RPGM Claire's Quest [v0.27.1] [Dystopian Project]

[Penitensary]

I got a couple of questions for the community here.
1. is it possible to avoid banging any guys?
2. is there any consistent lesbian/futanari content, beyond the few pics shown?

1. There is, though i would recommend focusing on Defiance and Intrigue to successfully avoid those situations and get the scene variations where you successfully fight off attackers. If you manage to avoid getting sent to the Meat Pit in Rathpike or locked up by the noble siscon (forgot his name) in Valos there should be no unavoidable sex situations i believe (barring bad choices of course).

2. Hmm... Kind of? I know futa content is restricted to one island, but there should be lesbian content here and there. The noncon content is all straight though.

 

[slavegal]

I got a couple of questions for the community here.
1. is it possible to avoid banging any guys?
2. is there any consistent lesbian/futanari content, beyond the few pics shown?

1. I don't think it's difficult. After all, this is a game where MC gets banged rather than banging anyone. If you are referring to all MF sexual scenes, I am afraid this is not the game for you, because you might have to ban 90% of the storyline of this game, which all lead to MF, MMF, MMMF, MMMM...MF sex scenes one way or another;

2, a)there are a few paths about lesbian/futa, especially fertility sisters, but they are not the central part of this game.b) And, keep it in mind: this is a deviant game where nothing is classic, like the MC might turn into a spider with a vast and distorted phallus to "bang" a girl (here we go, it comes again), is it lesbian/futanari? or bestiality? monster girl?

 

[Deleted member 96580]

The game will be completed. You just have to be intensely patient. And come back every six months. There are 8 more years of support planned. Currently, patches come out 2 times a year. The current version v0.25.4 is mostly focused on patching as many bugs as possible. The next v0.26.1 and up will add more content and finish current tasks. And developers are reading the posts here. They just don't want to respond. This is their decision and it should be respected

8 more years of updates, 2 updates per year, and $10,000 per month: nearly a $1,000,000 price tag for that production schedule of 16 patches. And that's not including the 6 years of development previous, and the hundreds of thousands the developers have earned up to this point.

Do people really think Claire's Quest is worth that much money? Because the state of the game, the story, and the development says otherwise. The devs don't respond because there's no point incriminating themselves any further when people are happy to give them $120,000+ per year with next to nothing to show for it. There's no reason to respect such blatant anti-consumer, greedy, and dishonest behaviour.

I really don't understand why you continue to defend them at every opportunity. Telling people to be "intensely patient" is egregious when you factor in the development cost and the timeline that the devs have 'promised' at this point (reminder that, once again, you can't trust what these devs say: they said they'd increase the rate of updates from 3-4 times a year when they finished Overgrown: Genesis... now we're down to two).

 

[kailina55]

I remember when this was getting an update every month or two. Can't believe people are defending and still supporting the money grab this has become. Getting the same or less content per patch and they are now taking wayyy longer to release. Sad to see this turn into another kingdom of deception.

 

[yahanZZZ69]

when is the 0.26.1 update coming out?

 

[Ataman87]

As it has been said many times before , since you are too lazy to use the search function its assumed the new update will come out in spring this year - probably april.

 

[Kamilgar]

8 more years of updates, 2 updates per year, and $10,000 per month: nearly a $1,000,000 price tag for that production schedule of 16 patches. And that's not including the 6 years of development previous, and the hundreds of thousands the developers have earned up to this point.

Do people really think Claire's Quest is worth that much money? Because the state of the game, the story, and the development says otherwise. The devs don't respond because there's no point incriminating themselves any further when people are happy to give them $120,000+ per year with next to nothing to show for it. There's no reason to respect such blatant anti-consumer, greedy, and dishonest behaviour.

I really don't understand why you continue to defend them at every opportunity. Telling people to be "intensely patient" is egregious when you factor in the development cost and the timeline that the devs have 'promised' at this point (reminder that, once again, you can't trust what these devs say: they said they'd increase the rate of updates from 3-4 times a year when they finished Overgrown: Genesis... now we're down to two).

That is strange, if that game would have at least animations, or be a good looking 3d game, i could understand that, ok the project covers some rare kinks but this is not the only one, and there are other project that "artificially" expand the development, in some cases there might be good reasons behind that behavior, like single or small group developer gets ill or a war breaks out in their region or something like that, and then you might be lucky that you get a couple pictures in the same time other projects throw out updates that in my opinion are worth the support.

