The Road Ahead

We want to take a moment to give a clear, honest update on the state of 3XO, the direction of Black Lotus as a studio, and how all of our current and future projects fit together. This has been a long development cycle, and it’s fair to want clarity on where things stand and where we’re going.

The State of 3XO

Development on 3XO is continuing, but it is still moving more slowly than we originally hoped. The core issue remains performance.

This is not a matter of adding more content or polishing what already exists. The bottleneck we’re dealing with lives deeper than that. It’s a technical limitation at the engine level that needs to be solved before the game can scale properly and before we can responsibly move forward with the experience we want 3XO to be.

To address this, we are currently working with another studio to develop custom Unreal Engine modifications specifically for 3XO. This studio operates as a white-label partner and works anonymously, which is common for specialized engine and backend work. Their role is focused entirely on solving the performance problems that have held the project back.

3XO is still coming. That has not changed. What has changed is our approach to how we build toward it. Rather than letting a single massive release sit blocked behind long-term technical work, we are restructuring the project so progress is visible, usable, and sustainable along the way.

Enter the EXOverse

Over the past few years, adult game development has become increasingly difficult and risky, both in the U.S. and internationally. These challenges affect payment processing, platform access, hiring, and long-term stability. In some regions, simply being associated with adult content carries real legal and financial risk.

Because of this, we made a necessary structural decision.

3XO is being re-branded as EXOverse.

EXOverse will be a PG-13 experience at its core, with all explicit 18+ content gated behind a separate, optional DLC. This change allows the core platform to exist, grow, and be supported long-term, while still preserving the adult content many of you originally backed.

Anyone who has already backed 3XO will receive the adult DLC for free. Nothing you supported is being taken away, removed, or re-sold.

At a higher level, EXOverse is meant to be more than a single game. It is a shared digital sandbox where players can bring their ideas to life and play together in a connected virtual world. Multiple mini-games, experiences, and social spaces will live inside that world, all tied together through shared identity and social systems.

Over the next couple of months, we’ll be updating our Steam page and website to reflect the EXOverse name and structure. We’ll also be adjusting pre-order tiers and rewards to better match this direction. Finally, our Discord server will evolve into a central hub for everything Black Lotus is working on, not just EXOverse alone.

The EXOgenesis Engine

While the performance and engine work continues in parallel, the rest of the team is focused on something foundational: EXOgenesis.

EXOgenesis is our character customization system, and it sits at the heart of EXOverse and all of our future games. It is not a temporary side feature or a stopgap experiment. It is a core pillar of what we’re building.

Because EXOverse itself is still a ways off, we’ve decided not to keep EXOgenesis hidden until the end. Instead, we plan to release it as a standalone, offline, single-player experience. This gives players something tangible to interact with and explore, rather than asking them to wait on abstract promises.

Over time, EXOgenesis will expand to include animation previews and a scene editor, inspired by tools like HoneySelect and Koikatsu. Even independent of EXOverse, EXOgenesis is something we believe will be valuable and fun to use on its own.

More details will be shared as this gets closer to release.

The Pulse Network

Another core pillar of EXOverse is Pulse.

Pulse is a social platform built around characters, communities, and shared worlds. It is designed to exist both inside EXOverse and outside of it, through a web interface and eventually mobile apps.

The goal of Pulse is to let communities form organically instead of everything appearing all at once on launch day. Players will be able to organize groups, share content, and build social spaces ahead of EXOverse’s full release, rather than waiting until the very end.

Pulse will be released before EXOverse. More information will be shared once it is further along.

New Game: The Suitor

During this phase of development, not every team member has programming-related work available at all times. Rather than letting that time go unused, Cryptic Moon has been working on a smaller project called The Suitor, with Caliope assisting on the technical side.

The Suitor is a visual novel-style parody of The Bachelor, built in Unreal Engine 5. Players take on the role of the Suitor and guide the season week by week, deciding who stays, who leaves, and who they pursue. The game features 30 contestants and full player control over how the story unfolds.

While The Suitor is meant to be fun and self-contained, it also uses the EXOgenesis system at its core. That makes it a valuable testbed for character creation, presentation, and narrative flow in a single-player environment where performance constraints are much lower.

The Suitor will be released episodically, with each episode covering a week of the show. It will be available for free to everyone who already backed 3XO.

Much more information will be shared in the next couple of months.

Other Future Games

Beyond EXOverse and the projects already discussed, Black Lotus has several future games planned. These are not in active development yet, but they represent the broader creative direction we’re building toward.

Suitor Nation

The Suitress and Suitors in Paradise expand on the reality dating show parody introduced in The Suitor. The Suitress places players in control of a Bachelorette-style season, while Suitors in Paradise leans harder into chaos, overlapping relationships, and shifting alliances inspired by Bachelor in Paradise. Both games embrace a strong mix of comedy and drama and are designed as visual novel-style experiences in Unreal Engine 5, focused on character dynamics and player-driven outcomes.

Spellbound

Spellbound is a fully 3D, third-person, choice-driven game set in the modern world, where the supernatural exists just beneath the surface of everyday life. The story follows Raven, a college student who discovers she comes from a family of witches, and Soren, a vampire who has survived for over seven centuries by staying hidden. Romance is optional but intentionally designed to be central for players who choose to pursue it. Spellbound explores identity, secrecy, and the tension between normal life and a dangerous hidden world.

Witchgate: Knightfall

Witchgate is a party-based RPG built around the fantasy of actually living inside a tabletop campaign. Players begin as modern D&D players who are pulled into their own game world, but over time the story expands far beyond that premise. You’ll meet a wide cast of original fantasy characters who can join your party, each with their own goals, conflicts, and relationships. Witchgate blends serious storytelling, dark humor, and meta-aware D&D tropes, with branching narratives and tactical combat inspired by Baldur’s Gate 3.

High Fantasy

High Fantasy is a crime-focused management game set in a medieval fantasy city, inspired by games like Schedule 1 and Grand Theft Auto. Players take on the role of a goblin building a magical drug empire from the ground up. You’ll grow and distribute fantasy drugs, expand territory, deal with rival operations and authorities, and navigate a city driven by corruption, ambition, and power. The tone blends dark comedy with criminal drama in a setting that reacts to player choices.

All of these projects are designed to stand on their own, but they share a common foundation. They are built around characters, relationships, and player choice, using the same core systems that power EXOverse.

We know 3XO has taken a long time, and it’s reasonable to feel skeptical. This update isn’t meant to generate hype or rush anyone into excitement. It’s meant to show that the project is alive, that the work is intentional, and that we are breaking a very large vision into real, deliverable pieces instead of waiting to ship everything at once.

Black Lotus is taking this seriously. We’re working toward something long-term, and we’re doing what we can to deliver meaningful experiences along the way.

Thank you for sticking with us. More updates soon.