VN Ren'Py Abandoned Summer's Gone [S1 Steam + DLC] [Oceanlab]

[FREAKY ALEX]

BETTER CALL IT

And summer's fragment will became fossils or even OIL by the time this game end

As a fan its just too sad

 

[c.mork]

Hello,

I hope you all had some pleasant Holidays, and a good time in general!

I didn’t do any real work during the holidays, now that I don’t live in Berlin anymore, I’m a lot more (forced) involved in the whole Holiday prep.

#SG
I didn’t manage to finish the entire cinematic before Christmas, I assume it’s the environmental asset, but the test renders take about two hours (for 120 frames).

When you see the cinematic, you might also be able to guess why I needed a few more test-renders than usual to dial things in.

Oh, before I forget for the fifth time: I switched Sasha and Bella back to Gensis 8. I made a post a while back where I talked about porting the characters to G8.1.

And it has been a success for most, but I don’t like G8.1 Bella and Sasha. Something around the eyes looks different when I dial in the expressions… I thought I’d get used to it but no. I went with my gut and reverted the two to G8.

#WIAB
Development will start on January 14th. Slow at first, because I must get through the Steam/GOG release. More info in the next log.

The way forward
After Patreon unrightfully nuked both accounts, my plan was to bring at least SG back, which as I mentioned in a previous log, I wasn’t allowed to.

This was my plan to stabilize everything; however, it didn’t work out, and now I have to look for alternatives.

Starting 2026, you can earn 603€ a month tax free through mini-jobs in Germany, and that would cover my electricity bill.

In 2027, my leasing contract for the single A6000 ADA runs out. That alone is about 380€ a month.

I’ll get a mini-job in January and help support the games through that. It perfectly covers my electricity bill plus a few high protein snackies.

It’s about 40 hours per month, I will, of course, still work full-time on the games. Afterall, I only do the mini-job for the games. To bridge 2026 and the first leasing contract.

I know I have a steam release around the corner, which on paper can change everything, but after the last two years, I don’t feel like being optimistic about this side of the coin.

If after 2024s WiAB nuke I lost the feeling of security, you can imagine how it is now... and after a while it wrecks you.

I think this mini-job can stabilize more than just the finances. Get my head out of the office for once.

On the other side of the coin, I ported Zara to Blender and will soon do some stuff with her. I have something planned… But I want to finish the cinematic first, as it will require me to render a few Blender animations.

The cinematic I’m currently rendering for SG has something in it that makes me smile every time I see it… I’ll talk about it after the update.

It’s a small detail, but it makes my day.

• Ocean

 

[Elduriel]

man these "devlogs" sure tell a lot of things without actually saying anything

 

[BeingADikDik]

Fucking drop WIAB already. It's 10% of your fanbase and 50% of your effort, and caused you to lose Patreon platform access. Stop being stupid. Full effort on SG, get it on Steam ASAP to earn money. Sheesh.


Edit to add: No one gives a fuck about mafia stories. And dropping WIAB might give you a path to getting back on Patreon if you re-incorporate the game studio as a new legal entity that has the rights to SG but not WIAB.

 

[Mamaragan]

*sigh*

If only he’d done the sensible thing and split this massive update into two parts, we could’ve had two updates every six months and most of his problems would’ve been mitigated. If he makes up for the lost two years and brings back both old and new players, he could live off Subscribestar. It’s pathetic that Patreon would nuke an artist who sacrificed the lewd content of his game to comply as much as possible, only for it to end like this anyway.

 

[Elduriel]

Fucking drop WIAB already. It's 10% of your fanbase and 50% of your effort. Stop being stupid. Full effort on SG, get it on Steam ASAP to earn money. Sheesh.

I don't give a shit about wiab, but I kinda want to see Miru doing porn

 

[O1duvai]

Hello
#SG
When you see the cinematic

#WIAB
Development will start on January 14th. Slow at first, because I must get through the Steam/GOG release.

