Garden of Venus's future (and next project info)

Alright everyone, time to explain some things and also outline what GoV's future will look like (spoiler: yes, it still has one ^^').

First things first, a big thank you to everyone who supported us primarily for GoV so far, despite the recent drought on the GoV-side of things.

Trust me when I say, I haven't been happy with how things have been going with GoV on our end, either.

Simply put, it's pretty obvious by now that GoV isn't working out as a side-project where 90% of the work has to be done by me, when I needed most of my time and mental energy for finishing TM stuff and, even more importantly, will need it even more going forward for my next main project.

And the idea of "small, but in return frequent" updates for GoV obviously didn't work out on the "frequent" part as a result at all, while it seems people were also hesitant to subscribe for such small updates.

It's pretty obvious in hindsight that the current situation wasn't sustainable on the GoV side, so to save GoV as a project, there will be some significant changes.

Change No.1: Different dev team
GoV will no longer be lead-developed by me.
It'll be taken over by a small team, though I'll still help out for a while to make sure the direction and quality stays about the same, until the new team has gotten into the groove.
Don't expect a massive increase in dev pace, as everyone involved has some other things going on in some form, but the plan is to ensure you'll get more bang-for-buck from now on anyway, more on that below.

Change No.2: Different dev team name, itch page and Discord
The newly formed dev team maintaining GoV will get its own name, itch page and discord server eventually, to reflect the personnel changes. Details will be announced on the SubscribeStar page (and discord) later.

Change No.3: GoV will become SubscribeStar-only
GoV will become a SubscribeStar-only-funded project for the forseeable future, and GoV content will be removed from my patreon page by the end of November.
Disclaimer: This is not related to any planned content changes for GoV, and GoV might still get it's own patreon page at some point.
But for now, to keep the organisational overhead down for everyone involved while the new team is still settling in, that's how it'll be.

In return, my content will be removed from the SubStar-page (TM is finished anyway, and my next project will simply stay patreon-only for now) to keep the dev teams cleanly separated.
The plan of the new team is to improve the bang-for-buck of GoV in a different way:

Change No.4: The approach to releases will be turned upside down
Instead of small releases every few weeks with only minutes of new content, the plan of the new dev team is that there will be a bigger GoV release every 2-3 months, with several new events and sandbox activities per update.
Basically, the idea is that updates will be big enough to justify subscribing for at least a month, and during the time between releases, supporters can in good conscience drop to lower or free subscription levels.

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Anyway, now you know what to expect (or not expect) on the GoV side of things from now on.

I'm sorry it came to this; objectively, releasing GoV wasn't my smartest move, as it was never the main project I wanted to make, and it kind of cornered me in terms of dividing my time and attention between multiple projects, which I frankly underestimated.
But as mentioned above, this will be a new beginning, both for GoV and for me.

As for what this will mean on my end: 

The Gardener tier will be renamed again (sorry...) and become either cheaper or get some replacement benefit, we'll work something out.

Apart from that, this simply means I'll finally have more time and mental breathing room to focus on making the game I've really been wanting to make all these years, which has also developed into a sort-of story follow-up to TM.

Project HHR (full title to be revealed soon) will eventually combine more story depth, isekai elements, RPG elements, monster girls, elves, maids, more character- and location variety, more gameplay (mostly optional, but we'll try to make it so fun most of you won't even want to skip it), lots of naughty (and sometimes kinky) sandbox fun and better graphics than what TM had.

I'd like to have an initial release ready in December, and while I understand not everyone will be happy about the GoV changes outlined above, I can say one thing with absolute certainty:

It's better that way, for everyone.

To be honest, I probably would've had to temporarily halt or even cancel GoV otherwise.
This way, it'll continue to live.
Though of course, it may need to reach a certain level of support over there to stay alive in the longer run, but... well, that's no longer my problem, I guess ^^'

I hope for your understanding, and I hope you're looking forward to HHR, because while I understand it's hard to convey with mere words or a few random images how good it'll be, I'm fairly confident that once you get to see and experience it, most of you will warm up to it in no time.
I don't want to hype it up too much until I've got something to show for it, but... it's not easy, since I'm really excited about it (frankly, much more so than I ever was about GoV).

Anyway, peace & out for now, hope to see you in HHR in December.

-OCN