequences
Dozens of weapons & shields, quality tiers, and durability
Throwables, consumables, and poisons
Magic schools: Body, Heal, Protection, Elemental
Special opponents with unique loot; face the killers of your past characters
Steam Leaderboard to compare your deeds worldwide
Launch details
Release: in 7 days
Price: $9.99 with a 10% launch discount
If you like brutal, turn-based arena tactics, Wishlist/Follow to get the launch ping and discount.
⚔️ See you on the sand.
— ThVaz
Have you heard? The NPCs have more voice options now! It's hard to miss when Elysia's British accent seems to hit hard with many players. ❤️🔥
Curious why you can choose between Legacy and Advanced text-to-speech? Read on to learn how our team yandere'd their way into this one—the emotional journey's end result is characters that are more dynamic, emotive, and dare we say alive?
Originally, we used Azure's Speech Services for our demo builds — it was stable and fast to set up for a demo project. But Azure came with some limitations. We wanted our girls to sound consistent across languages, yet few of Azure's voices could handle that well. Plus, Azure's TTS costs always ate up a big chunk of our budget. 💸 We're always on the hunt for ways to reduce cost without sacrificing quality.
At the same time, other TTS services like ElevenLabs and MiniMax came out, offering more advanced options, including different emotional tones. After many months of testing, we chose MiniMax, which supports multiple languages, delivers more expressive voices, and is significantly more cost-friendly.
We first rolled it out in the Steam China region, then in Russian and German, and finally implemented it across all languages for the global version this September.
MiniMax isn't the only service we tested. Our team compared multiple providers on price, stability, scalability, and technical support. Here's how they stack up for our case:
Azure: Pricey
ElevenLabs: Widely used and good quality, but the most expensive.
OpenAI: Also pricey, with no available technical support.
Inworld: ❌ Not fitting for our use case.
MiniMax: Cost-effective, with voice output that can reflect different emotions, plus excellent technical support from their customer service team.
Here are some samples comparing familiar voices with our test ones. We use one of Eddie's iconic CUTscene lines—let us know which of these voices truly speak to you!
We're also careful not to rely on smaller or short-term projects. Voice consistency matters — you don’t want to wake up one day and hear Eddie with a completely different voice, never able to change back. That's why we still keep both Legacy and Enhanced voice models in our game, so players who prefer the older voices can stick with them.
Scalability is another key factor. We currently support six languages, including English, Chinese, and Japanese, and we want to expand further. We're surveying our global community to decide which language to add next, so it's important to have a service that can reliably cover most of our needs.
Switching pipelines is never easy:
One major challenge was picking tones that sound natural across all languages, then testing them through various game scenarios. The tone needs to match the original, since players are already familiar with how each girl should sound — it's part of their identity.
We also changed our audio format — a technical adjustment that doesn't impact gameplay — moving from .wav (our early demo's quick-prototyping choice) to .mp3, which is lighter in size. This was partly because the .wav files from MiniMax didn't fully fit our previous project's structure.
These details may stay behind the curtain, but they're what make sure you hear the right voice, with the right emotion, at exactly the right moment. 🎧
We're still experimenting — balancing cost, stability, and immersion. The goal stays the same: voices that feel alive, connect with our characters, and make your time with them unforgettable. ✨
Based on the AI2U community's vocal feedback, fans are split between Eddie's original sweet voice and her new "anime dub" one. Meanwhile, Elysia's new British voice has enchanted many longtime and returning players, while Estelle's Legacy voice is preferred by her dedicated engineers.
Are you a fan of the Enhanced voices or a Legacy TTS enjoyer? We'd love to know if you like the new options or if you're committed to the NPCs' original voices (Eddie approves either way 💖🔪)