Space, Aliens and Sex – An Interview With Perverteer

As you might of heard from a previous news article or from Perverteer’s patreon; Tales From The Unending Void by Perverteer is coming to Steam! Perverteer was kind enough to give us an interview – giving us some more insight into his game and what is to come.

Note: This interview contains spoilers of important events/moments within the game.

First of all I want to thank you for doing this interview and also I want to congratulate you on your completion of Season 1 of your game ‘Tales From The Unending Void’ (TFTUV) and also for being able to release it on Steam. I have personally been a big fan of TFTUV for about a year so it is great to see it come this far.

A: Thanks a lot for the opportunity. I’m always happy to talk about my games, process and whatever else tickles my fancy. Completing the first season of Tales From The Unending Void and publishing the game on Steam feels very much like a milestone, in the same way that bringing Sisterly Lust to completion felt.

Q: You have another game ‘Sisterly Lust’, how different was the development of TFTUV to Sisterly Lust? Did you find things much easier since you already have a completed game or did you discover any new challenges?

A: I began developing Sisterly Lust back in 2017, without much of a clue on game development, let alone crafting a lewd game. After creating a few characters in DAZ3D on a MacBook and a very vague idea of a story, I just started hammering away. As such, Sisterly Lust was very much written around tropes often found in adult games. It shows very much in the earlier parts of the game, like Rachel seeing the protagonist’s cock and falling in love with it, or Liza being a relatively old and completely naive virgin. As the game progressed, I tried subverting those tropes a little, or at least play with them a little.

With Tales From The Unending Void, I prepared far more in advance. Before I even started creating characters, I’d already written an outline and fleshed out some of the lore of the game’s universe. I also wrote short character descriptions of each of the cast members of the game, as well as a rough outline of what will happen to them during the course of the game. 

For Sisterly Lust, I wrote the story directly as a Ren’Py script. Tales From The Unending Void is written in Scrivener, which helps me structure and edit the story far better than before.

As for the artwork, a large chunk of Sisterly Lust was rendered using 3Delight, a CPU-based render engine that I could run on my MacBook. The resulting renders weren’t great, so when I was able to buy a decent GPU from my first Patreon proceeds and converted the existing renders to Iray, there was a noticeable bump in quality. Especially towards the end of Sisterly Lust, I finally got the hang of lighting scenes somewhat, so there’s a gradual improvement throughout the game. I was of course able to put all of that knowledge into creating the artwork for Tales From The Unending Void. I wouldn’t say that creating renders is my strongest suit, but it’s something I enjoy at least.

The one thing I still find challenging is releasing regularly. I still work a dayjob and it’s sometimes hard to find the time to work on my lewd projects in my spare time. The time leading up to a release date is always filled with last minute fixes and bug hunting. I also consistently underestimate how much time it takes to actually release my game builds. It invariably leads me to keep working in the small hours.

Q: Obviously, TFTUV is set in space and features a range of species, that are also involved in sexual activities. Did you find it difficult when creating the different species and also their sex scenes?

A: Creating new characters is something I very much enjoy and creating aliens even more so. The only gripe I have is that it’s often difficult to stray from the humanoid base. Of course I’m not sure if people (I’m sure there are some) get aroused by having intercourse with an amorphous blob, so any fuckable alien species needs to have some recognizable parts.

For Season Two of Tales From The Unending Void I’ve set myself more of a challenge to get a little further from the human form. I recently created a snake-like species which will be introduced in Season Two of Tales From The Unending Void. She’s still vaguely humanoid and even has lady-parts hidden somewhere. (View Right Image)

Q: Season 1 starts with Camran floating in space then flashes back to how it all began and ends with him floating in space where we started. Did you have the entire of Season 1 written out or just the beginning and end parts?

A: Wasn’t it George R. Martin who made the distinction between ‘plotters’ and ‘pantsers’? Where the former has some grand design and plans for every detail, the latter just makes it up as they go along.

I think I fall roughly in between those two categories. For each season I have written down a framework of story beats that will be achieved at some point. The details in between are all a bit sketchy, but there are still clear end goals in sight. For Season One, I already knew from the start that the crew would get stuck inside a research facility at some point. Nadya’s big reveal in the last episode was also something I had planned out from the start.

The image of Camran floating in space and talking about his exploits was a very early idea. I thought it would be a powerful image to start the narrative. Completely narrating three seasons worth of story would stretch the player’s suspension of disbelief a little too much (and I’m aware it might already be stretched thin at some points). It was very satisfying to work with those old scene files in DAZ3D again after twelve episodes. I’m a bit of a sucker for that kind of circular storytelling.

There are a few other iconic images related to the story, especially the prophecy that gets told at the very beginning, that still float around inside my head. Can’t wait to get started on those…

Q: So Season 1 is now complete. How do you feel about reaching this point? Is everything as you wanted or are there some things that you would want changed?

A: Of course there are always areas where I can improve, but I’m very happy with my progress so far. The only thing I’m seriously on the fence about is doing this full time. I’m not much of a risk taker and going at producing smut full-time would be quite the change. It might just help with that nagging feeling of not having enough time to work on the things I love to do. Food for thought, at the very least.

Q: How many seasons will TFTUV have and do you have written out or is the direction of the game’s story an unknown to you as well as us players?

A: The game will have two seasons after the first one. I’m not sure yet about the amount of episodes per season, but twelve seems like a nice number. The story has to progress of course, but also the relationships between the protagonist and crew members. There’s also the (optional) harem path that will be developed later on, as well as the pregnancy content (also optional). I plan on handling this very similarly compared to Sisterly Lust, so the harem and pregnancies will have many possible configurations. 

