About the future (and a poll)

Alright folks,

with GoV's development ending soon, I owe you some info about the time after, so let's cut right to the chase.
For a number of reasons, I've come to the conclusion that making HHR in its originally planned scope just won't work.

I either have to cut it down to the most important bits, or make something else (like TM2).

I don't know how many posts explaining it I've written and then discarded again over the past couple of weeks. At least a dozen, and they were all walls of text, because there's simply a number of factors that played a role.

But in short, bluntly put, I reluctantly have to accept that my feeble, slow, aging, ADHD(inattentive type)-ridden scatterbrain isn't cut out for making HHR the game I was originally envisioning, at least not in a timeframe that I myself would find acceptable.

I underestimated how much worse my brain has gotten over the past 3 years (and admittedly, it wasn't great before that, either).
Getting old sucks, mild-to-medium chronic burn-out doesn't help.

And you see, with everything going on in the world (plus my health also slowly getting worse), I don't think I have that much time left as game dev.
So taking 5-7 years to make HHR the game it's supposed to be isn't an option for me.
Other devs were luckier in their timing.

On top of that, there's a smaller project I absolutely want to make, and while it's more of side-project nature, I don't want to delay it.
You know, with the world heading where it seems to be heading.
It's just something I want to do before my game dev career might end, so I can't afford to just put it off by 2-3 years or something.

So for my main project, there's 2 options:

1) Scale down the sandbox scope of HHR dramatically, dropping most of the sandbox and even some sidegirls I had originally planned, and make it a mostly linear story VN.
It would still have some repeatable content, but no grind or gameplay in the traditional sandbox game sense.
What I can promise you is that the story would be quite decent... that's the part I'm most confident in, actually.
I just don't know how many of you actually care about story... ^^'
Plus, there's a risk I still wouldn't be able to finish it.

2) Let it go, and make Total Maidness 2 instead.

This would continue the TM1 story and be similar to TM1 in concept, but with more story- and character development focus, and many other improvements (including measures that make it easier for me to develop it at a solid pace), and of course a few cute and hot new maids, while keeping at minimum the most popular ones from TM1.

It just wouldn't be as epic as HHR in terms of story.

Though it would have more synergy with the side project I mentioned, since that is also TM-related. The benefit would be minor, but it's there.

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Option 1 is riskier, but might story-wise also be more rewarding (if we get to the endings).

Option 2 is safer, but might be a little less interesting.

I leave it up to you.

-OCN

P.S.: It's alright to be disappointed, I just want to mention that at least part of the blame is on those politicians and autocrats out there that make me feel like I'm living on borrowed time and have to perform "triage" on the projects I still want to do.
But please, NO political discussions here.
I don't want to deal with that.