Hey everyone, how’s it going?
It’s me, Zeus. I’m writing this on the Monday before the release of Chapter 4, and I wanted to share some thoughts, and maybe clear up a few doubts you might have about this project.
Well, Knight and I started working together back in 2022, around mid-November. It was really exciting to start all of this, because honestly, I was someone who wasn’t doing anything with my life. No job, no studies, dealing with some personal issues that kept me in my room most of the day playing on my PC. So being able to write a story and actually earn some money from it? Holy shit, that was a dream coming true.
At that time, BP was in a rough spot, a beginning that most people hated, a ton of negativity surrounding the project, a remake that kept stumbling as it tried to build something new and appealing for the audience that was still around.
We’re still far from where we want to be, but damn… those were some ugly days for these characters.
I ended up rewriting most of the game’s dialogue, deleting some things, adding new ones, we created Chapter 3 and quickly moved on to remaking Chapter 1, all in what, looking back, feels like a very short window of time.
But what exactly made things get so much worse? Honestly, I don’t think it was just one thing, it was more like a pile of small mistakes and problems stacking up over time.
As I said at the start, I had no responsibilities when I began writing BP. Knight had a part-time job that still allowed him tons of free time too. So we both had this huge window to create and work nonstop.
But then 2024 came around, and everything changed.
Very early that year, I got accepted into college, and that flipped my entire life upside down.
If before I could wake up whenever I wanted and spend the whole day planning and writing, now I had to spend most of my days from 7 AM to 5 PM on campus. That immediately affected Chapter 3.5, though I’m proud of that chapter, I think it turned out beautiful. I don’t think it suffered from anything other than the longer development time, since we released it right after the end of the first semester.
It was the beginning of college, so everything was still manageable. The first semester was smooth. Honestly, even good, meeting new people can improve someone’s daily mood a lot.
But then the second semester of 2024 came…
Believe it or not, we actually wanted to release Chapter 4 last year. Looking back now, it’s almost funny to think that. But at the time, everything seemed possible.
One month after releasing Chapter 3.5, Knight also started college, now we were two engineering freshmen, and I think that’s when things got genuinely harder.
We don’t live in the same country, not even the same continent, so our time zones are completely different. When I was in class, he was getting ready to sleep. When he woke up, I was snoring like a chainsaw in the middle of the night. And trying to coordinate anything in that rhythm was a nightmare.
But we kept going anyway.
As I mentioned, we both study engineering. Different branches, but still both a pain in the ass most of the time. And as the classes got harder, the workload basically exploded.
Stress piled up. Burnout was right around the corner.
The same two guys who previously only had to worry about writing a romance and creating renders of big-boobed women suddenly had to study calculus 24/7, deliver complex assignments, and prepare for exams.
Is any of that the project’s fault, or anyone else’s fault besides our own? No.
But it’s definitely a part of the disaster equation.
Now, talking about something more personal, Knight originally asked me to be the writer of Broken Promises, but over time that turned into many other roles. In movie terms, you could say I’m the director and Knight is the cinematographer, like we’re Fincher & Cronenweth (I wish we had even a third of their talent).
Neither of us works alone in our departments; we always discuss things and critique each other, positively or negatively.
But here comes a major problem on my end:
When I joined this project, my mission was to defuse a massive bomb that was seconds away from exploding… while simultaneously being asked to build an entire skyscraper around it. A good one. One that could attract and please anyone who looked at it.
And it can also become very difficult to work with a plot and characters that are not your own creations. You have to put in twice the effort to understand them from scratch and to know where they should go and how they should behave. I try to do this in the best way possible, staying faithful to the original concept that Knight planned for all of this.
Now add that pressure to the stress of college and life in general… man, there were days that were unbearable.
I just couldn’t think of anything to write, didn’t want to.
I couldn’t form the next line of dialogue, let alone the next ten chapters of the game.
And speaking of everyday problems…
This year had a few heavy ones I never mentioned at the time.
