I think this one is done. Hopefully not though. in that September update he said he hasn't even started on update 12 and would rather do bonus stuff and then put it on steam. SO this wont be finished or anywhere near it any time soon. Maybe the mods here should put an on hold status or something. I think the creator is no getting greedy. pity this was a great one. I think these people should focus on finishing their games then add to steam, but thats me
This is why porn games on Steam have such a bad reputation. You can get away with a lot more when the payment model is "contribute what you think is fair" than you can when you're charging full price for an incomplete game and can't be bothered to finish. Back a few years ago when devs were putting out updates at a comparable rate to Tell Tale, it was easier to excuse. Now that major games are taking more than a year between updates? There's a reason I keep stressing that it's taking more than twice as long to get 40% more content per update - that's what its averaged out to as an industry. The most successful games are by far the worst and some of them have more than tripled their original dev cycles while delivering the same amount of content per update.
I do think we're approaching a situation where this bubble is going to burst, but considering it took more than a decade for the consumers in the movie and AAA gaming industry to finally get fed up... I think we're still years away, but I could be surprised.
I think more people would be infinitely more forgiving in this case if these "bonus" scenes were being integrated into the game. There's only 1-2 that are worth it to begin with, though. I get that it can be boring trying to cover one story/arc for YEARS, but that's the devs personal failing. We keep expanding the story, but we've kinda lost the plot. A season of a tv show might have 2-4 self-contained arcs. A movie concisely tells one arc. This is trying to tell 4-5 entire life stories - that's not going to work. That's why the dev is getting bored, frustrated and is instead getting instant gratification from telling some really bad one-offs.
Hillside is the perfect VN story. We get to know the characters, but we don't get their entire life stories. We learn of Charlotte's trauma, but its fed to us in bits and pieces as the stalking is the primary focus. Here, we now know more about Ashley than we know about all of the backstory of all of the characters in Hillside, combined. And Ashley is supposed to be the walled-off bad bitch.
It's not scope creep that is killing this game or causing the dev to get bored/frustrated. I'd wager its him getting frustrated wasting all this time on shit that isn't really that interesting. Yes, bits of it are vital to the story, but we only need those bits. We didn't need our PO's entire life story in our lunch meeting. We didn't need much of anything beyond "I want to press charges," the scene with Sam and then the scene with Emily while we're in the hospital. Most of these side scenes should take roughly as long as scenes where we walk in on Ashley and Emily, not be substantial parts of the updates.
Even that entire episode dedicated to Ashley's family was completely unnecessary. Her family is like borderline if not outright mob. So we get this entire fucked up date episode where we're introduced to everyone in her life when we should've been bagged and dragged from destination to destination. That entire side story could've been reduced to like 1/8th of what it was and been infinitely more impactful. The main element is clearly the grandfather okaying Ashley staying at the house and deciding her sister should spend time there as well. And ofc the "Don't hurt my granddaughter or let anyone else, bc if she gets hurt, I'm coming for you."
If this story were being told on a weekly basis, it would be good. It's not. There's a LOT Of good here. The dev just needs to learn he doesn't need to waste his time on this shit he doesn't want to waste his time on. We could've gotten 1-2 episodes worth of plot/character development if he had adequately trimmed the fat. And not all of it has to be completely cut, its just that we don't need all of it at one time. These characters are going to be an ongoing part of our MC's life, there's no justification for functionally trauma dumping their entire life stories on our MC. It could work for a weekly tv show, but it doesn't work in THIS format.
