Lets be honest, it is 100% for the money. A minor update with things that should have been added in the initial UI update and it all took what? 6 months? If the guy wanted to deliver lore like a Souls game then why not have more lore and items with lore descriptions? Why don't characters talk about the world aside from "We really horny ;P"? Hell. Why not make the gameplay more like Dark Souls if the only games he likes are DS? Defeat a wild Neph in combat then dominate it in order to bring it back to the ranch?
There is being a pessimist and there is being a realist observing trends in these types of games.
He picks apart what he likes from his limited experience with actually playing games to include in what his take on the monster breeding genre is. So what we get is something trying to be a monster breeder but without interesting breeding mechanics/gameplay, with lore that's light-hearted and goofy but intended to be delivered in a vague and not entirely spelled out fashion. Everything makes more sense when you understand that he's a modeller trying to self-learn game development and doesn't play video games.
It didn't used to be this way, updates came frequently, or at least much more frequently than they do now, he communicated more and, while he never had much of a personality to begin with, his interactions publicly over the years have become more robotic. That's why I believe that he's had a mental episode, even before he announced his issues he was posting some out there shit on discord.
It's funny how it goes, huh? Seems like a majority of successful patreon game devs either become self-appointed rockstars or they lose their minds and halt everything to a crawl but what's even more depressing is that the money never seems to stop flowing no matter what they do.
