I agree that this is an important contextual point that nobody really thinks about.
Probably because going 'it only has three people working on it' is a pretty shitty attempt at defence when talking about a 2D hentai platformer game. That size of team (or often smaller) is the norm for games in the genre, and plenty of those games didn't take nine years and a few hundred thousand dollars worth of crowdfunding to release on time. Lone Jap devs (granted they are pretty dedicated at times) can turn out comparable games in three to four years with perhaps one artist outsourced.
And please, because I can already see it coming, no Future Fragments is not extremely complex gameplay wise to the point that the dev time is justified. Hell, dev themselves have said that they massively fucked up the development process and bit off more than they could chew, but continued on as if everything was fine anyway. The big difference it brings to the table is the voice acting and the... lore cutscenes/databanks.
More like "if you don't understand that three people can only accomplish so much in a certain frame of time and how game development works, you're an idiot, so don't bother replying". Which is true.
They are still taking money for this, every month passed is another month of income without needing to release a game for sale. If HW is to be believed, then the project has consumed so much money that they had to
take out loans in order to continue development despite the income they are making from crowdfunding. For a
2D, sidescroller porn platformer.
They have failed to meet multiple release targets and they have failed to stick to their budget. Their 'PR guy' has pissed off multiple forums, publicly batted for both Eromancer and Divine Arms in a professional capacity, and lied about steam policy to cover their arse. They can't even organise a release of the (still MIA by a month the way) fire level demo, which is the first level of the game and a stage I played all the way back in 2018 before massive lore databanks and cutscenes were even a major thing. It also has to be noted that this future demo release is of the 'unpolished' demo, with the 'polished' demo coming 'soon after' it.
To accuse people in this thread of not understanding game development time frames or basic project management practices while holding up
Future Fragments as your shining example of a counterpoint is frankly ridiculous. When a finished product is released for sale, functional and relatively bug free, then we can talk about how great the platforming is or how worth it the story cutscenes are.
Until then shit will be heaped on every promised released date skipped, and the salt will flow at every tired excuse repeated over and over. It is what it is.
EDIT:
Sorry, just had to pop this in to make it clear the calibre of bullshit HW is peddling.
"Prease understandu, small indie dev team" my hairy arse with those claims. Taken from the steam forums if people don't believe that this is a real claim from HW.