The way forward
After Patreon unrightfully nuked both accounts, my plan was to bring at least SG back

This was my plan to stabilize everything; however, it didn’t work out.

you can earn 603€ a month tax free through mini-jobs in Germany, and that would cover my electricity bill.

In 2027, my leasing contract for the single A6000 ADA runs out. That alone is about 380€ a month.

It perfectly covers my electricity bill

It’s about 40 hours per month, I will, of course, still work full-time on the games. Afterall, I only do the mini-job for the games. To bridge 2026 and the first leasing contract.

I know I have a steam release around the corner, which on paper can change everything, but after the last two years, I don’t feel like being optimistic about this side of the coin.

Ocean

Time for awesome stories.

 

[Gari Fuze]

Phenomenal Milking Project, I left a 1star review 3 years ago, and I come back to check the game progress to see an abandoned tag. So, six years of milking and blue balling players, without a single proper H-scene.

 

[Andolt]

Phenomenal Milking Project, I left a 1star review 3 years ago, and I come back to check the game progress to see an abandoned tag. So, six years of milking and blue balling players, without a single proper H-scene.

The project itself is not bad. I’d say it’s decent — 4/5 or 8/10 — in terms of story, art, music, etc. But the thing I don’t get is why he needs “mini-jobs” if he still has around $4k from SS? Is life in Germany really that expensive?

 

[Andolt]

Hello,

I hope you all had some pleasant Holidays, and a good time in general!

I didn’t do any real work during the holidays, now that I don’t live in Berlin anymore, I’m a lot more (forced) involved in the whole Holiday prep.

#SG
I didn’t manage to finish the entire cinematic before Christmas, I assume it’s the environmental asset, but the test renders take about two hours (for 120 frames).

When you see the cinematic, you might also be able to guess why I needed a few more test-renders than usual to dial things in.

Oh, before I forget for the fifth time: I switched Sasha and Bella back to Gensis 8. I made a post a while back where I talked about porting the characters to G8.1.

And it has been a success for most, but I don’t like G8.1 Bella and Sasha. Something around the eyes looks different when I dial in the expressions… I thought I’d get used to it but no. I went with my gut and reverted the two to G8.

#WIAB
Development will start on January 14th. Slow at first, because I must get through the Steam/GOG release. More info in the next log.

The way forward
After Patreon unrightfully nuked both accounts, my plan was to bring at least SG back, which as I mentioned in a previous log, I wasn’t allowed to.

This was my plan to stabilize everything; however, it didn’t work out, and now I have to look for alternatives.

Starting 2026, you can earn 603€ a month tax free through mini-jobs in Germany, and that would cover my electricity bill.

In 2027, my leasing contract for the single A6000 ADA runs out. That alone is about 380€ a month.

I’ll get a mini-job in January and help support the games through that. It perfectly covers my electricity bill plus a few high protein snackies.

It’s about 40 hours per month, I will, of course, still work full-time on the games. Afterall, I only do the mini-job for the games. To bridge 2026 and the first leasing contract.

I know I have a steam release around the corner, which on paper can change everything, but after the last two years, I don’t feel like being optimistic about this side of the coin.

If after 2024s WiAB nuke I lost the feeling of security, you can imagine how it is now... and after a while it wrecks you.

I think this mini-job can stabilize more than just the finances. Get my head out of the office for once.

On the other side of the coin, I ported Zara to Blender and will soon do some stuff with her. I have something planned… But I want to finish the cinematic first, as it will require me to render a few Blender animations.

The cinematic I’m currently rendering for SG has something in it that makes me smile every time I see it… I’ll talk about it after the update.

It’s a small detail, but it makes my day.

• Ocean

What Steam release is he talking about? SS Season 2?
Sorry, I read his dev logs pretty rarely, so I didn’t know about this or that it would be coming soon.