In early July, my grandfather passed away suddenly. He had lived right next to us since 2017. He was the only grandfather I ever knew, and the last grandparent I had left. I loved the old man a lot, we had so many fun conversations. At least I got to have one final good, cheerful talk with him. It turned out to be a perfect goodbye… even if I didn’t know it at the time.
A weird detail: on the day of his funeral, I opened my phone to distract myself and write something for the scene I was working on. And when I opened the document, the last line I had written was Alice telling Jack about her sick grandfather. A coincidence dark as hell.
After that, we hit what I believe was our lowest point since we started working together.
By then, it was getting close to one year since the last update, and Chapter 4 wasn’t even remotely close to finished. So we started investigating ourselves, trying to figure out what exactly was dragging us down.
And I think we found it:
The damn monthly customs.
To give you an idea… The amount of customs we were producing in a single year was basically the size of an entire new chapter.
That was insane. Completely unsustainable.
So we cut that benefit from Patreon until the new chapter was out.
And man… that was a brutal decision.
It dramatically improved our work rhythm, but financially?
We got screwed. Hard.
You can’t remove a major benefit from a subscription and expect people to keep paying for it. It’s totally understandable that many stopped supporting us. But that August hit like a punch to the stomach.
Imagine earning a certain amount every month and suddenly,
boom, you're making only one-third of it the next month.
Thankfully, we’re careful with money and always save, so we managed to stay afloat. And eventually, new supporters arrived, people who continued backing us even without the customs. Some on higher tiers. You have no idea how much that helped us.
And speaking of money, that brings me to another point.
Around August/September we officially registered ourselves as a “business” and started paying taxes and everything. And holy shit, that stuff is expensive. Add that to the drop in monthly Patreon income and you’ve basically got a black hole sucking your wallet dry.
But at least we’re fully legal now. One less thing to worry about.
Still in that period - looking back now, between July and September, life decided to test us hard, because damn…
I had a health problem that had been bothering me for a while. I finally went to a doctor, and found out I needed surgery. I could have lived with it, but it would’ve been risky. So I chose to get it done. Thank God I have health insurance, so money wasn’t an issue.
But let me tell you: I have never experienced so much discomfort and anxiety in my entire life.
Luckily, everything went well. I spent half of August and half of September recovering, and today I'm great. I’m glad I got it over with.
“But why didn’t you talk about any of this in your status reports?”
Well… before being a developer, I was a fan, an active AVN player. Today I only follow three devs, but back then I played tons of games in the genre.
And the thing I saw the most? Constant delays… and devs making some crazy excuses every single time.
I promised myself I would never be that kind of dev.
(Which might be one hell of an irony, and hypocrisy, depending on the tone you're reading this.)
So instead of crying every 15 days on Patreon, I chose to just pretend everything was fine and keep my head down, working as hard as I could.
And that's why I’m here writing this massive text today, because now Chapter 4 is released, done, and behind us.
How are things now?
Well, I’m working on the next chapter while Knight handles most of the launch with patches and fixes.
I hope you enjoy Chapter 4. Right now I need to study, it’s my final week of classes and I have a bunch of tests. It’s going to be hell, but after that I’ll be on vacation and can work in peace.
What about the future?
There’s a lot to worry about, sure. But one thing is certain:
Unless one of us dies, this story will be finished. Properly. Naturally. Not rushed into two chapters or abandoned halfway through. We love doing this.
And it’s pretty obvious by now that we’re not doing it for the money.
Will there be new games after Broken Promises?
Hard to say.
I have my own story, one I’ve been planning since before joining BP. I would love to see it come to life someday.
But this year was a huge challenge. Some days were actual hell. A lot of frustration and disappointment piling up. So I’ve been thinking a lot about whether I’ll continue after BP.
But BP will be completed. That’s a promise and a personal commitment. It will end with dignity.
Will the next chapters take a whole year again? Will things get better?
Impossible to give you a precise answer. We don’t want to repeat this ever again. But something my mom likes to say is: “Tomorrow belongs to God.”
