Progress Report #82 - Important wall of text (Patreon)

Hey lads!

As promised, here comes the wall of text, since I had some stuff to mention.

First of all, Unaware in The City gets delayed until late November. Sorry about that, but after thinking it thoroughly, it's really better to wait a bit more than to release unplayable game. Also, I lost 3 days due to kidney stones attack again (but managed to get rid of them, so hopefully will have some peace for a couple of months), and those 3 days were really crucial to be able to release anything this month, so even if I really tried my best now, I wouldn't be able deliver, sorry. Lately I've been crunching like hell, too, and with all that stress it started getting dangerous to my health, so I have to slowdown a bit (wife already got pretty mad at me). I also did something fucking stupid and burnt my back badly in the process (up to 2 weeks recovery), and while it doesn't prevent me from working, it's quite annoying (especially to sleep). I'm gonna take it a bit slower, so don't expect release in the first half of November, as it's more likely to come out at the end of November. So yet again, I'm sorry about the delay, and if someone feels somehow cheated by me, then feel free to ask for a refund - as always, I won't cause any problems with that.

While I'm at mentioning bad news, my overall situation is quite bad lately. Actually, I know we are all living in really hard times nowadays, and some people might have it even harder, but my case is pretty grim. Inflation and prices are skyrocketing in Poland, and it gets worse and worse with each month. In last 3 years prices increased by 2-3 times here. Starting new year, electricity bills will increase 3-4 times. Heating is like twice as expensive compared to previous year. What's even worse, they cut dosage of some of my meds, and it's really bad as temperature also gets lower, and more importantly, they resigned from the device that allows me to move freely (and only allowed me to keep it until end of the year, and after that time, I will lose all of my mobility), so walking around the home will be a real chore, and I won't be able to leave home on my own. Pretty great, huh? Everyone here is literally cutting the costs as much as they can.

Hiring new artists and releasing UiTC required me to take quite a big loan to pay for it all, and the thing is I've already ran out of money and I'm swimming in the debts (one of the reasons I didn't want to further delay the game). Please don't take it as a form of asking for more money, that's not it. I'm really grateful to anyone who supported me in the last few months after announcing Unaware in The City, it greatly reduced the burden and allowed me to work on UiTC at all. Also, as some of you know, I never increased prices on tiers since beginning - it's always been $3 for Basic & $10 for Extended version. Though I changed currency from USD to EURO a few months ago, which is worth less nowadays, so game actually got cheaper. I'm mentioning it all, because due to everything that happened, happens and is going to happen, I'm gonna increase prices with the release of UiTC - Basic version will increase to 5 euro and Extended to 15 euro. So please, don't hate me for that, as it was a really hard decision to make. But as I am grateful to everyone who kept supporting me all these time, as a token of my huge gratitude, I will lock current 3 & 10 euro tiers and rename them to Legacy, so their prices won't ever increase. In other words - all existing patrons won't have any price increase, so it will affect only new patrons after the Unaware in The City release. Because Patreon tools are really limited, I can't guarantee old prices for all of my old patrons; I can only do it for the current patrons, sadly. So if you took a break from supporting me and will come back after UiTC release, you will sadly have to pay new prices, and there's not much I can do about it. But if you pledge in November before UiTC release, you will keep old price until you cancel your subscription. The best savings would be with yearly subscription, since it's -16% off (max discount available on Patreon), though I know that paying 30/100 euro upfront for an unfinished game might sound ridiculous, but I'm just letting you know about the options of how you can save money. I promise that these Legacy tiers won't see any price increase in the future ever, and won't be deleted either, even if the world goes to hell and we will have to pay $100 for bread.

I also tried to do some research about my disability, talked to doctors about my future and so on, and found out that my doc took part in a miraculous experiment years ago that would greatly reduce my health problems, but... nobody wanted to finance it, since selling meds is always more profitable than curing people and losing clients. FML. Though they proposed me a surgery that would fix some of my health problems (and probably cause others), but it's quite dangerous, and I'm not sure if I have the balls to take one, not to mention months/years of waiting in a queue for it.

Now from the cool stuff (although the timing is really horrible) I'm going to become a dad and have a daughter around December/January! Waited to share this until I was sure of the kid's gender, and I finally got to know it for sure like 3 weeks ago. What will it change? No idea, as I never had a kid before, but I'm sure it will take a chunk of my time.

I'm not gonna mention game progress in this post, but I can share animated game's main menu with you! We are working hard to release UiTC, and thanks to the extra time I'll be able to polish it better and add some quality of life changes, including UI re-make (which I wanted to scrap for October's release). I'll try to post something before Halloween.

Thanks a lot to anyone who bothers with reading my spam, and to everyone who still supports and believes in this project. Thanks to you I can keep going, especially now, while being in a really foul mood lately.

Cheers!

P.S. Forgot to mention it, but anyone who pledged in the last 4 months (starting in June) or later, will get access to the initial release of Unaware in The City, so no worries!