Big changes for the project ahead. (Patreon)

Dear Supporters!

This bothers me so much that I can not work until I have spoken it out loud. I do not know if this is something to tell my supporters. Or if it is a good decision. However, I always try to be honest with you and here it is.

I was working so hard with the game, and I was so proud of myself for what I managed to achieve with v0.7 in such a short time. But then on Sunday while I was away for my 2-day military service an event happened that made me lose much of my motivation to continue with the project. At first, I decided to abandon it completely. But I am a guy who never gives up. I check the new situation, reorganize and move on. And I still want to tell the story of Laura and I like rendering. So that, fortunately, won't happen. 

However, last Sunday made me seriously reevaluate how healthy and rationale is to spend so much time and effort on this project. I am alone working on it. It makes my working days being 16, sometimes 18 and during the last December even next to 20 hours long. This had been so during the last one and a half years. I am not 20 anymore. I had health issues because of it and had to rest for a couple of weeks in January. I have family and children. They all need my attention as well. My other hobby is music (you can hear some parts in the game as well). That is abandoned completely because of the game.

My motivation for the game was and still is the following:

I wanted to tell a consistent story. Quite often games tend to lose their initial idea turning the MCs into a cock thirsty sluts. I wanted to create a story that would be as far from that as possible. Have I managed it? It is for you to tell. I am just speaking about motivation.

Frankly speaking, I do not think my project is a success. The number of supporters since last December has been more or less the same. Probably the story is too specific or too heavy. Maybe some other reason. I can not ask you that. You are the people with the taste like mine. You enjoy the game so much that you are ready to support it financially. My deepest thanks for that. This is the most serious reason for me not to give up! I respect your engagement a lot. Therefore I try to be transparent and open about my project in communication.

Let us be honest! The only real commercial part of this game is time. When I release each update least patient people join Patreon, pay for the update, take it and leave. This goes through all of the tiers, the benefits of which were made after discussing them with you. At the end, when all tiers had received it, I give the update to one person (who some years ago told me about these games) to upload it to F95 for people to play it for free. Some time ago I had a Patron who uploaded to F95 when it was released to 5$ supporters. I did not find it very fair and had a separate post about it a long time ago. But later, I found it as an ok compromise.

It was working more or less fine until the last Sunday. Until somebody decided that my hard work and sleepless nights should not be rewarded. And v0.7 early access was given out there. 

I know that it is pointless to fight. I have seen comments like "developers contribute to society and maybe rewarded for that" etc. Somebody called developers "capitalist pigs". I was born under the communist regime. I know that it was not working this way even then. And I wonder if this could be my case as I always give my updates on F95 for free after my Patrons had received it. Also, I think that me doing voluntary military service on weekends (and longer periods occasionally) for my small country and raising happy children is a far bigger contribution to society...

But if it is my new reality, I must adapt and return to a healthier balance in my life. Yes - unfortunately by reducing the time I spend with the project.

I have no certain general plan now. Most likely this would mean adding a few weeks to production time for each update and abandoning RPG. But I will come up with the plan and news during the next week.

About the nearest future. v0.7 will be officially released to tears according to the plan. I am not going to play this game. Here it will happen as written in tiers. RPG... I know that some of you are waiting for it. In the previous weekly update, I wrote that the early update of it will be released on Thursday. It won't...sorry! Most likely it will be out on Friday evening. On Monday I was so disappointed and demotivated, that I did not want to hear about the project at all. But still, I made a promise and I am working on it.

That is it for today. Thank you for being with me on this journey!

And thank you for your patience and reading this far :)

Regards,

Nemiegs.