 

[SToyS]

Development will start on January 14th. Slow at first, because I must get through the Steam/GOG release. More info in the next log.
Starting 2026, you can earn 603€ a month tax free through mini-jobs in Germany, and that would cover my electricity bill.
In 2027, my leasing contract for the single A6000 ADA runs out. That alone is about 380€ a month.
I’ll get a mini-job in January and help support the games through that. It perfectly covers my electricity bill plus a few high protein snackies.
It’s about 40 hours per month, I will, of course, still work full-time on the games. Afterall, I only do the mini-job for the games. To bridge 2026 and the first leasing contract.

I don't understand what's going on. A month ago, he wrote that he would start working on Wiab on December 14th. A month has passed, and he's still writing the same thing, and there's no progress in the logs. I assumed that since work on Wiab would start on December 14th, that meant the update for SG would already be ready.

Apparently I was wrong, it seems to me that Ocean is already brazenly starting to milk subscribers. If he wants to make more money this way, he's unlikely to succeed; he'll most likely scare away the remaining subscribers. Especially now, when there are so many rumors that the SG update doesn't exist, and instead we get a couple of pictures a month.

 

[Matt2012021]

Man i thought i had all the trolls blocked guess not another to the list.

 

[Joan6969]

So......March or April? "soon Lads soon"

 

[zetlak]

The project itself is not bad. I’d say it’s decent — 4/5 or 8/10 — in terms of story, art, music, etc. But the thing I don’t get is why he needs “mini-jobs” if he still has around $4k from SS? Is life in Germany really that expensive?

50% is tax and other stuff, then I guess ~1k or more for the flat, apparently 400€ for power… so yes, life is expensive in Germany

 

[lonelyk]

it's criminal what this dev has done to himself in my opinion, he took what he had for granted, but now that reality hit and talk of himself losing 70% of his revenue why not stop wallowing in self pity and put your head down and get back to work like he never did before when he had it all

i hope he finally see his shortcomings and put his head down and focus on the work grind and on steam and releasing something, anything and everything else will follow, his subscribstar page will see a decent bump from building a stronger relationship with his customers on steam and will later reap the benefits

I sympathize but I beg to disagree. I haver never doubted for a moment that Ocean is working himself to death on his games, totally dedicated "to the grind" as you put it. That's actually part of the problem, he thinks he needs to work hard to succeed when he should be working most of all smart. More of the same won't solve anything.

Goal: Complete Summer's Gone in a reasonable time (<5 years from now, and that's being generous)
How: There are two main levers for this: scope and speed.

Scope:

• He has been targeting 30 chapters (or more?). Cut it down, to 20 for example -> that's already 40% less effort needed to finish the game. He can always release DLCs later if he wants to.
• Lower the number of LIs. I'm sure we'd all be disappointed but there is no need for so many LIs. Drop at least Marla, Elsa, Vanessa and whoever hasn't been introduced/confirmed yet. That will lower the storyline branches, which will especially become very slow and complex to work around as we progress further into the game with so many different variables from player to player.

Speed:

• Drop WIAB. It's great that he has a universe in mind and how it intersects with other stories, but he's not a full dev studio and he has to adjust his priorities accordingly. It's too ambitious to work on two games simultaneously, it slows both of them immensely which is counter-productive. Full focus on SG, complete it, then switch to WIAB. If enough financial success, he could hire help to complete it even faster, and get to new games, etc.
• Lower quality reasonably. It's still Ocean, it'll still be great compared to the competition, but likewise there is no room for perfectionism if you want to complete in a reasonable time. Use the same render for several lines of dialogue, no need to make many small variations. It's okay if a render isn't perfect, they are used to support the story.
• Fewer animations. They're nice, but too time-consuming for what it's worth.
• Hire someone to help with the renders and the coding. Probably no longer possible due to the current struggles, but there was plenty of opportunity and Ocean purposefully shut this down because the quality wouldn't be identical to his work. Duh. But that's okay. It means growing from being an individual contributor as an artist to an art director who can instruct someone on what art direction is expected and can compromise for the sake of getting things done.
• Get some professional, neutral/objective advice about the game production. Let's not forget that Ocean is working on his debut game, he is making rookie mistakes but he is certain of his decisions. He is not only an artist, but also a developer, a producer and a marketer. So many issues would be resolved if he could get good advice that he would trust from someone who has experience and could steer him on the right track. Getting surrounded by yesmen is comforting but won't help.
• No acceptance of scope creep. What we've been witnessing the past 18 months is typical game development without good management: since there is no stakeholder to say no, no deadline from the outside, the release scope is expanding because of things that would be nice to we find out as we develop the update. But that always means you will be super late in releasing and it gets you no closer to completing your game. Farther in fact. He needs good self discipline about that.
• Likewise, there is no world where he should think it's okay for his game to wait nearly 2 years for the next update, even if it's worth whatever number of usual chapters he wants to say. First, he loses interest of his support base so it will hit his wallet while frequent (smaller) releases will garner a lot more interest and goodwill. Second, what matters is also the target completion date. Release one chapter as big as two, that's still only one chapter and there are many left to do. He needs to make hard choices so the projected completion date isn't 30+ years from now like it has been. So he needs to ensure his updates can be released every 3 months at the most. And that would be full chapters, not half chapters like we've been getting, if this has any chance of completing within a few years.
• No reworks. This was a poor decision he made, although I can understand the temptation with the Steam release and ensuring that first impressions are as good as the game as become in more recent updates. But his reworked renders will still look old and outdated in a few years... So unless he turns it around and completes the game soon, he will need to rework it again.
• Get some AI help. Not for renders, or maybe in some exceptional cases, but mostly to help with the coding part. AI Code Assistants excel at that and that's easy productive time gained.

There is maybe not even need to do all of that, these are just examples I would recommend. But the game development is taking a very predictable trajectory so far, and it's a shame Ocean has not thought it worth it to change course so far. He is working his ass off, which also brings the risk of burning himself out like many devs have before him. And encountering issues that make his work feel unrewarded (not getting the success and financial reward he surely believes it should be getting, at least on par with before) would increase that risk.

I have not given up on that game yet, it has something special. But something needs to change drastically and it is entirely in Ocean's hands.

 

[KrusherKev]

I sympathize but I beg to disagree. I haver never doubted for a moment that Ocean is working himself to death on his games, totally dedicated "to the grind" as you put it. That's actually part of the problem, he thinks he needs to work hard to succeed when he should be working most of all smart. More of the same won't solve anything.

Goal: Complete Summer's Gone in a reasonable time (<5 years from now, and that's being generous)
How: There are two main levers for this: scope and speed.

Scope:

• He has been targeting 30 chapters (or more?). Cut it down, to 20 for example -> that's already 40% less effort needed to finish the game. He can always release DLCs later if he wants to.
• Lower the number of LIs. I'm sure we'd all be disappointed but there is no need for so many LIs. Drop at least Marla, Elsa, Vanessa and whoever hasn't been introduced/confirmed yet. That will lower the storyline branches, which will especially become very slow and complex to work around as we progress further into the game with so many different variables from player to player.

Speed:

