Month plus waiting for an update, 5min of play time, no animations, few new renders. Coool beans
I'd love nothing more than to make our updates 2 or 3 times as long, but FFC and I are both busy with our day jobs, school, and our lives in general... this is a project that, speaking only for me, I love being a part of, and I love being able to create. It's just a matter of the game not making the kind of money that would allow us to spend more time on it.
Not to say that you all need to go become patrons of it (you decide if it's worth it or not!), but it is to say that if we continue, and the patrons continue to come in, we absolutely will start pushing out longer updates.
I can't get into the discussions that FFC and I have, but I will say that we are trying our best to find ways to increase the length of the updates to come.
For this update, it is shorter than the previous one in terms of straight gameplay time, BUT it does something that previous updates haven't done - It caters the one big scene of the update to the character you've selected. There are 3 distinct Image Sets, but 4 distinct stories for that scene based on how you've played up to that point. This is one way we have tried to allow the player's choices to be more meaningful, but it also came at the cost of overall length.
In the future, this needs to be weighed as pros and cons of the scene that is being created. Would it benefit from having an alternate version? Does the alternate version need new images? Does this mean that the other scenes need to be cut or adjusted to make room for the other images?
For me, it's somewhat tough to juggle those questions. I know that if we put out an update like this, some of you will say that it's too short, where as some of you will hopefully enjoy the fact that the scene was catered to your character. I have said it over and over again in my months working on these games: I want to create something enjoyable, but unfortunately not everyone will enjoy everything we create. I can only hope that the audience that does enjoy this game finds it.
Thanks, as always, for playing the game at all. I appreciate every bit of feedback on this thread. I read every bit of it, even if I don't always reply. We take every bit of feedback into consideration. Some great ideas happen here that we wish we had thought of, or could implement; sometimes people say some really harsh stuff too, and that just needs to be digested to see where the issue is stemming from that led to the negative comment. We want to make this game fun for people, so keep your feedback coming!!
edit: i just want to be clear - i'm not complaining about how much money the game makes in any way. Every patron an absolute treasure to us, and I personally feel exceptionally grateful to be able to make any money at all on this game. I was simply saying that due to other responsibilities and other commitments, it's hard to allocate our time and resources to creating longer updates each month, although we both want to do so.