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“Hey Everyone, it's V.A. Laurie. I wanted to take some time to reach out to everyone. It's been a while since I have been active online, and I know a lot of you are eager to play the next update of Freeloading Family, and you must be wondering what's up with it taking so long.
Well to start, the world was turned on its head this year. It doesn't even need to be explained, every person on this planet that could be reading this message knows what's been happening. This covid bullshit upended my life as well. I was one of many who lost their day job at the start of this thing. In a way I looked at that happening as a blessing. After all, I could write all the time now. The next chapter would be awesome because I could focus on it and nothing else. Right? Not so much.
It was around this same time that my brother fell ill. We worried it was covid, but it wasn't. Isn't. It's still ongoing, whatever is going on with him. He was in a coma for over two months, his organs shutting down. My family actually got a call from doctors at one point saying to expect another call from them in the next 12 hours announcing he had passed. Somehow, he survived. Like I said, we still don't know what's going on. Tests are ongoing.
My wife also lost her job around this same time. So we went from being a two income family to zero income, with a child, and my brother was in really bad shape.
And then, as if that wasn't enough, a friend went missing. Like, completely missing.
So with the stress of not being able to pay my bills, the fear for my brother's survival, the fear of my friend being missing, all hitting me at once, I fell into a bit of a depression. I was really sad and unwell for a bit recently. Every time I'd sit down to write, I would feel anxiety. It didn't help that I was reading a lot of the negative feedback comments from the last update. I get it, really, I do; the chapter was a slap to the face to many who weren’t expecting the ending to the main storyline being announced in such a way. But, since I was already on my way down into depression, reading that made me start to feel sick to my stomach about writing.
I had to take some time to get my head together, and I apologize for that. But for anyone wondering about these horrible things I’ve been dealing with - my friend made contact with her family before disappearing again, which is troubling, but I suppose better than the alternative of not being found. My brother is still being tested and treated. He’s out of the coma and currently living with my mother, as he’s almost completely atrophied during that coma. He’s… really unwell. But getting better.
We are making better progress again for the game. The chapter is more than ¾ complete at this point, so we should be announcing a release for it very soon.
Thank you all for the support you’ve shown this game over the years, and more importantly right now, the support any of you have shown me over the years. It’s really appreciated and what has kept me doing this.
Ps, something I’ve been doing to get through my depression is exercising, which I know, is something that everyone says to do, but the kind of exercise I’ve chosen to do is via Stepmania. I used to be big into Dance Dance Revolution many years ago. So I whipped out the old USB dance pad and I’ve been getting my dumb ass moving by dancing around.
Love you all, bye for now!”