Seems like there are "hardcore supporters" that have no problems getting milked. The true "believers" that do not care if the project is stretched like a human body in a black hole.

 

[Penitensary]

Ah, the Monster Token area. You mean this one, with the NPC that sells Monster Tokens?





But hey, i'm in a nice mood today. So here you go.

Skipped the Introduction, cheated in 500 gold, went north, paid my way past the guards, got smuggled past the fort and paid Captain Grey for passage to Rathpike. All within two minutes and forty-nine seconds, which is less time than it took you to head to the forums and demand a post-prologue save.

 

[Innocent Chloe]

8 more years of updates, 2 updates per year, and $10,000 per month: nearly a $1,000,000 price tag for that production schedule of 16 patches. And that's not including the 6 years of development previous, and the hundreds of thousands the developers have earned up to this point.

Do people really think Claire's Quest is worth that much money? Because the state of the game, the story, and the development says otherwise. The devs don't respond because there's no point incriminating themselves any further when people are happy to give them $120,000+ per year with next to nothing to show for it. There's no reason to respect such blatant anti-consumer, greedy, and dishonest behaviour.

I really don't understand why you continue to defend them at every opportunity. Telling people to be "intensely patient" is egregious when you factor in the development cost and the timeline that the devs have 'promised' at this point (reminder that, once again, you can't trust what these devs say: they said they'd increase the rate of updates from 3-4 times a year when they finished Overgrown: Genesis... now we're down to two).

That is strange, if that game would have at least animations, or be a good looking 3d game, i could understand that, ok the project covers some rare kinks but this is not the only one, and there are other project that "artificially" expand the development, in some cases there might be good reasons behind that behavior, like single or small group developer gets ill or a war breaks out in their region or something like that, and then you might be lucky that you get a couple pictures in the same time other projects throw out updates that in my opinion are worth the support.

Seems like there are "hardcore supporters" that have no problems getting milked. The true "believers" that do not care if the project is stretched like a human body in a black hole.

So just quoting both of these comments as I simply cannot agree with these statements

• 10k per month is what the dev is earning now (gross before the cut of Patreon and taxes presuming he declares this extra income) it wasn't always 10k per month so 1 million is too high it was less than that over that time frame
• In the amount of time since this game was first released as a v0.01, the dev has completely started from scratch on it (engine swap I think it was to a newer version of RPGM) and also got inspired to make another project at the same time, Overgrown which could have easily ended up being abandoned or gotten slow updates. But while it did delay the development on Claire's Quest - Overgrown has been finished and completed. Which is great and it is a great game with a substantial amount of content
• The dev likely has IRL stuff as well, a family, a job --- who knows? The difference with a professional company and hobbyists like those that make a lot of the games that are on F95 including Claire's quest is that hobbyists aren't going to be able to work on it 5 days a week 9am to 5pm. No they likely have 9-to-5 job taking up the bulk of their time and are only working on their game in their limited free time
• Even as a full-time endeavour, solo development is long and hard
• I don't think many people really understand how hard game development is even for an adult game. Just making the art in itself takes a long time and for that this dev had to hire someone else to do it. But also the writing of the dialogue takes a long time, the coding of the events, map building in RPGM etc.... this is all very longwinded and very time consuming to do

As for whether or not the development is being intentionally dragged out, without personally knowing the dev no one can say that for sure. He may have other stuff going on in his life and adult game development even at 10k per month might still be a hobby for him

One thing about Patreon income is that it is not guaranteed income so even at 10k unless you first build up a massive savings is not a safe bet to then quit your job and rely on that income. The income can fluctuate or just completely stop one day like we saw with the invasion of Ukraine, Patreon stopped all payments from both Ukraine and Russia so many devs saw their income go to near 0 for quite an extended amount of time. So while it is a lot of money, it isn't reliable money

If I started getting 10k per month as an adult game dev I would be tempted to quit my day job but I would have to weigh up the pros and cons. One benefit of keeping my day job is then I have my 4k per month (before tax) income. Which is guaranteed and safe (I am very good at my job and the company I work for is massive with little to no risk of vanishing and my job is essential to the company so even with downsizing my role would always need to be there no matter how many jobs they need to get rid of) and then I'd suddenly be earning 10k on top which would just be pure extra money that I can save, invest, use etc....