We have no idea what tomorrow will bring, so I won’t make empty promises.
We’ll release things when we can, as soon as possible, and with the best quality we can deliver.
I think I’ve said everything that was weighing on my chest. I hope a lot of things have been clarified. And if you still have an important question, feel free to reach out, I’ll be happy to talk about it.
Even with all the struggles along the way, all I can say is thank you. Truly.
It’s comforting to know that there are people out there who genuinely enjoy what you create.
Thank you so, so much, for everything.
Knight:
I was around 18-19. I can't remember when exactly, I started to work on DAZ art. I enjoyed working on it a lot, I loved doing fan-art of characters that I love and also wanted to improve my art because back then it wasn't like how it is.
I was honestly quite young, never really made art, I only remember drawing stick figures as a kid, but nothing like that in the past, making art is just full of joy for me, especially when people loved it. Which was back then very important to me, maybe too important. I was quite insecure back in the day. I didn't have the best mental health either, I was in a dark place at that time, I was depressed and I didn’t know I believed I would amount to nothing. But the only way I got through it was because of making art, I guess in a weird way it gave me purpose and was one of the only things in my life that I could control, that no one can ever take away from me.
Creation of our models
One day I decided that I wanted to create my own character, I was quite inexperienced, I never have done it before. But I remember, I was enjoying this. The first time I ever done this, I wasn't really using any references, just the personality I had in mind. And then I made Brie, now back then I didn't have a indepth view in my head with Brie, only that she was Russian and that I mainly wanted to have something related to emotions with her.
I made some art with her, here some earlier renders of her:
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I was very happy making her and giving her a sort of life for her and I wanted to make a short story of her. At some point I also made Alice, I made her as a certain inspiration from a certain Raccoon.
After making the girls I was really happy, I can't really describe it, but I kept doing renders of them over and over again, I knew I wanted to make some sort of story and have people enjoy it in some way through art. Later in the future I made new characters, Vanessa, Tianna, Grace, Afina, Kylie and Eveline.
When did I start Broken Promises?
Well originally it was called Lethal needle, I'll be honest, I had no direction and no clue where I wanted to take this story. At that time I was very inexperienced, I wanted to make a game and create a story, but I didn't know how. I remember days where I was rendering as I went and then wrote dialogues, wasn't the best but I at least was making something I guess. I made a “test prologue” just to try out and see what feedback would be. However later it became an actual Prologue to the game, I don't remember how exactly, but at some point I and the writer worked together to shape the story, but he had a falling out, the one thing that stuck was Broken Promises.
After that I hired another writer to help, this isn't Zeus, this was someone else. We worked together and managed to release the first chapter, which was honestly a disaster. Honestly looking back at it was probably my fault, the problem with me is that I'm passive. I don't like to have confrontations, which I've gotten better in the years that passed, then me and that writer also had a falling out.
After that I swore that I will never have another writer.
How come you hired writers instead of doing it yourself?
Around that time I was under anti-depressants, they were honestly horrible, but they blocked the bad thoughts away. And even then I wasn’t the most creative person. I only played first person shooters and not really watched any movies or read any books.
But after that I honestly gave up on hiring a writer (ironic), I did however write a few chapters on my own, it was received kind of well? But I’d be lying if it wasn’t almost or even below average, I was committed however to continue and work on the story because despite everything I’m no quitter. Some friends messaged me and said they can help out a bit after what happened and I set up a proofreading group. Honestly I was blessed to have such good friends who helped me. But that’s where I met Zeus.
Meeting Zeus
Zeus was part of the proofreading team, he helped out a lot, I remember in the past he wanted to help with chapter 1 writing. I invited him since he offered and well I trusted him in a weird way. In the proofreading he was actually quite active than most and gave some good suggestions. Better than my ideas that’s for certain, idk when it started, but the cafe scene in chapter 3, I remember I asked him to write me something for that. Well he did and I quite liked it.
