The Big Recap & Possible End

Hey there everybody. And I do mean everybody.

In the above video, I'm showing a bit of a preview of all the visual things I was able to make thanks to all of my awesome patrons who've been sticking with me on this journey so far.

Are you actually working on this?

Well... yeah.

On the visual side of things, my work so far amounts to about 6 backgrounds, most of them with day/night variations. I also remade Elena's animated sprite, followed by 3 new animated sprites for new characters (Johan, Elise and Laura). All of them feature facial expressions I can use independently from their various arm poses. There's also a close-up of one of the character's face, some dialogues, icons, a phone animation, some UI improvements, a travel-map feature, etc. Little things. Lots of things I made thinking of the future, doing them now to not have to do them later (an example would be the day/night variations of backgrounds).
Oh, and let's not forget the 34 pictures from Bonus Content Drop that I've released for my fellow Hobz & Gobz.

I've also finished working on two nude sprites for Elena and I've started working on the actual FMG sprites. I'll have some previews for my fellow Gremz, Hobz and Gobz over on the OnlyGobz Discord channel.

All of this takes time and I always make a point to achieve a level of quality that pleases me with everything I make. This means fixing consistency errors that generative-AI will make, leaving as little as possible to randomness, and not accepting something I think is subpar for my own tastes.

The hard truth:

This venture is just not viable for me anymore. Over the past few months, I've seen the sub numbers dwindling down week after week. For every new patron I gain, an average of two others leave.
Some will join the Gremlin Tier, get a key to the 1.0 version of the game, go download it, then cancel or refund on Patreon.
Dem's the breaks, I guess.

I'm at a point where I'm making $270 per month from Patreon for a project I work on roughly 4 to 7 days a week. I'm getting to a point where I don't know how to pay my bills and groceries, so yeah.
I guess my gamble of quality over quantity at the cost of time... failed.

Truth is, we're all having money issues, so I understand people cancelling their memberships, and I don't blame them.
At the end of the day, things like games or Patreon are luxuries.

The anxiety-inducing lack of comments I receive (aside from the couple of regular chads in the Discord text-channels - shoutout to Yarg and Soundwave) and the latest poll I ran with Free Patreon followers (who either never have joined a Tier or have cancelled theirs in the past), which represent 2/3 of my total Patreon followers, tells me that the only thing I can do for them is keep working on the game and release a (free) update ASAP.

So, what's going to happen, now?

Option 1:

Assuming that, out of the blue, Patreon support increases, I'll keep working on the game. I'll focus more on that, spending less time on bonus content drops, especially since I'm now working on the actual meaty part of the update (the NSFW FMG animations). When it's ready, update 1.1 will be released on Itch for free to all the owners of version 1.0 of the game. Then I go on to work on a Chapter 2 where I'll get to add the goth-gym-girl Morgane Moreau, and so on and so forth.

Option 2:

The worst-case scenario (yet the most likely at this point): I keep working on the game until the end of June as outlined in Option 1... Then, around the end of June, I shut down the Patreon.
I'll then make version 1.0 of the game free on Itch, I'll look for a better way to make a living, all the while still trying to (slowly) finish update 1.1 on my own time. When it's finished, it will be released on Itch as a free update. Aaaand that would be the end of it, no Chapter 2.

I'm expecting numbers to go down the drain immediately after posting this, and I don't blame anyone for leaving now. Still, I will do my best in the coming weeks to keep this train rolling while I can, but I thought I owed everybody to be honest about the dire situation.

That's about it for now. I wish I had more uplifting words for this weekly post, aside from "Have a nice Sunday".
Cheers!