Six years... (Patreon)

Jesus Christ...It feels like it has only been a few days since I made that post in 2024. But six years ago today, on August 31st 2019, I posted the first playable version of My New Family on the internet.

So it's going to be this kind of post. The renders for this week will follow later and it's totally fine if you don't want to continue reading from here! Thank you for being a part of this community anyway!

Well...Six years...

I'm always happy to think back. But the last anniversary was already in a pretty dire mood - the wound that my stuff has been taken from me was still fresh, at least to me. Now we have the 2nd year in a row where I still don't have anything back. Neither my beloved assets, nor any of my hardware. Not even a freakin' laptop that didn't contain anything, since it was freshly formatted. Nothing...

But I don't want to sound too depressing in this post. With the release of the prequel earlier this year and the insane amount of support of you guys, I was able to stay on track. Still, I'm wondering how much would be different if I had my stuff back. I can see it with the numbers, that they are dwindling, that less and less people stay because the game they wanted to continue to play is currently not really progressing. And again, I totally understand that. If I was on the other end I would have probably done the same. Moral support yes, financially supporting someone that can't deliver what you are here for? Maybe not so much.

But it was never about the money to me personally. I love what I started with My New Family. The game that started it all for me. From being unemployed, at the brink of poverty, to someone that is able to do this work as their main source of income. My life became better, my life has a purpose again. This might sound a little too extreme but it's true. The reason why I'm still here and didn't give up after what happened to me almost two years ago is the person reading this post right now. You people are giving me the biggest positivity I ever had in my life. I can keep going because I know there are people out there who want to read and play what I create.

So these posts are mainly for you, the players and the community. The people that were there when I released the first alpha, only to a few on the very small Discord server back then, to the person who only discovered my games yesterday. Everyone of you, no matter where you come from, if you are a pirate who never wants to pay a dime for these games, to the people that decide to support me in multiple ways, even financially, you all are amazing. Like I said, I never started to make these games for the money. I wanted to do something with my time and never would I have thought it would be the center of everything for me now.

Six years is a long, long time. So I want to use this post to not only talk about the past, but also a possible future. It's something I hinted about a few times but before I tell and show you what I mean, I want to clarify something, and I think most of you won't be happy about that.

As some of you might remember, I got some amazing help regarding the recreation of the main cast of My New Memories. The thing is...Whatever I tried, no matter which angle I looked at them or how much effort I put into them to make them look more like their originals... They just aren't the originals. That's why I think that I'm not going to use them for Chapter 4, at least for now. I know this might be super disappointing to you people but I have a different suggestion, a different approach, I guess.

I know that the prequel is liked by a lot of you and I know that some don't care about it. But with the models I have so far, I was thinking about using them in the prequel eventually... And with those models I mean Anna and Lena. Those two would make sense to appear in the prequel at one point, and I think with the changes I made to the recreation, they would "fit" in there, since I made them look younger than their originals. I will give you a comparison for Anna below.

This is Anna how you remember her from My New Memories.

And this is the copy , using the recreated model Terminator made and then altered by me to fit my style a little more and I Made her younger, so she fits the university theme more...

The difference is huge, I know, especially in terms of skin color etc. But...Yeah. That is my plan. I really, really want to hear what you guys think about that, so don't hesitate to message me here, say something in the comments or talk to me on Discord!

Of course my main goal is still to get all my stuff back, especially my character assets. This is the single most important goal in my life right now, to do everything I can, no matter what it takes, to get these things back. Sadly, I'm at the mercy of the german law here, and the law is slow...Painfully slow, to be honest. Two years with no charges being pressed or a court hearing coming, getting nothing but silence from the state attorney, no matter what we do...It's frustrating. And we can't even sue them for anything yet, because the excuse right now can always be "We are heavily understaffed and there is a lot to do". I don't know how difficult it is to check an external SSD as a state attorney and say "Yes, these characters are fine and those assets are needed for work" or "No, they are not fine", so we can proceed to get a judge involved.

All in all...I'm happier than I was last year, I think. I'm still struggling a lot mentally, especially when I see the decline on every end, but it's definitely better than last year. I'm hoping and praying ( and I hope you keep me in your prayers too if you are religious ) that this situation will be solved this year eventually, so that I can get my beloved characters back. Because I think thats the main issue right now - That I love these characters so much that I can't replace them just like that. I just can't. And I'm really, really sorry for that, like I said above. This is totally only on me and I can fully understand if you're thinking "Stop being such an idiot and just use those models, we'll love them anyway!". But...I can't. And I have to live with that decision, at least for now. If it's 100% clear I'm not getting anything back then I will use them, that is a promise.

Okay, I think this post has been longer than I wanted it to be and I talked about a lot of things. If you stayed with me until here, Thank you. Thank you so so much for all the support, on this platform or on Discord or anywhere else. Like I said above, it's thanks to you guys I'm not giving up. Never.