If I were to quit my job then that 10k extra (or whatever it is after Patreon cut) is suddenly a lot less. And I would still need to declare that income anyway and pay taxes on it so you can see why many devs even with high earnings on Patreon still keep their day jobs

What some devs have done is use the income to build up savings and then start their on adult game development company and that has been a massive payoff but others simply stay as a hobbyist dev and thus their games don't get the update progress we'd hope for but it doesn't always automatically mean they are scamming their Patreon supporters or being scummy

Anyway sorry for long text, that's my 2-cents on it. I am a bit of a fan girl of Dystopian Project, I love Claire's Quest and I love Overgrown Genesis

And I also am developing my own Renpy game now for the past 2 years and I still don't have a v0.01 ready so I know how hard it is to find time and develop a game not to mention how personal circumstances can change and delay development. In my case being kicked out of flat I was renting as landlord decided to sell

 

[funny feller]

As it has been said many times before , since you are too lazy to use the search function its assumed the new update will come out in spring this year - probably april.

I actually dont know how to search only within a thread for certain keywords. can you teach me?

 

[Kamilgar]

So just quoting both of these comments as I simply cannot agree with these statements

• 10k per month is what the dev is earning now (gross before the cut of Patreon and taxes presuming he declares this extra income) it wasn't always 10k per month so 1 million is too high it was less than that over that time frame
• In the amount of time since this game was first released as a v0.01, the dev has completely started from scratch on it (engine swap I think it was to a newer version of RPGM) and also got inspired to make another project at the same time, Overgrown which could have easily ended up being abandoned or gotten slow updates. But while it did delay the development on Claire's Quest - Overgrown has been finished and completed. Which is great and it is a great game with a substantial amount of content
• The dev likely has IRL stuff as well, a family, a job --- who knows? The difference with a professional company and hobbyists like those that make a lot of the games that are on F95 including Claire's quest is that hobbyists aren't going to be able to work on it 5 days a week 9am to 5pm. No they likely have 9-to-5 job taking up the bulk of their time and are only working on their game in their limited free time
• Even as a full-time endeavour, solo development is long and hard
• I don't think many people really understand how hard game development is even for an adult game. Just making the art in itself takes a long time and for that this dev had to hire someone else to do it. But also the writing of the dialogue takes a long time, the coding of the events, map building in RPGM etc.... this is all very longwinded and very time consuming to do

As for whether or not the development is being intentionally dragged out, without personally knowing the dev no one can say that for sure. He may have other stuff going on in his life and adult game development even at 10k per month might still be a hobby for him

One thing about Patreon income is that it is not guaranteed income so even at 10k unless you first build up a massive savings is not a safe bet to then quit your job and rely on that income. The income can fluctuate or just completely stop one day like we saw with the invasion of Ukraine, Patreon stopped all payments from both Ukraine and Russia so many devs saw their income go to near 0 for quite an extended amount of time. So while it is a lot of money, it isn't reliable money

If I started getting 10k per month as an adult game dev I would be tempted to quit my day job but I would have to weigh up the pros and cons. One benefit of keeping my day job is then I have my 4k per month (before tax) income. Which is guaranteed and safe (I am very good at my job and the company I work for is massive with little to no risk of vanishing and my job is essential to the company so even with downsizing my role would always need to be there no matter how many jobs they need to get rid of) and then I'd suddenly be earning 10k on top which would just be pure extra money that I can save, invest, use etc....

If I were to quit my job then that 10k extra (or whatever it is after Patreon cut) is suddenly a lot less. And I would still need to declare that income anyway and pay taxes on it so you can see why many devs even with high earnings on Patreon still keep their day jobs

What some devs have done is use the income to build up savings and then start their on adult game development company and that has been a massive payoff but others simply stay as a hobbyist dev and thus their games don't get the update progress we'd hope for but it doesn't always automatically mean they are scamming their Patreon supporters or being scummy

Anyway sorry for long text, that's my 2-cents on it. I am a bit of a fan girl of Dystopian Project, I love Claire's Quest and I love Overgrown Genesis

And I also am developing my own Renpy game now for the past 2 years and I still don't have a v0.01 ready so I know how hard it is to find time and develop a game not to mention how personal circumstances can change and delay development. In my case being kicked out of flat I was renting as landlord decided to sell

honest communication on point is the key,
that is the minimum i would expect as a supporter/customer. So when a dev/team/company (yes in that case, there is no difference between a big player or a single hobby dev) decides to stretch his schedule, this should not happen without a understandable reason and it should be communicated on time.