Sisterly Lust became a bit of a nightmare to handle in the end, because of those possible branches. But I think I have a clearer handle on the technical implementation. For example, Sisterly Lust suffered from missing a lot of render variations in the various sex scenes. Those were often encountered after the official release, I plan on catching those bugs far earlier in Tales From The Unending Void’s development cycle. Already, the testing process of Tales is far more rigorous compared to Sisterly Lust’s. It also helps that Ren’Py doesn’t spit out thousands of linting errors for Tales, because I consistently neglected to close formatting tags…

Q: Alorth is credited for doing the animations. Do they do all of the animations or do you also create some as well? Also, how is it working with Alorth?

A: Alorth is responsible for all of the animations. I’m absolutely terrible at animating and I don’t have the patience, nor the time for it. What I do during development is, once I’ve created a few sex renders, I sent the most interesting poses to Alorth and ask him to turn them into animations for me. Sometimes I request certain angles, or Alorth comes up with some good camera placements. After Alorth sends me the animation file, I render the frames in DAZ3D and he uses the resulting frames to create the final animation. The setup might sound a little convoluted, but it works.

Q: During early development, did you make any major changes to the story and/or characters? And do you think you made these changes for the better or do you have any regrets?

A: No, there haven’t been any major changes to characters. There were appeals from players to make both Raene’s and Ziv’s gender optional, but in the end I decided against that. In part, because it means creating two branches per character, which is a lot of extra work. Also, I think the current backstory of Raene and Ziv is what gives them part of their appeal.

Another thing that has been requested more recently is having Rahia, the Acarhyn warrior commander, join the crew of the Iron Bastard. The main cast of the game is already quite large, so adding Rahia would simultaneously add to my workload, but also introduce unexpected changes to the story I have in mind. All I can say is that Rahia will be back (if you’ve played your cards right).

Q: Your game features characters with both genitalia that the player can have sexual interactions with. What was the reason for this? Is it due to them being alien or is it something more?

A: Sisterly Lust didn’t include trans characters at all, which I wanted to remedy in Tales From The Unending Void. I find that quite a few porn games treat trans characters as something that adds some sort of shock value. The tired old: “OMG! She has a dick!!! She’s a he!” I wanted to avoid those tropes and write about a strong character who’s embraced their sexuality completely (Ziv) and someone who’s just started on their path of self-acceptance (Raene).

Q: When developing Season 1, did you have any goals/achievements in mind and did you reach them?

A: Hard to say really. Animations and music were a clear goal from the start. Sisterly Lust lacks both, because animations weren’t really a big thing when I started out. Neither was music, come to think of it. Only when Sisterly Lust came to Steam, I began receiving reports about players who noted the lack of music. So for each episode of Tales From The Unending Void, I select music that fits the major scenes, which is a process I’ve come to enjoy very much.

I still want to update Sisterly Lust with a full soundtrack. There was someone who even wrote some musical sketches for the game at some point, with the intention of composing a full suite of music for the game. Sadly, I haven’t heard from him in a while, so the project remains in limbo.

In general, I’d say I wanted a more cinematic experience for Tales From The Unending Void. I think that by including animations and music, as well as increasing the quality of the renders, I achieved that goal.

Q: What are your plans now that Season 1 is complete? Is season 2 already in the works and can we expect to see it anytime soon?

A: Season Two is very much in the works. I’m already rendering and writing parts of what is to become Episode 1. I don’t have an ETA for release yet, still to early to guess, I’m afraid.

Q: What can we expect from Season 2? Are there going to be more characters, dramatic moments and of course, sex?

A: A large part of Season One was very much about the crew finding their way after deserting from the Sovereignty. There has been some critique about the protagonist being brash, selfish and stupid at times and I’m hoping to show some character growth in that regard in Season Two. You’re not playing Commander Sheppard from Mass Effect in Season One of Tales From The Unending Void, but rather a hapless cadet who has just been plunged into events he can barely fathom. There will be some big moments in Season Two and Three that will hopefully make the protagonist reach for some Shepard-like badassery.

Q: Are there any people in particular that you want to thank for helping you with TFTUV or just thank them in general?

A: Yes, of course. I can’t thank Alorth enough for his help on the animations and DAZ related stuff. Hobocop86, for finding all those clipping limbs, wonky blinking eyes and other horridness. Grubb, for being one of the best proofreaders, sometime editor and Portuguese translator (seriously, you should hire him). And to everyone else who contributed in some way to both my games!

Q: Finally, is there any advice you would want to give to anyone who wants to start out developing their own lewd games?

A: I would only start developing lewd games if your heart is really in it, if you really like what you’re doing. Writing, rendering, editing, scripting, releasing, is quite the undertaking and you should really only be doing it if you’re having fun at the same time. All to often people get into producing lewd games thinking they’ll get rich fast. That probably won’t happen though and you’ll pour an ungodly amount of time into a project before seeing any return. But having fans (even a small amount) eagerly anticipating your work really makes it worth it. It certainly does for me.

Giveaway Winners

As part of the release of Tales From The Unending Void on Steam. Perverteer was kind enough to give us 5 keys to give away to our community.

The winners of this giveaway are as follows:

Disclaimer. Perverteer is an owner of LewdPixels.com. As a developer, Perverteer was not granted any special exceptions to our content or publishing policies or practices.

Thank you to Perverteer for his time and doing this interview. If you would like to check out Tales From The Unending Void you can visit the Steam game page here or you can check our Perverteer’s Patreon. What are your thoughts on Tales From The Unending Void and what do you hope to come?