May Update: Inflation and Why I'm Increasing Prices

So, it's no secret that over the last few years things have gotten dramatically more expensive. I had avoided this for a very long time, but I can't ignore it anymore. I wanted to keep prices low and reasonable for anyone to subscribe, like a magazine subscription or monthly newspaper. But, things change, and over the last two years, not only has inflation increased all of our costs of living, but, the reality is, while I never intended to become even semi dependent on income from this patreon, I sort of have.

The reality is a good chunk of the monthly subs basically pay for my rent. In return I spend more time than maybe some people realize, per week, on this project. I know updates are slow but when I crunch the numbers, I end up spending 20 to 30 hours a week on this project. That's time I could spend working a job that pays 5 or 6 times more than what I make off this project.

This is a passion project, so I never expected it to become an important part of my financial budget. At the same time, it's becoming harder and harder to justify the time spent on this project every week versus the reality of getting a "real" job.

So, the base membership will increase to 6 dollars on June 1st.

I am lucky, in that my primary job does afford me a lot of flexibility, but things are still tight. I understand if this is asking too much, especially considering that updates are not coming out as quickly as I would personally like them too and I'm sure that's disappointed many other people, as well.

Come June 1st, if you are still a member, you will see your sub cost increase to 6 USD.

If you're frustrated, let me know. This project went from being a simple text adventure to a very complicated Godot project with way too many aspirations that it could never ever realistically fulfill.

That is the other part of this.

Switching from a simple text adventure format to a full-fledged game engine with higher quality graphics, better sounds, better music, better mechanics, better everything, has really taken more of a toll on me than I expected. It's taken so much more time to get to this point than I expected, and honestly, in-hindsight, I should have known this. That's my naivety on display.

The original text adventure games had no sound, no music, no complicated ui or interface or save data management systems.

I don't mean to say these things as an excuse, but just to highlight why things have moved as slowly as they have. I was naive enough to really expect, a couple years ago, that by this time in 2025 I'd be near the end of completing this game. I wish I was, but I'm definitely not.

Anyway, I guess this was a more sincere and honest post about the state of the game than I had originally intended. A bit more stream-of-conscious than I planned.

Next public alpha is still coming. I might as well confirm now that it won't be coming until early June, as opposed to mid-May. There are just too many little story beats that need to be wrapped up before release along with many bug fixes currently being contended with, but still, early June is a solid timeframe.

That means, for patrons, more dev-builds that they will get early access to as well as the continuation of the one-off galleries. Briefly, I'll talk about that; the one-off galleries are coming to an end since there's only two more patrons to go through. After that, I plan to change up the formula a bit but still provide atleast 2 gallery posts a month for patrons based on votes. I'll have more to say about that later.

At the end of the day, thank you all so much for your support. I can't believe it's 2025 and I'm still here making this game.