Hey brother. Some kind words about your question regarding the money:
To me it's the same with every other thing in the world. Mainstream music, sugar, fast food, porn, basically anything. Taking pop music, it's not bad, it's just using a much used-before groove and sometimes slightly altering it, slightly deepening it or making it only slightly better.
Most pop music sounds great and fresh right off the bat, but then when you listen to a lot of it, it all starts to sound the same very quickly, because it's all build from the same patterns, the same tricks in high quality production, the same ideas with slight twists, and usually made to cater to as many people as possible and sell quickly.
As soon as you divert a little too much from this groove, or path, less people listen to it because they don't recognize it as what they know, or they just don't find it as easily, or they can't fit it into their idea of what they usually like, or it doesn't go down without chewing properly.
A lot of the time, these things are also pretty one dimensional and short lived. You may listen to your favorite song many times because it's literally build to stimulate your dopamine as much as possible, but it won't blow your mind or make a deep expanding impact.
Sugar hits pretty hard but it's not enriching, nourishing, long lasting or satisfying.
Finding hidden gems where people put their soul, emotion, care, boldness and personality into the songs has so much more depth and can make me feel so much more + literally change me by showing me a reflection of me inside that person's genuine creativity rather than forcing the creation of something that will stimulate, or even just reach, the most amount of people.
If I may give you some reassurance: To me you are part of the hidden gems here. It doesn't matter what the exact lines are, or getting too precise with how everything fits together, or how their faces look (even though feedback can be a good tool sometimes). To me, I feel that you created this with a genuine appreciation and humble creativity wanting to give a life to a vision that made you feel joyful to imagine and bring into being. I feel as if there is a soulful presence emanating from somewhere "behind" or "on top" of the visuals and words itself. It just has character.
I'm not trying to overpraise or exaggerate on the quality here. I'm just stating a literal sensation I'm getting when I play this game. It's immersive and draws me in.
It seems like you had a genuine spark to create something personal here which I and others can feel. That just makes it more rare and less quick to catch attention from "the masses"
You could also see it this way: You have JUST released your game and you are already getting some super positive feedback and it seems like people are enjoying and recognizing the love you put into it. That's absolutely awesome and will take you a long way in the end probably! You will build a more dense following rather than a quick following. It could have gone a lot worse
Anyhows, have fun creating!
