4/14 Status Update

My plan was to put out some sort of preview today, but nothing is quite done yet. Here's the status of projects:

At the Mountains of Friendship: I could put out a preview for this, it's complete enough, but the tutorial isn't done. 

Netoria: It's made good progress, but still a little ways away from being playable. Things have pretty much solidified, but there's still a lot of scenes to be written. I probably will have to release previews without the final level, as that is pretty complex and nowhere near done.

Futa Oasis: I really just have to finish writing the sex scenes. I have been working on this, I promise. 

All three of these are all close to previews, but not quite there. I think I should be able to put them all out this month, but it's going to be back loaded, sorry about that. Most of my productivity this month has been with ATMOF, which isn't really available to anyone expect myself and play-testers, but that will change soon.

Unless At the Mountains of Friendship really takes off, I'm probably going to scale down production costs a lot. Even though my patreon revenue has grown, costs have grown more. Because people like Netoria a good amount, I increased the art budget for that, so that eats up most of the patreon income at the moment, meaning I'm mostly paying for everything ATMOF related out of my pocket. Last year I lost money on games, and this year is trending worse. So unless ATMOF grows the patreon a lot, I can't really keep up this kind of production quality and schedule. 

I don't mean to be gloomy or anything, it might be a huge hit, I think the game is really fun after all. But I don't think the way I work on games is really conducive to making lots of money here. I like to cycle through products and themes, and people who come for one thing often leave after it stops being the primary focus of updates. I try to be transparent about what's going on, but feel like sometimes people still get annoyed at me when Naked Ambition hasn't updated in almost a year and such.

Making money is the part of game development I like the least. I have to do it to pay my artists and such, but the whole process is something I don't enjoy. If game revenue didn't matter, I'd be perfectly happy with the ~300 patrons I have and the attention I currently get. Maybe it's my fault for scaling up production costs, but I want to make my games as good as they can be, both for my own satisfaction and for the enjoyment of my players.

In the past I've thought about shutting the patreon down altogether because having people give me money makes me feel bad if I don't give them something of value for it. And that pressure of giving people something for their money monthly is pretty intense. Maybe it's all in my head though, and you all are very happy with the pace of content coming out. But just the patreon existing makes me feel like I need to do it as consistently and as fast as possible. Maybe that's a good thing in the end, as it keeps my productive, who knows.

I suppose this has kind of turned into a bit or a rant about the costs and pressures of development rather than a status update at this point. But I like to talk about how I'm feeling and what my plans are on here. And the plan is still the same as it was, nothing's changed. Make games and have fun. I just wish the process was a little less stressful sometimes. 

That's all for this week. As always, thank you for your continued support.