February News post #2

Thank you for the kind words and support overall! <3 ^^ It really means a lot to hear this sort of thing at times. I have thought about it before with possibly giving ourselves more time per game update/release so it's not quite as stressful. There's some good pros and cons to the different ways to go about it I think, it's just sort of trial and error to see what will work the best. ^^" Mainly my concern with how the project functions is that we mainly run off of support funding to cover the costs for mostly art assets, but general work costs for say our programmer per month and so it feels like the longer or further apart updates are, the more awkward support might feel? (That goes without saying our 2021 year in development is the odd ball.. ^^" ) But this has been something generally in my thoughts ever since early 2020 development. Originally in the first 3-4 months we did bi-weekly updates, but the amount of content was very, very small in comparison to what is offered these days. (Much of it being 3d placeholder assets.) Even then, that felt too hectic. So we changed it to every 30 days, which seemed to work out pretty well all throughout 2020 without any hiccups, offering new content each month felt like a win win for both development and supporters/fans in general. The only downside is that in time, it started to become a little too much to handle towards the very end of 2020. But generally the holiday season is super busy with my day job anyways, so it was expected. With all of this in mind, I think with what we offer for content these days is probably a little too much to fit within a 30 day time limit like we did in 2020, but the goal or well.. At least a test plan to see how things go along the way this year is that I'd like to shoot for 45 days per update. It feels like a good middle ground both on development side and supporters/fans, but right now I think our biggest thing holding us back from this schedule is simply the sudden, unexpected leaving of Artie (previous programmer) and trying to get a new one on board, getting used to working with them and what our expectations are from each other, etc. Which is sort of where we stand currently, but we're about over the bump in the road that we've hit to begin this year. If all works out roughly as I'm spreading it out in front of me. We'll have some content out on Feb 28th for sure! v0.20 is roughly looking to be between March 7-14th as a worse case scenario, just based on being unsure what to expect with the new programmer fully yet until they provide a play test version of that content for me to look over and address anything major, minor, etc. More or less after March 7-14th area, we'll loosely get the 45 day per update schedule into motion for this year. That being said, of course if we do try and notice 45 days isn't enough time to offer new content. We can go back to the drawing boards and figure something else out, but one big perk coming after v0.20 is that all the content for the rest of the game is split up into route episodes. Of course the plan for v0.21 is to offer Nova, Heather and Lola's episodes to begin their route, which those episodes aren't as big as how say episode 1 is in comparison. If worse came to worse, we could also go about things in a way where say we don't have Heather's episode ready before 45 days. We could simply release the other two no problem and just hope to include Heather's in the following release or perhaps as a mini update between main updates, etc. (Few different ways we can go about things. :P ) Overall, I'm very happy and thankful with what you're saying. It really does mean a lot to hear all of this for concerns from supporters/fans. I guess from here, we'll just have to see how things roughly pan out towards Summer time and keep everything in mind for backup plans or how to go about things if one plan doesn't quite work out as we hope. ^^ <3

Have you ever thought of trying to do updates on a quarterly or bi-quarterly basis instead of running yourself ragged trying to please certain overzealous fans by attempting to churn out several updates with predetermined release dates that may or may not end up coming to fruition within a certain time frame? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate you wanting to get things done as early as possible, while still taking quality into account prior to releasing. However, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm starting to think you may be trying to do too much while setting too many constraints on too many WIP update releases, to the point of being overwhelmed, only to be further disappointed because you failed to meet yet another deadline. I worry about how this may be affecting your health, both physically and mentally. I get that you want to make your fans happy, and that many, myself included, are looking forward to the next update with ever growing excitement and anticipation. But please make sure you are taking care of yourself first. We can wait a bit longer, or more, if that is what you require. I'd offer to help if I had any real programming knowledge, and especially if I knew how to draw human characters.