10K(after patreon and taxes cut) from Patreon is it enough or not?
that is not easy to answer, some devs might have a save well payed regular job, all bills are covered, so the 10k is just extra money and in that case even big fluctuations might not be a problem. Others depend on every cent they earn and could get in troubles with ideas like "stretching development" especially when they struggle with supporters that are skeptical.

IRL of Developers or the struggle of most human beings
Some ppl are lucky some are not but fate throws stones in our way, i already partially covered that in the part you have cut out of the quote of my post. The simplest way to handle it is covered in my first part of this post, honest communication on point, if they have troubles they should not be shy, i do not need to know the name of the landlord that kicked you out of your house/flat, just to take your "stone" as an example, but it would be nice to know why your first release is delayed, the ppl that support you should know why there is a delay, you need a break, be honest tell it, but not two months after you were away, and yes in some cases there might be no way to communicate, maybe a russian or ukrainian developer is signed for duty and had no time to log into his patreon account to tell that in the next months he might not have time for his project and if he has real bad luck we might never hear from him again.

Is development/programming/drawing easy?
Again for some ppl it might be easy for some not, some ppl threw code out like a huge waterfall some are like a small water tap and need lot more time, some have such a good understanding of the programming language or a program they use to paint/render that it is easy for them, there are other factors too like hardware, especially for rendering your progress might depent on the hardware you use. The dev/s from Distopian Project as you mentioned changed the engine, that might also make it harder but that does still not explain the delay, i mean they started actually fast and now they seem to struggle, this is the point where i would like to know why, if that has some other reasons maybe one of them had IRL problems, a short "Sorry we had some troubles because this or that happend" would bring light into it. Especially in the adult game industry where your income depends on individuals such things should be communicated.


For the rest you mentioned further, i think that i mostly covered it up with the points above, if it got stretched with or without intensions, i can only repeat myself, honest communication on point is the key, silence just leaves room for speculations.

Some devs especially those that are well skilled, for them building up a company could be a good deal but doing that by making mistakes like going silent, or getting the money by scamming might not be a good head start for a company. Especially for adult gaming they have a hart time to get money if needed, crowd funding or big sponsors are hard to find so the only way is to do it with platforms like patreon and for those you need a ongoing schedule, their income might be somehow equal to streamers on twitchtv, when you stream enough and your streams are interesting for a wide range of ppl you earn enough to be a full time streamer, but when you do not stream for a month or two and did not put some money on the side, hard times might follow, same with adult game devs, a month delay and no communication and your 10k are 5k or even less in the next month, it is a risky field but that is why weird decisions might break your neck, the only "anomalies" are the "hardcore supporters" or "believers" that i mentioned, they sometimes allow that weird things happen, it might be good for the devs behind those projects but not always for the project itself, those things might turn into a weird mix of kinks, i do not remember the name of the game but the devs gave to much options for supporters and they kinda trolled them so this game ended up as a weird "something" or the devs gets greedy and the project turns into a "milking machine" with nearly endless development time.

But don't get me wrong i would not call me a fanboy of both Dystopian Project games, but i like them, especially Claire's Quest is one of the few non-animated games that i like very much, maybe that is the reason why i am skeptical and seeing that the light at the end of the tunnel is getting further away makes me even more nervous.

 

[GUSTABERCOS]

No port for Android?

 

[Innocent Chloe]

honest communication on point is the key,
that is the minimum i would expect as a supporter/customer. So when a dev/team/company (yes in that case, there is no difference between a big player or a single hobby dev) decides to stretch his schedule, this should not happen without a understandable reason and it should be communicated on time.

10K(after patreon and taxes cut) from Patreon is it enough or not?
that is not easy to answer, some devs might have a save well payed regular job, all bills are covered, so the 10k is just extra money and in that case even big fluctuations might not be a problem. Others depend on every cent they earn and could get in troubles with ideas like "stretching development" especially when they struggle with supporters that are skeptical.

