I will try to summarize the history of the game to illustrate the problem. We develop the game with three people: a programmer, a mapper (who draws the game's maps) and me, who does everything else. Up to this point, I had most of the work, which I honestly didn't mind.
The problem is that the game was supposed to have 12 chapters and 1 extra chapter, so 13 in total. Since we wouldn't make the decision to continue the project or not until we delivered chapter 5, about 40 to 45% of the game, if it was financially worthwhile to continue, our financial plan was that each of us would gradually quit our respective jobs to devote ourselves full time to the game. We came to the conclusion that $1500 would be enough to devote more time to the game. We split the money between 3 people, with me getting the biggest chunk, about 50%, and the others getting 25% and 25% depending on how much responsibility each member had.
So we started developing the idea. Unfortunately, the game didn't do very well in its first chapter due to poor balance, which I was responsible for because I didn't have enough math skills to solve the problem.
The development group agreed to fund the 2nd chapter out of their own pockets, which cost about 70$ to produce and required even more (sprits, tilesets, music, software). After we released the second chapter, it wasn't well received either because the balance wasn't ready,
my mathematician friend and I released 2.5 (The new version) The cost of developing the third chapter was about 80 dollars, while the game made about 7 dollars in the meantime. We came to the conclusion that the game was not accepted by the community mainly because of my mistake and that it was a waste of time and resources, because although it is only 6~8 months old game, many of the early versions have much more founding than Tales of Eleonora achieved during its development.
So one guy said "well makes no sense pay to work" i'm out, the other said i agree i'm out too,
and the project was ended.