The reason for the abandonment of this project is baffling to me.
In 2 weeks we haven't got any reasonable minimum amount of support. Our team members are very demotivated to continue.
- Taken directly from Darkwoodtale's Patreon
You can't expect your project to get a large amount of support within a mere two weeks. That's just crazy. The fact that a few Patrons decided to support you within a few weeks should actually show that you have some potential. People are smart. They usually don't donate to a brand new project that just had its first release. They usually wait to see the pace of updates, improvements, communication and love for the project. Once they see that, they are much more likely to pledge.
Do you think people pledge 100$ to a project with only 1 post? No, of course not. But if the game have had several releases, then I could see someone with a big pocket showing his/her support.
I myself believe that this game could've been something great if the developers continued with the project and listened to the criticism it got.
Just as
@Gnodab stated. The presentation on Patreon was absolutely awful. I bet if they took one hour minimum to make their Patreon page look good, the reception would've been far more great.
Darkwood Tales is a team of people deeply involved in development of adult games.
One day we decided to try it out and create our own short adult Visual Novel (and hopefully with your support we will be able to create more, including some placed in a Dark Fantasy setting)
Our game "Dakota. Subway" will be released to public in a few days from now
The fact that this is all the information a public viewer sees on their Patreon is not good. There was no public release at all. And there are no images, plot description, genres or anything similar to describe the contents of the game.
I've said this previously on a project's thread that also had been abandoned: You can't expect people to support your project until at least 3 months or so. If you don't see any progress from the fanbase after those 3 months, then sure you can conclude that something's wrong. But this project got some minor recognition here on F95, Reddit and other sites. They also got 8 patrons all within 2 weeks. I'd say that shows promise. Don't expect to hit 1000$/month after just 2 weeks. I really don't know what they were expecting.
I guarantee that they would see a much bigger growth during their second release if they pimped up their Patreon and listened to criticism about the game.
If you believe that a project is not worth continuing after a mere two weeks, then I'm sorry, but you should find something you feel more passion for instead. When I started my project, I did it as a side-hobby, I didn't expect anything at all. If no one noticed my game, I'd still make a few more version of it at least. Because it's still something I burn for. Of course I'm not denying that fan support can be great fuel for your passion. You do need to see past that though.
