Man, this looks fantastic! Kudos for the visual work you put into this!
First some bug fixing and some more polishing. Then I'm taking a vacation mid October for two weeks after having worked non-stop for almost two years now. Development for season two will begin as soon as I'm back.
Even if I can't wait for season 2, you should take more than 2 weeks of vacation.
Definitely agree here with the frog. Take three or four weeks to recharge properly, mush as I'd like to see what you have in store for the gang, taking a real break once in a while is really important, and you may come back with fresh eyes.
Agree that more vacation is ok, but if You don't want to be away from work for so long, maybe take a scheduled real vacation once a year at least.
I believe once you receive an outright rejection...that's pretty much it. No take backs.
Sorry if it is to personal, but does itch blocks your payments? I ask because when you make a google search 'summer in the city itch io' you can still buy the game for the 5$ min price or more, but have only paypal as a payment option. If you get the money and it is not blocked it is maybe an option for those people that are not able or do not want to commit to a monthly subscription.
The problem is that impulse purchases make the majority of sales. And due to the delisting, these kind of purchases stopped almost entirely. I am currently working on a free demo version so my game appears on their public lists again at least. I won't make as much as before the crackdown on adult games, but it could at least alleviate the losses a bit. We'll see how it goes. Getting the word out on social media is pretty hard nowadays in the vast ocean of creators, especially when you have limited visibility due to NSFW content, so I can't rely on that method alone unfortunately.
For me as a German I have the problem that for being able to sell a game for a mature audience a shop has to offer age control and games need to have a age classification. If the dev does no classification for the game it is by default not being able to be sold. Itch kind of ignores the thing, but I guess it's to small for our government to care. It's different with GOG and steam. I don't use GOG, but not long ago steam created it's own age classification. It's a free form to fill and after that a game has a classification. Even if the result is 'only for mature audience' you then can buy the game if you are an adult. If the dev does not care and does not fill the form or have another official age classification (for example PEGI) you can't buy the game at all and it doesn't matter if it's a children puzzle of a sesame street character or a hardcore vore game.
Moin! Another German here. Gog does not regionblock nsfw as Steam does. So I can see VNs like it used to be on Steam. Gog also does not forbid using VPNs like Steam does. With a VPN the catalogue is even bigger.
I remember a dev who changed the name of the game or something to get around that, but the details are hazy.
Afaik the name change in this case was because the original dev abandoned the game and the new one wanted to develop it under his own label.