IRL of Developers or the struggle of most human beings
Some ppl are lucky some are not but fate throws stones in our way, i already partially covered that in the part you have cut out of the quote of my post. The simplest way to handle it is covered in my first part of this post, honest communication on point, if they have troubles they should not be shy, i do not need to know the name of the landlord that kicked you out of your house/flat, just to take your "stone" as an example, but it would be nice to know why your first release is delayed, the ppl that support you should know why there is a delay, you need a break, be honest tell it, but not two months after you were away, and yes in some cases there might be no way to communicate, maybe a russian or ukrainian developer is signed for duty and had no time to log into his patreon account to tell that in the next months he might not have time for his project and if he has real bad luck we might never hear from him again.

Is development/programming/drawing easy?
Again for some ppl it might be easy for some not, some ppl threw code out like a huge waterfall some are like a small water tap and need lot more time, some have such a good understanding of the programming language or a program they use to paint/render that it is easy for them, there are other factors too like hardware, especially for rendering your progress might depent on the hardware you use. The dev/s from Distopian Project as you mentioned changed the engine, that might also make it harder but that does still not explain the delay, i mean they started actually fast and now they seem to struggle, this is the point where i would like to know why, if that has some other reasons maybe one of them had IRL problems, a short "Sorry we had some troubles because this or that happend" would bring light into it. Especially in the adult game industry where your income depends on individuals such things should be communicated.


For the rest you mentioned further, i think that i mostly covered it up with the points above, if it got stretched with or without intensions, i can only repeat myself, honest communication on point is the key, silence just leaves room for speculations.

Some devs especially those that are well skilled, for them building up a company could be a good deal but doing that by making mistakes like going silent, or getting the money by scamming might not be a good head start for a company. Especially for adult gaming they have a hart time to get money if needed, crowd funding or big sponsors are hard to find so the only way is to do it with platforms like patreon and for those you need a ongoing schedule, their income might be somehow equal to streamers on twitchtv, when you stream enough and your streams are interesting for a wide range of ppl you earn enough to be a full time streamer, but when you do not stream for a month or two and did not put some money on the side, hard times might follow, same with adult game devs, a month delay and no communication and your 10k are 5k or even less in the next month, it is a risky field but that is why weird decisions might break your neck, the only "anomalies" are the "hardcore supporters" or "believers" that i mentioned, they sometimes allow that weird things happen, it might be good for the devs behind those projects but not always for the project itself, those things might turn into a weird mix of kinks, i do not remember the name of the game but the devs gave to much options for supporters and they kinda trolled them so this game ended up as a weird "something" or the devs gets greedy and the project turns into a "milking machine" with nearly endless development time.

But don't get me wrong i would not call me a fanboy of both Dystopian Project games, but i like them, especially Claire's Quest is one of the few non-animated games that i like very much, maybe that is the reason why i am skeptical and seeing that the light at the end of the tunnel is getting further away makes me even more nervous.

Yeah sorry, I snipped it as I forgot F95 automatically shrinks quotes. Some forums I use don't and if you multi-quote two large quotes like I just did it keeps the entire quote in your post so you end up with a wall of quotes. I totally forgot F95 collapses it

I'll go back and edit my post to have the full quotes in there now

As for your response, I don't really have much to say on it. I get your point and I honestly have no idea what the communication has been like as you can only see posts if you are a subscriber and while I did subscribe for some time on Dystopian's Patreon at the moment I am not so I have no clue how good or bad the communication has been in recent years

Maybe he has started work on a new game he hasn't announced yet or maybe he is stringing the supporters along or maybe IRL stuff going on. I definitely can't say for certain. But I so so so hope he isn't scamming his subscribers I loved Overgrown and I love Claire Quest so I really don't want to see this dev go the scam route too. That will be extremely disappointing

 

[barsik]

I actually dont know how to search only within a thread for certain keywords. can you teach me?

Just use the search function at the top right and make sure "this thread" is selected.