• Drop WIAB. It's great that he has a universe in mind and how it intersects with other stories, but he's not a full dev studio and he has to adjust his priorities accordingly. It's too ambitious to work on two games simultaneously, it slows both of them immensely which is counter-productive. Full focus on SG, complete it, then switch to WIAB. If enough financial success, he could hire help to complete it even faster, and get to new games, etc.
• Lower quality reasonably. It's still Ocean, it'll still be great compared to the competition, but likewise there is no room for perfectionism if you want to complete in a reasonable time. Use the same render for several lines of dialogue, no need to make many small variations. It's okay if a render isn't perfect, they are used to support the story.
• Fewer animations. They're nice, but too time-consuming for what it's worth.
• Hire someone to help with the renders and the coding. Probably no longer possible due to the current struggles, but there was plenty of opportunity and Ocean purposefully shut this down because the quality wouldn't be identical to his work. Duh. But that's okay. It means growing from being an individual contributor as an artist to an art director who can instruct someone on what art direction is expected and can compromise for the sake of getting things done.
• Get some professional, neutral/objective advice about the game production. Let's not forget that Ocean is working on his debut game, he is making rookie mistakes but he is certain of his decisions. He is not only an artist, but also a developer, a producer and a marketer. So many issues would be resolved if he could get good advice that he would trust from someone who has experience and could steer him on the right track. Getting surrounded by yesmen is comforting but won't help.
• No acceptance of scope creep. What we've been witnessing the past 18 months is typical game development without good management: since there is no stakeholder to say no, no deadline from the outside, the release scope is expanding because of things that would be nice to we find out as we develop the update. But that always means you will be super late in releasing and it gets you no closer to completing your game. Farther in fact. He needs good self discipline about that.
• Likewise, there is no world where he should think it's okay for his game to wait nearly 2 years for the next update, even if it's worth whatever number of usual chapters he wants to say. First, he loses interest of his support base so it will hit his wallet while frequent (smaller) releases will garner a lot more interest and goodwill. Second, what matters is also the target completion date. Release one chapter as big as two, that's still only one chapter and there are many left to do. He needs to make hard choices so the projected completion date isn't 30+ years from now like it has been. So he needs to ensure his updates can be released every 3 months at the most. And that would be full chapters, not half chapters like we've been getting, if this has any chance of completing within a few years.
• No reworks. This was a poor decision he made, although I can understand the temptation with the Steam release and ensuring that first impressions are as good as the game as become in more recent updates. But his reworked renders will still look old and outdated in a few years... So unless he turns it around and completes the game soon, he will need to rework it again.
• Get some AI help. Not for renders, or maybe in some exceptional cases, but mostly to help with the coding part. AI Code Assistants excel at that and that's easy productive time gained.

There is maybe not even need to do all of that, these are just examples I would recommend. But the game development is taking a very predictable trajectory so far, and it's a shame Ocean has not thought it worth it to change course so far. He is working his ass off, which also brings the risk of burning himself out like many devs have before him. And encountering issues that make his work feel unrewarded (not getting the success and financial reward he surely believes it should be getting, at least on par with before) would increase that risk.

I have not given up on that game yet, it has something special. But something needs to change drastically and it is entirely in Ocean's hands.

This post ^^^ is one of the best I have seen on this thread, excellent thoughts and advice to the dev for the project(s). Desperately want to move forward with playing this excellent game, hopefully the dev could at least review some of your ideas. Total props for these great ideas

 

[BeingADikDik]

I sympathize but I beg to disagree. I haver never doubted for a moment that Ocean is working himself to death on his games, totally dedicated "to the grind" as you put it. That's actually part of the problem, he thinks he needs to work hard to succeed when he should be working most of all smart. More of the same won't solve anything.

Goal: Complete Summer's Gone in a reasonable time (<5 years from now, and that's being generous)
How: There are two main levers for this: scope and speed.

Scope:

• He has been targeting 30 chapters (or more?). Cut it down, to 20 for example -> that's already 40% less effort needed to finish the game. He can always release DLCs later if he wants to.
• Lower the number of LIs. I'm sure we'd all be disappointed but there is no need for so many LIs. Drop at least Marla, Elsa, Vanessa and whoever hasn't been introduced/confirmed yet. That will lower the storyline branches, which will especially become very slow and complex to work around as we progress further into the game with so many different variables from player to player.

