Escape from Blackwood Manor Dev Log 20th September 2026 (Patreon)

Hey everyone it's Sunday so here's another Weekly update on the Progress of Escape from Blackwood manor

As you may have seen earlier in the week I showed off the title screen for the game, if you haven't you can see it here, I think it turned out pretty well if i don't say so myself, or at the very least it's fitting

There's also been a lot of other smaller jobs I've had to do, for example the game actually has an 18+ rating for obvious reasons (Nudity/BDSM/Sex, you get the gist), so I've had to make a plugin just to deal with the "hey, you gotta be 18 to play this, click here if you are" ect, which isn't a huge job but it's one of those things that's necessary, i added some fun Chibi art though so i guess there's something.

Another thing, the games actual icon, for example if you're viewing this on chrome (that's a assuming your using a desktop PC) you see the little chrome icon, that's another thing I've had to do so there's a placeholder, I might actually have a poll for Patrons and Supporters eventually to decide what the icon should be but that's a ways off yet, the plan was to come up with some designs and see what people liked more, just a bit of fun i guess.

Anyways i might as well get into the meat, other than some bug fixing (the AI pathfinding was gonked if certain variables were set) I've mostly been working on music and ambience, i always held a belief that every good game I ever played had good music so it was important to try and get this right, however with this style of game that leaves some problems, specifically when it comes to tone.

So, the game is Primarily a BDSM Escape room game with puzzle solving, but there are a lot of VN elements too such as the character talking to each other, and it's set in a dark and oppressive prison, so the how do you write a soundtrack around that. I've found that most of the tracks i did earlier were either too cheerful and upbeat or too ominous, with the ideal being a combination of both, which is why i have landed on a specific style which I guess you would call Ethereal/Otherworldly Music.

So what do I mean by that, it means lots of ambient tracks and lots of instruments with increased Reverb/Wet added to the mixer settings (obviously other stuff too like EQ and balancing all the audio in the mixer ect, making music is hard...), I guess if i could give an example or some inspirations Silent Hill 2, Look Outside, Danganronpa, Lobotomy Corporation, not that any of it sounds like or is anywhere NEAR as good as these soundtracks, more that these had some music which helped me get on track with the style, the result is something that I think is pretty fitting for this game's themes.

In addition to this i've been working on atmosphere, this is way easier and the atmospheric tracks are good i think since i already put a lot of effort into the sound design beforehand, like how when the player walks over water or a metal grate it sounds different, so having a muted or toned down ambient track can just add to that, sometime silence is golden (or Red). On top of that i have the tracks which kind of stick out like a sore thumb but it's intentional, these play when your being chased/hunted, I'm not talking unnerving like when the thing chases you in amnesia but noticeable enough to get you on edge, there's also 3 variants, when its patrolling, chasing or searching, i still need to get these all tied into the games logic but its a start

That's all for now, sorry it was mostly me rambling about music and sound design but for the most part that's really all I've been doing, the next real job is working on the escape theme, and since I literally have only 2 songs of reference seemingly in the entire world (didnapper 2's A little tied up and Kinky Dungeons main theme) I will probably spend a while on getting this right, or as right as it can be, I should probably also mention that pretty much everything in the demo will be a Demo track, most of these need some work or some mixing but i set a deadline for the end of the month and need to release something, you've all supported me so much and i want to show off what I've been working on