You were the only one here relaying info actively and helping people out. I'm surprised you lasted this long to be honest. Mad respect to you.
Honestly, the entire situation with the game had gotten out of hand back in 2020, and I'm surprised that more people haven't jumped ship as of yet. I did notice more patrons start to verbally berate or question the dev in the comments section on Patreon, so hopefully either more people back out or the dev finally gets their shit together.
I was okay with contributing a bit of money each month so long as there was an indication that stuff was being worked on. When Covid started, it was still fine for me because with everything closed down I really didn't have anything to spend money on at that point, and again, there was still
some hope because there were
some updates and communications. At this point, the possible endings for this project are:
a) the dev isn't going to deliver on a new build and we get the perpetual variations of excuses;
b) the dev disappears completely (wouldn't be the first time someone's walked away from a project with no indication); or
c) at some point with no heads up, the dev will just provide the new build.
I'd hope for the latter option, but when it's been under a status of "just a month" since the beginning of 2020, it's certainly concerning.
That being said, I'd have kept supporting the dev if they:
i) Actually had regular communications with their patrons;
ii) Released some builds showing their progress, even for minor things like new mechanics or combat builds, which they did during previous version updates such as the previous dungeons, the dreamworld, the zombie event, and the gardening additions; and
iii) Were honest with how badly they've fucked up their development cycle and process. More than likely, they've reached a point where their code is spaghetti, and they either lack the know-how to fix it, are too stubborn to get help, or just think they can do it, which is leading to a continuous development cycle of "Oh no, I've got to fix the bugs".
Notably, in the past 4 months or so, there were several Patrons who were asking the dev if they needed assistance with the game to help with bug testing, like releasing a current-status build and then starting to hunt for bugs. The dev never directly responded to them, but other Patrons did, saying things like "oh, let the dev work, that way it'll be bug free." Of course,
that's not going to happen. There's only so many bugs the dev can fix by themself, let alone find them in the first place. Even if the dev spends well into 2022 working on the game, the first build that comes out is going to have problems.
But goddamn, at this point I'd like the dev to prove me wrong.