Speed:

• Drop WIAB. It's great that he has a universe in mind and how it intersects with other stories, but he's not a full dev studio and he has to adjust his priorities accordingly. It's too ambitious to work on two games simultaneously, it slows both of them immensely which is counter-productive. Full focus on SG, complete it, then switch to WIAB. If enough financial success, he could hire help to complete it even faster, and get to new games, etc.
• Lower quality reasonably. It's still Ocean, it'll still be great compared to the competition, but likewise there is no room for perfectionism if you want to complete in a reasonable time. Use the same render for several lines of dialogue, no need to make many small variations. It's okay if a render isn't perfect, they are used to support the story.
• Fewer animations. They're nice, but too time-consuming for what it's worth.
• Hire someone to help with the renders and the coding. Probably no longer possible due to the current struggles, but there was plenty of opportunity and Ocean purposefully shut this down because the quality wouldn't be identical to his work. Duh. But that's okay. It means growing from being an individual contributor as an artist to an art director who can instruct someone on what art direction is expected and can compromise for the sake of getting things done.
• Get some professional, neutral/objective advice about the game production. Let's not forget that Ocean is working on his debut game, he is making rookie mistakes but he is certain of his decisions. He is not only an artist, but also a developer, a producer and a marketer. So many issues would be resolved if he could get good advice that he would trust from someone who has experience and could steer him on the right track. Getting surrounded by yesmen is comforting but won't help.
• No acceptance of scope creep. What we've been witnessing the past 18 months is typical game development without good management: since there is no stakeholder to say no, no deadline from the outside, the release scope is expanding because of things that would be nice to we find out as we develop the update. But that always means you will be super late in releasing and it gets you no closer to completing your game. Farther in fact. He needs good self discipline about that.
• Likewise, there is no world where he should think it's okay for his game to wait nearly 2 years for the next update, even if it's worth whatever number of usual chapters he wants to say. First, he loses interest of his support base so it will hit his wallet while frequent (smaller) releases will garner a lot more interest and goodwill. Second, what matters is also the target completion date. Release one chapter as big as two, that's still only one chapter and there are many left to do. He needs to make hard choices so the projected completion date isn't 30+ years from now like it has been. So he needs to ensure his updates can be released every 3 months at the most. And that would be full chapters, not half chapters like we've been getting, if this has any chance of completing within a few years.
• No reworks. This was a poor decision he made, although I can understand the temptation with the Steam release and ensuring that first impressions are as good as the game as become in more recent updates. But his reworked renders will still look old and outdated in a few years... So unless he turns it around and completes the game soon, he will need to rework it again.
• Get some AI help. Not for renders, or maybe in some exceptional cases, but mostly to help with the coding part. AI Code Assistants excel at that and that's easy productive time gained.

There is maybe not even need to do all of that, these are just examples I would recommend. But the game development is taking a very predictable trajectory so far, and it's a shame Ocean has not thought it worth it to change course so far. He is working his ass off, which also brings the risk of burning himself out like many devs have before him. And encountering issues that make his work feel unrewarded (not getting the success and financial reward he surely believes it should be getting, at least on par with before) would increase that risk.

I have not given up on that game yet, it has something special. But something needs to change drastically and it is entirely in Ocean's hands.

Mostly agreed, except Ocean cannot afford to hire third party and probably should not hold aspirations for continuing WIAB after SG is done. WIAB was the source of all his issues with Patreon, no need to open that can of wormies again.

Completing SG alone even with a reduced scope will likely occupy his full-time effort for the next 8-10 years. By then, who knows what he might be interested in pursuing. His attitude is one of an inexperienced artist who underestimates the effort needed to complete a title and allows himself to fantasize about '5 game universe' etc. while solo developing two games in parallel. Until he gets a single completed title under his belt, he is operating under delusions of grandeur.

 

[Razrback16]

Snip - for length

If you want to post this somewhere he might read it - he does peruse and occasionally post on the r/SummersGone subreddit.

 

[ViralRivalz]

I sympathize but I beg to disagree. I haver never doubted for a moment that Ocean is working himself to death on his games, totally dedicated "to the grind" as you put it. That's actually part of the problem, he thinks he needs to work hard to succeed when he should be working most of all smart. More of the same won't solve anything.

Goal: Complete Summer's Gone in a reasonable time (<5 years from now, and that's being generous)
How: There are two main levers for this: scope and speed.

