I think after reading this, I can only give you my following thoughts; and I'm gonna be real about this, so it's gonna be a bitter pill to swallow (please bear in mind this is not an attack on you in any way);
1)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having ambition with something bigger as your goal of sandbox gameplay.
Having said that, the way you went about it....... really wasn't well planned or well thought out.
You've spent so much time from game's beginning till when MC becomes King in VN mode, which literally created the expectation and hype with it being a pure VN game (with many hours of game playing time until that point).
And one day, you announced you're inserting in sandbox, and splitting the game into 2 modes.
This really split the fanbase into "I'm not a fan of sandbox" & "I still think the game is great" camps.
Problem is not the fact you put in sandbox, but when.
If you really wanted sandbox Kingdom management gameplay, that really should have been in the game from the get go (or very early in act 1, like most sandbox titles do), not when the game is in act 5, or 6 (or what the number it would be).
But given Vis's story (MC not being King until much much later into the story), I'd say the most sensible solution would have been to push the Sandbox/Kingdom management gameplay feature into the backburner, and finish the game till the very end in VN mode.
That's where you built the hype around the game, and where the focus should have been.
After Vis has been completed in VN mode, you could have just announced a remake with sandbox/kingdom management features and whatever little features that you feel ambitious about.
Sure, you're pushing back a feature you have wanted but at least the hype and trust would have been ongoing.
But instead, you started juggling sandbox and things started to slip away from you....
But I guess the bigger issue is;
2) After you put Vis "on hold" I didn't check out Highway to Hell, beccause well.... it just didn't interest me.
So given what you stated with that 1 star review, while on one hand I understand you were upset (you released something with so much effort, and some idiot made an absurd comment with one star about it). But on the other hand, I don't.
Why?
Well, this is f95zone (aka "the zone").
All sort of people are here, not just sensible & rational people, but also trolls, idiots, people who whine and complain at devs about all sorts of stupid little things.
And I see devs handling it in various ways, which I'll list;
- Thick-skinned devs: these are the devs who pretty much brush off all the trolls, idiots and go about their way and their work on the game like usual. They survive the longest on this site.
- Sensitive devs: these devs, they don't handle it all too well when criticized or complained at, and from what I've seen till now a lot of them either delete their f95zone account and purely resume their activity exclusive on Patreon (or Subscribestar or whatever platform they are on).
Now, I'd say from what I can tell you're in the latter category, but you took a step further to the extreme and deleted all your Patreon, Discord and other social media accounts, except DeviantArt.
From my (and others') view, I'd say this was a big mistake (probably biggest, even bigger than your decision to implement Sandbox/Kingdom Management gameplay) and very rash.
You said you had gotten a "well deserved break."
And there's nothing wrong with that.
However, your break could have occurred without deleting your Patreon & Discord, and other social media accounts.
With Patreon, most rational solution would have been being honest about what you were feeling such as "Guys, I'm at a breaking point, and I really deserve a break, and will take time off from any game development" (and afterwards, of course pause Patreon payments with that post to stop the whole 'dev is milking' comments. You can unpause Patreon payments when you definitely are back with the release of the new game)
Same with discord. An announcement saying you're taking a break and folks would have been understanding.
Instead, you cut everything off.
And what's the primary thing fans think of when a dev deletes everything?
Well, there is only one; "dev literally gave up on game development permanently cause of some reason, whether it's monetary, or other irl reasoning etc."
Pretty much everyone thinks that is the case and moves onto other (possibly better) games.
You made an action which made folks think you abandoned everything.
So the question people will ask in their minds is "What's to stop this dev from calling it quits and deleting his accounts again when going gets tough?"
And yes, I get that you're releasing on Steam, but Steam I'd say could be as much of a prison as reviews on this site.
In the end, I don't think the whole "cut everything off" decision you made was the right call.
In fact, I'd say it probably did more harm than good to your reputation.
Cause things like flaws within a game itself, people tend to forget more over time, sooner than you think.
But actions like abandoning games (as
Maviarab listed, it's 3 game now), or cutting off contact entirely, folks remember them for much longer.
(With cutting off contact; whether people believe you only decided to only take a break, or whether you were so upset that you decided to call it quits entirely & changed your mind later to come back?
It won't matter. The issue is the optics; which makes it very seem like you gave up)
Honestly?
I didn't expect to write this much on this.
But I think it's best to give an honest feedback.
You made a lot of mistakes (some of these mistakes, I think could have been avoided and handled a lot better), and I think you have an even larger uphill battle with this new game than with Vis before (at least with that game, the AVN you had until Kingdom management was solid, afterwards where things began crumbling down).
But oh well, what's done is done.
No going back now.
And with the new game being free-roam RPG mechanics, while on concept it sounds nice, like Maviarab said I remain unconvinced it's gonna be up to standard like those freeroam games from AAA or even AA studios (biggest hurdle would be resources, given you're forking out your own money to finance this).
So even with you coming back, sorry to say but I can't help but feel pessimistic about this.
