I have a hard time trusting devs saying they are doing such a slow job because they don't get enough support.
There are so many scammy devs recieving monthly support and only delivering a months worth of work in an update every 6 months.
I don't remember this game getting frequent updates when the Patreon was up either. Hitting the remake bandwagon when the game was maybe 10-20% finished also does not really help when everyone wants the story to continue. I think the better solution is to make more frequent smaller updates because that will prove to people that you actually work on the game. Making it easier to trust and support you.
damnedfrog gave very sensible answers to your legitimate questions, but I’d like to add a few nuances regarding my particular case.
For me, when you support a small dev who doesn’t yet make a living from this, I’ve always seen it as a way to thank them for what they’ve already done and to encourage them to keep improving and moving forward — rather than as a monthly salary payment with obligations attached. Of course, once you reach an amount that actually lets you live off it, then it becomes your main source of income, and the game’s development becomes your life — with all the new responsibilities that come with that. But on the flip side, you can (and should) spend your whole day developing it (which was never my case yet).
In my case, just when I reached that point and started considering quitting my job, I got banned from Patreon — back to zero. Luckily, I hadn’t quit yet, or I’d have ended up with no income and on the street, lol. But yeah, that obviously slowed me down, because now I have to rebuild everything little by little to hopefully reach that level again — the point where I could work on the game full-time and make much faster progress. So yes, that’s what caused the delay in that sense.
As for your other questions and your doubts — you’re right, I’ve been posting less often, even before all that. But for those who really want to see how things are progressing, I’d remind you that I’ve
always posted very long and detailed progress reports, free for everyone to read, showing clearly that the game is advancing, that scenes are being written, and that the code is growing massively. You can just look here, for example — I even post screenshots of the code lines, etc.:
You must be registered to see the links
That said, you’re right about one thing — I’ll have to change how I publish updates. To rebuild what I lost, I’ll need to start releasing smaller updates more frequently. I plan to begin doing that after Chapter 3 is released. Once that big one is out, I won’t repeat the same approach for Chapter 4 — instead, I’ll post smaller, regular updates. And I’ll try to be less perfectionist about polishing every single scene and interaction as if my life depended on it.