Scope:

• He has been targeting 30 chapters (or more?). Cut it down, to 20 for example -> that's already 40% less effort needed to finish the game. He can always release DLCs later if he wants to.
• Lower the number of LIs. I'm sure we'd all be disappointed but there is no need for so many LIs. Drop at least Marla, Elsa, Vanessa and whoever hasn't been introduced/confirmed yet. That will lower the storyline branches, which will especially become very slow and complex to work around as we progress further into the game with so many different variables from player to player.

Speed:

• Drop WIAB. It's great that he has a universe in mind and how it intersects with other stories, but he's not a full dev studio and he has to adjust his priorities accordingly. It's too ambitious to work on two games simultaneously, it slows both of them immensely which is counter-productive. Full focus on SG, complete it, then switch to WIAB. If enough financial success, he could hire help to complete it even faster, and get to new games, etc.
• Lower quality reasonably. It's still Ocean, it'll still be great compared to the competition, but likewise there is no room for perfectionism if you want to complete in a reasonable time. Use the same render for several lines of dialogue, no need to make many small variations. It's okay if a render isn't perfect, they are used to support the story.
• Fewer animations. They're nice, but too time-consuming for what it's worth.
• Hire someone to help with the renders and the coding. Probably no longer possible due to the current struggles, but there was plenty of opportunity and Ocean purposefully shut this down because the quality wouldn't be identical to his work. Duh. But that's okay. It means growing from being an individual contributor as an artist to an art director who can instruct someone on what art direction is expected and can compromise for the sake of getting things done.
• Get some professional, neutral/objective advice about the game production. Let's not forget that Ocean is working on his debut game, he is making rookie mistakes but he is certain of his decisions. He is not only an artist, but also a developer, a producer and a marketer. So many issues would be resolved if he could get good advice that he would trust from someone who has experience and could steer him on the right track. Getting surrounded by yesmen is comforting but won't help.
• No acceptance of scope creep. What we've been witnessing the past 18 months is typical game development without good management: since there is no stakeholder to say no, no deadline from the outside, the release scope is expanding because of things that would be nice to we find out as we develop the update. But that always means you will be super late in releasing and it gets you no closer to completing your game. Farther in fact. He needs good self discipline about that.
• Likewise, there is no world where he should think it's okay for his game to wait nearly 2 years for the next update, even if it's worth whatever number of usual chapters he wants to say. First, he loses interest of his support base so it will hit his wallet while frequent (smaller) releases will garner a lot more interest and goodwill. Second, what matters is also the target completion date. Release one chapter as big as two, that's still only one chapter and there are many left to do. He needs to make hard choices so the projected completion date isn't 30+ years from now like it has been. So he needs to ensure his updates can be released every 3 months at the most. And that would be full chapters, not half chapters like we've been getting, if this has any chance of completing within a few years.
• No reworks. This was a poor decision he made, although I can understand the temptation with the Steam release and ensuring that first impressions are as good as the game as become in more recent updates. But his reworked renders will still look old and outdated in a few years... So unless he turns it around and completes the game soon, he will need to rework it again.
• Get some AI help. Not for renders, or maybe in some exceptional cases, but mostly to help with the coding part. AI Code Assistants excel at that and that's easy productive time gained.

There is maybe not even need to do all of that, these are just examples I would recommend. But the game development is taking a very predictable trajectory so far, and it's a shame Ocean has not thought it worth it to change course so far. He is working his ass off, which also brings the risk of burning himself out like many devs have before him. And encountering issues that make his work feel unrewarded (not getting the success and financial reward he surely believes it should be getting, at least on par with before) would increase that risk.

I have not given up on that game yet, it has something special. But something needs to change drastically and it is entirely in Ocean's hands.

Sir, you make very great points and this is a sensible strategy.

However, if Ocean is like most developers, and I'm pretty sure he is -- he will do absolutely none of this. (Except maybe drop WIAB).

Most developers get comfortable in a particular workflow, especially ones who've been working for years. If they want to work faster, they "hustle" through the process. But rarely have I seen a developer re-invent the process itself.