 

[Deleted member 96580]

So just quoting both of these comments as I simply cannot agree with these statements

• 10k per month is what the dev is earning now (gross before the cut of Patreon and taxes presuming he declares this extra income) it wasn't always 10k per month so 1 million is too high it was less than that over that time frame
• In the amount of time since this game was first released as a v0.01, the dev has completely started from scratch on it (engine swap I think it was to a newer version of RPGM) and also got inspired to make another project at the same time, Overgrown which could have easily ended up being abandoned or gotten slow updates. But while it did delay the development on Claire's Quest - Overgrown has been finished and completed. Which is great and it is a great game with a substantial amount of content
• The dev likely has IRL stuff as well, a family, a job --- who knows? The difference with a professional company and hobbyists like those that make a lot of the games that are on F95 including Claire's quest is that hobbyists aren't going to be able to work on it 5 days a week 9am to 5pm. No they likely have 9-to-5 job taking up the bulk of their time and are only working on their game in their limited free time
• Even as a full-time endeavour, solo development is long and hard
• I don't think many people really understand how hard game development is even for an adult game. Just making the art in itself takes a long time and for that this dev had to hire someone else to do it. But also the writing of the dialogue takes a long time, the coding of the events, map building in RPGM etc.... this is all very longwinded and very time consuming to do

As for whether or not the development is being intentionally dragged out, without personally knowing the dev no one can say that for sure. He may have other stuff going on in his life and adult game development even at 10k per month might still be a hobby for him

One thing about Patreon income is that it is not guaranteed income so even at 10k unless you first build up a massive savings is not a safe bet to then quit your job and rely on that income. The income can fluctuate or just completely stop one day like we saw with the invasion of Ukraine, Patreon stopped all payments from both Ukraine and Russia so many devs saw their income go to near 0 for quite an extended amount of time. So while it is a lot of money, it isn't reliable money

If I started getting 10k per month as an adult game dev I would be tempted to quit my day job but I would have to weigh up the pros and cons. One benefit of keeping my day job is then I have my 4k per month (before tax) income. Which is guaranteed and safe (I am very good at my job and the company I work for is massive with little to no risk of vanishing and my job is essential to the company so even with downsizing my role would always need to be there no matter how many jobs they need to get rid of) and then I'd suddenly be earning 10k on top which would just be pure extra money that I can save, invest, use etc....

If I were to quit my job then that 10k extra (or whatever it is after Patreon cut) is suddenly a lot less. And I would still need to declare that income anyway and pay taxes on it so you can see why many devs even with high earnings on Patreon still keep their day jobs

What some devs have done is use the income to build up savings and then start their on adult game development company and that has been a massive payoff but others simply stay as a hobbyist dev and thus their games don't get the update progress we'd hope for but it doesn't always automatically mean they are scamming their Patreon supporters or being scummy

Anyway sorry for long text, that's my 2-cents on it. I am a bit of a fan girl of Dystopian Project, I love Claire's Quest and I love Overgrown Genesis

And I also am developing my own Renpy game now for the past 2 years and I still don't have a v0.01 ready so I know how hard it is to find time and develop a game not to mention how personal circumstances can change and delay development. In my case being kicked out of flat I was renting as landlord decided to sell

The devs are actually earning closer to 12k USD per month, but I rounded down. And you're misinterpreting my math. I never said the devs have earned $1,000,000, but rather that at current rates of patreon support matched with the 8 year development cycle announced, they would earn nearly $1,000,000 USD for a total of 16 updates. I specifically said that estimate does not include the previous 6 years of development. (They have, without a doubt, received hundreds of thousands, though; as they've been at around $10k support for years).

So if you're going to write an essay to respond to my criticisms of the devs shady business practices, actually reading what I said is important in providing a valid rebuttal.

Changing the engine, redoing the entire prologue, redesigning characters, scrapping questlines or massively altering/expanding them in favour of actually finishing the multitude of current, unfinished quests already in the game, and not updating the main story for years are not things which the developer should receive praise or patience for. They're a sign of badly mismanaged development, with no direction, little respect for patron's time and money who have invested in order to see a finished product in a timely fashion, and a clear decision to cater to unique fetishes when those are what's generating revenue at the moment. (And then subsequently dropping said quests when the benefactor is no longer funding them, leaving yet more unfinished content like the entire breeding ranch quest).

They literally lied about increasing the number of updates Claire's Quest would get once Overgrown: Genesis wrapped.

