Hey.
On the tasks in the progress tracker:
I have already posted several messages in this thread explaining what we mean by the tasks in the progress tracker, how we count them, why their numbers change, how Chestnut's way of counting them differs from mine, etc. There are also several questions and answers in the FAQ channel of our discord server dealing with this very topic (thank you moskyx for copy-pasting them here). I assume going through a forum thread with so many pages may be difficult for some, so I'm going to make things easier for people and also add them to the FAQ in the OP here.
On the time taken to develop the game:
Making a game takes time. Or rather, we take a long time making the game the way we want it. And we want to keep making it the way we want it, because we have fun doing it, and if we have fun doing it, the result has a chance of actually being somewhat acceptable and also reduces the chance of us ever abandoning the project.
That's not even touching on the fact that there are so many words in each of our updates, words that need art, posing, editing, debugging, and whatnot. That all takes time.
Now it's fair if you imagine you would have done a better job; power to you and your imagination. It's also fair to hate our approach or think I don't want to wait this long or will never play this game again; okay, adiós.
On hiring new people:
I cannot think of ever hiring enough people to drastically speed up the dev time. Why? The tasks that take the longest (art and posing) are the ones we have the most fun doing. Fuck, I've been logging my time since May of 2021, and know exactly how many hours I have worked each day and looking at it, I would never have been able to put in so many hours with so few breaks if I didn't enjoy most aspects of my job. There are more reasons, of course, and I'll also be adding those to the FAQ in the OP.
On the amount and quality of the content:
I see people are hyped about the next release, which is great. We have been working very hard and really hope that most people will enjoy the result of our work. But I've got to warn you to temper your expectations. The update wasn't made with any specific player in mind, and while we like what we've made, we're obviously biased and have our own likes and dislikes. So if you come to play it with an extremely high expectation, you may be setting yourself up for disappointment. The same goes for the amount of content. I think there are more than a few minutes of gameplay, but that's with my playstyle. Your mileage may vary.
On the lack of meaningful choices:
If we wanted the choices to impact the outcome of the story, we would take even longer to develop each release (for it to not feel half-assed, it would need extra art and posing). And I also don't like it when in some games, some choices change the outcome but others don't. So for us, it was either all choices have an impact on the narrative or none of them do. We with the latter, of course. Why do we still have choices, then? Plenty of reasons, all posted earlier in this thread, but the gist of it is that I find them a useful tool for breaking a long dialogue and injecting some humor here and there. The one thing I should have done better (and will do in 0.6 if I have the time) is adding a message at the beginning of the game, clearly telling the player that their choices don't impact the story so that there's no surprise when they don't.
On criticism:
You're welcome to criticize every aspect of the game and our development approach. We've been doing this for over two years now, and since people on the internet never hold anything back, it's likely we have already heard your criticism from another mouth, and either it's something we cannot do anything about, prefer to keep it as it is, or have some changes planned in response to it. Still, criticism is welcome, and there are always new ideas we haven't considered. In fact, many of the suggestions here and elsewhere have improved the game.
That said, some people seem prone to mistake name-calling for well-thought-of-criticism. That, I'm afraid, doesn't count.
Also, thank you to all those people who have been answering questions on this thread and trying to help folks who need genuine help. I still upload the progress tracker in the OP every day but have sort of stopped reading the posts.