There's a bunch of possible reasons which I won't bore you with. I'll just focus on why I think Ocean would reject changes to his process: perfectionism.

This is the double-edged sword of developers of "high-quality" visual novels with stunning renders. The games are beautiful because the developers cannot accept even the character's ass clipping into a seat cushion, nevermind lighting imperfections.

I'm further inclined to believe this after seeing WIAB get re-mastered despite so little progress: Those. Little. Flaws. Are. So. Annoying.

People often see perfectionism as a sign of an expert, but I see the opposite. It takes a lot of practice to "let go" creatively.

Source: myself, other developers in the dev forum, and one dev who I suggested exactly what you just said, and they agreed but they said, 'they just can't' because 'it would just bug them'.

 

[Manuya]

"I know I have a steam release around the corner, which on paper can change everything, but after the last two years, I don’t feel like being optimistic about this side of the coin"

and who's fault is that!!!!???

i said i will disappear again but OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS GUY, i mean i hope everything work out for him but Christ.
first confusing customers with the whole censoring thing (as if there were already anything worth censoring, lmfao), and going with 'Frequent Nudity or Sexual Content" in hopes of getting more eye balls, but the most important thing and take me as an example for this, when i first came across this AVN here back in 2022 i think and downloaded it and saw the warning at the beginning i stopped everything and came here to see what's up, after made the calculations and doing some research i saw and knew everything i needed to see and know to made the right decision at the time for me:

4 years of development and you're telling me go away nothing to see here because i'm an "artistic visionary" and i have a grand plan for this but AHh AHh AHh you wanna see some thing worthwhile after reading my poetry you'll have to wait for my yearly release chapter split into two updates and that if everything worked according to plan, on top of me doing rework on the old chapters, on top of me also having another project, on top of me having plans for more than 20 chapters and because of my Grand plot for those who wanna see something to >FAB< about come back in a 5 years or so (i know i was naïve back then thinking it'll only take 5 years lol, stupid) with that been said i remember never clicking shift+del faster in my life

now with my example out of the way let's lay out the facts, SG released on steam 10 May, 2024
(i bought the bundle for 22.29€ minutes after release just to pay him for the excellent work he did with the first couple of remake chapters for WIAB which to this day the only thing i saw from this dev's work)
and since that day let's count on one hand the dev logs: 3 including the release one and one after with some previews, a dev log labeled #1 and one promoting WIAB and the latest Christmas one, and that's ladies and gentlemen for the course of 18 months, now his hardcores know, but for the average steam customers they think mostly it's abandoned project like the label here rightly suggest and what's my review has been mostly about!

for WIAB it's even worse since it's an EA title, released 4 Jul, 2025 and we only got one dev log for patch after release and the latest one came 6 months after release, so most people there already moved on thinking the same thing

the above is being generous and understanding so i'll stop beating around the fucking bush, take me as an example: hard working individual like many others here and on steam 11 hours a day with so many responsibilities having limited time to game and with already being so many options on the fucking table like the true masterpiece i forgot to mentioned earlier Desert Stalker which combine the artistic with the fucking goods that you can sink hours into among so many other prime and shining lucrative profitable examples than this >artistic milking<...... which one you think we'll go for here!????

again stop treating steam customers as if they're all your hardcore fans and directing them to reddit or discord to get a grasp on what's going on with you, we're big boys and steam not only a gaming platform but a social media by itself that rivals others, so tell it like it's and explain the situation there directly and slap a supporter dlc to offset some of the lost patreon revenue and i'll be the first to pay for it even though i vowed to never touch this AVN again after deleting it back in 2022

but please change your old milking approach when you had it all & work hard, release something on steam so people there know there's still a light at the end of this damn tunnel, and hopefully everything will work itself out for you, and by time you'll reap the benefits and be "optimistic about this side of the coin"

EDIT: he should also look into translating to as many languages as he can to take advantage of other markets like oppaiman does it if he hasn't already.

i'll go away again, sorry and happy holidays to you and your loved ones here everyone