However…
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I know one thing for sure however back then I knew, I can’t keep asking Zeus to work for free, that is just something immoral but also I was afraid. At that time Broken Promises had a very bad reputation and if another storm came it might have been either the end of it or me being less trustful of people.
Thankfully it worked out in the end. Me and Zeus popped off and we had the same vision, on the back of that we are similar ages. Previous writers were a decade older than me, we didn’t really click terms of vision like how me and Zeus have.
Ever since then we became a team and things evolved. Me and Zeus are best friends. We talk daily and have such passion for the game.
University
Before college I had a lot of free time, I had a part time job but I could work a lot and I could do a lot of custom renders too at the end. However after I entered college a lot of new obstacles came, obstacles I really wasn’t mentally prepared for. I remember being scared because it was my first time being in University, but it was also an experience worth having. But I was actually really scared about something, about university being a lot and well affecting the game in an extreme way. My first year was of course very new and I wasn't used to it, it was more about doing everything on your own time and handing in assignments not like high school. It took an adjustment. Which of course in a way affected the game.
2025 Summer
After University semesters were finished, I was in constant anxiety, like everyday I woke up I was just anxious, because I was worried about not being eligible for student loans, not being able to keep my apartment, I had exams on August that I had to do, if I failed them well I would have a huge problem and it would’ve caused a domino effect with me, that I’m honestly not comfortable sharing what that would’ve caused.
This year's summer might be, if not the worst summer I’ve ever had in my life, when it comes to stress and anxiety attacks. A lot of stems because of my bad habits that I’ve been doing my best to fix, but honestly still need to be better, like sleeping very very late like 6 in the morning late, not having a schedule and burning out. On the back of that, I had to worry about paying taxes and taking care of a company, making sure that I can pay taxes monthly which added an unbelievable amount of stress. There were days where I was just shut down mentally, to the point where I wanted to cry, it was physically painful, because I couldn’t, it’s very hard to describe, however I don’t want to feel like that ever again nor wish my worst enemies to feel what I felt.
Now what does this mean? This was not sustainable, that's certain, I had to change how I do things and be better. After I fixed my grades and got the points that I needed to keep my student apartment and get student loans I asked myself, “What could’ve I done better? What do I need to change for this to not happen again” It all came down to sleeping earlier, studying early and then working on the game after I finished. This was more sustainable, despite me being tired after I studied, worked on the game after I finished and well things got better.
So what now?
I’ve started to look for a therapist, I have bad habits, everytime I make a positive change and started to improve I keep falling into the same bad routines and well it doesn’t help anyone and I also have very bad anxiety and horrible stress management, sleep is essential but as I stated just earlier I keep falling in the same holes. I’m getting help on that, it will hopefully affect the game’s development cycle positively.
I would’ve done it earlier, me and Zeus spoke about it during the end of summer, however my issue is that I was scared that I couldn’t afford it because of taxes. Problem with me in general, I’m always afraid of the unknown and I look way too far ahead, despite it being preventable I just shut down and keep delaying it.
Have you ever been worried about something that you feel like once that worry that storm arrives your life is over? I know it sounds weird, but that’s how it feels for me sometimes when it comes to things I worry about (not everything, the very impactful ones like tax declaration) that honestly are probably not as bad as I thought it would be, it’s a common trend. I worry about something so much that when it passes I feel surprised, then rinse and repeat.
To be better I have to admit that there are issues that need fixing and asking for help is the first step to change. Honestly I’m kind of excited? I’m just hopeful that I will become a lot better at managing all the stress, anxiety, sleep and fixing my very bad habits.
Now why am I opening up a lot? You all deserve an answer and I really want to change for the fans, my friends and for myself. We don’t want to take 1 year+ to update, we want to be faster and I have to take a few steps on my end and improve so that we can arrive at a much more sustainable and faster development.
Love you all
I wanna thank everyone, for being with us on this journey, we will see to this being finished I assure you of this. I’m going to do my utmost best to be as fast and efficient as I can be. You all deserve better, I never expected to have as many people who love our game and for that I’m thankful.