All of that is in stark difference to how Dystopian Project started out when creating Claire's Quest and Overgrown: Genesis years ago.

Monthly releases, focus on finishing questlines and expanding main story content, adhering to promised schedules, niche fetishes remained secondary to primary development of gameplay, locations, and mainstream content, and there was consistent direction in terms of scope, tone, and story that was being told in both games. They found the time and the resources to create far more content, far more regularly, and with a lot less money rolling in, but now after years of success they've suddenly forgotten all those lessons and struggle to release two full updates a year?

My criticism comes primarily from the fact that the Dystopian Project of today is a far-cry from what it was back then. And I do not understand how anyone can look at their current production cycle and their planned one, see how much money they're making with how little, unfocused content they're putting out, and factor in the broken promises over the years, and still actively defend them.

They're not a brand new developer struggling to get by or balance the commitments to life, work, and development. They've been doing this for over half a decade and have started to provide notably worse service for a whole lot more money.

 

[ByronBurkey]

The devs are actually earning closer to 12k USD per month, but I rounded down. And you're misinterpreting my math. I never said the devs have earned $1,000,000, but rather that at current rates of patreon support matched with the 8 year development cycle announced, they would earn nearly $1,000,000 USD for a total of 16 updates. I specifically said that estimate does not include the previous 6 years of development. (They have, without a doubt, received hundreds of thousands, though; as they've been at around $10k support for years).

So if you're going to write an essay to respond to my criticisms of the devs shady business practices, actually reading what I said is important in providing a valid rebuttal.

Changing the engine, redoing the entire prologue, redesigning characters, scrapping questlines or massively altering/expanding them in favour of actually finishing the multitude of current, unfinished quests already in the game, and not updating the main story for years are not things which the developer should receive praise or patience for. They're a sign of badly mismanaged development, with no direction, little respect for patron's time and money who have invested in order to see a finished product in a timely fashion, and a clear decision to cater to unique fetishes when those are what's generating revenue at the moment. (And then subsequently dropping said quests when the benefactor is no longer funding them, leaving yet more unfinished content like the entire breeding ranch quest).

They literally lied about increasing the number of updates Claire's Quest would get once Overgrown: Genesis wrapped.

All of that is in stark difference to how Dystopian Project started out when creating Claire's Quest and Overgrown: Genesis years ago.

Monthly releases, focus on finishing questlines and expanding main story content, adhering to promised schedules, niche fetishes remained secondary to primary development of gameplay, locations, and mainstream content, and there was consistent direction in terms of scope, tone, and story that was being told in both games. They found the time and the resources to create far more content, far more regularly, and with a lot less money rolling in, but now after years of success they've suddenly forgotten all those lessons and struggle to release two full updates a year?

My criticism comes primarily from the fact that the Dystopian Project of today is a far-cry from what it was back then. And I do not understand how anyone can look at their current production cycle and their planned one, see how much money they're making with how little, unfocused content they're putting out, and factor in the broken promises over the years, and still actively defend them.

They're not a brand new developer struggling to get by or balance the commitments to life, work, and development. They've been doing this for over half a decade and have started to provide notably worse service for a whole lot more money.

Fucking right! I agree completely

 

[GroupSession]

I must disagree with your level of confidence. I'm both a doctor and an engaged in the development of an adult game during my free time, I can attest to the incredibly demanding nature of game dev. However, I am of the opinion that certain aspects of this dev process portray exploitative practices and can be perceived as capitalizing excessively on the "good well" of the patrons.

 

[Juicy Blueberry]

No updates after 8 months?

 

[The_Knut]

No updates after 8 months?

Just some scenes that the dev releases on Patreon/Discord once in a blue moon, maybe we'll get something later, after more months.

 

[keum68]

Awesome game/dev. at first.
However, it's been a slow descent to the abyss. questlines are never finished (urchins is a good example)
Updates gets less frequent.... let's face it: it has gone done the milky way. (not an english native, not sure if this wordplay actually works. its does for me anyway.

There is alwas someone to say: "hey, dev is a hard work, takes time etc". to this one i'll say yes, true, especially if things aren't well design at first. it can get ugly when adding new stuff.
But they excell at adding new stuff, reworking shit, so that's not it.