Patreon QA Survey Results + SnaccPop IP Updates!

Hiya everyone! This has been a WIP post for a little bit now, and we finally got everything all ready to announce to you! So, strap in and get cozy, it’s gonna be a long one~

Survey Results

Starting off with finally letting you all know the results of the Quality Assurance survey we released earlier this month (thanks to all 269 people who participated, by the way!), the results turned to…

All small projects are continuing! 🎉
Some of them will just be continuing a little differently…

1. The results for “Yes'' and “Neutral/Indifferent” to see BOTM continue were actually smack-dab in the middle (42% each), so since yes was tied and higher than “no,” that means BOTM will continue! And, 50.9% of you wanted voting to return. Ye ask and ye shall receive, voting will also be returning for BOTM!

We’re so sorry that Tariq’s pin-ups didn’t get completed like many of you voted for, this was due to health complications of our BOTM artist. But, we hope you all look forward to voting on the top 3 results we received from the poll within the survey! We’re gonna keep the 3 contenders as a surprise for you all, but y’all will NOT be disappointed! (You might struggle with choosing just one, though~ ;-P)

2. Guest Artist of the Month will also be continuing! We’re happy to hear that, because we love it just as much as you guys do (with a staggering 61.7% to see GAOTM continue)! Being able to showcase and commission these wonderful artists from our community has been such an honour, and we’re so glad to see that you guys want it to continue! You guys show so much love for the series and characters we create and it just warms our hearts to see.

We hope you all enjoyed not only Jude’s for June, but all the previous Guest Artists we’ve had! Each of them have knocked it out of the park with their pieces and we can’t wait to see what the next Guest Artist will bring!

3. 58% of you wanted to see Project Drama Boy continue on our Patreon, with a mixture of these one-shot fellas and existing SnaccPop fella audios winning by just a sliver! (It was literally 40.9% for a mixture, 40.1% for just SP characters, a super tight race!) So, we’re proud to say that Project Drama Boy will also be continuing! After we finish this last batch of audios, we’re going to be working on scripts with the SnaccPop boys from the IPs that you all know and love! Releases are TBD, so stay tuned!

DachaBo: Simoun Finally?!

After nearly over a year of announcing our beloved kitty, a Simoun build of DachaBo is FINALLY in the works! We’ve gotten a good handful of lines written that you’ll be able to sift through when the full game is completed, and sprites and assets are also in the works! You even get a little example here, isn’t that fun?~

As you can see, Simoun’s rockin’ a new outfit! Designed by the ever-so-helpful Jude, he’s a crop-top tank underneath a pink, sheer top. And his collar is reminiscent of puka-shell necklaces! Super Y2K/2000s fashion~

We don’t have a release date yet for this Simoun build, but we’ll keep you guys as updated as we can regarding work on him. We’ve got 2 trans-masc writers/creators workin’ on him, and we promise he’s in good hands! He’s our baby boy, our son, our little blorbo! (We say, as Simoun bears his claws at us–) 😼

AphroDesia: ConciUrges

As announced yesterday, after months of ConciUrges being Patreon-exclusive, the mini-VN of ConciUrges is now available for the public! We’re so grateful to everyone who played, loved it and gave feedback for it!
The game was made solely by our 2 studio founders and with the help of some lovely playtesters. And, of course, it wouldn’t have been possible without all of your guys’ love and support!

AphroDesia means a whole lot to our founders, so while you all wait for updates regarding “AphroDesia: Cupid Syndicate,” we hope you enjoy this mini-VN ♥

If you haven’t yet, check the game out on our itch.io and give it a play!

Sunny Day Jack

As announced within our new management post, production regarding the final demo build and First Act release of “Something’s Wrong with Sunny Day Jack” is still trucking along! A little teaser was even posted on our Discord server about some small updates to the sprites! (Which psst, you should join if you haven’t already!) And you guys get to see them now:

 We even have a small written section by one of our new programmers regarding current production on SDJ:

Hi there!

To those who know me, and those who don't, my name is Jude! I'm currently a moderator for the official Snaccpop Studios discord server, and as of recently - programmer for SWWSDJ! I wanted to take a moment to talk with y'all, to tell you my plans, and bring some much-needed transparency.

In a previous post made on the Patreon, our new Studio Head, Ane, briefly mentioned a new programmer that already has implemented the base script for the SWWSDJ demo into Ren'Py - that was me! And I would like to share my [cautious] optimism for a summer release date for the new-and-improved [and final] SWWSDJ demo.

Redoing the demo in Ren'Py will also give me the ability to push forward with the completion of Act One, of which our writers are working tirelessly to get ready to be implemented in! If all goes well– and I would like to express my dedication and devotion to getting SDJ ready and finished as quickly and efficiently as possible– we should still hit our target of having Act One ready to play by October. But, I will be keeping everyone as updated as I possibly can, and if there will be any kind of delay, I'll be sure to let all of you know exactly what's going on, and the plan going forward. 

[Another Ren'Py positive; getting Mac and Linux builds will be just as easy as getting a Windows build! So more of you will be able to play!]

I would also like to bring a transparency that's been sorely lacking with our former programmer. Ideally, I'd personally really like to be able to post screenshots and possible clips as behind-the-scenes from the game as we continue with programming, but I'd also like to avoid spoiling too much~! For the demo, at the very least, I would like to post actual content from, as we go, so all of you can see the actual work being done through regular updates. You all deserve to see the hard work being put into this game from all across the SWWSDJ team!

I'm really excited to continue working on Sunny Day Jack! Thank you all for your continued support and patience. I hope I can do right by you all and right by the team while working on SWWSDJ. Stay tuned! There will be more fun to come!

- Jude

So, as mentioned before, SWWSDJ production is trucking along! Look forward to what we can show off in the future! ^u^

New $1 Support Tier:

We understand that some of you may want to continue supporting us but need to reduce your donation. To accommodate this, we are introducing a new $1 tier! Think of it as a tip jar—a simple way to say “thank you” and show your support. Every dollar helps us make these awesome projects come to life!

Temporary Hiatus for Smaller Projects

Yeah, you’ve read that right. While we’ve got all this good news going on and production is trucking along in places, there’s some things we unfortunately need to place on a hiatus. This is due to a handful of complications happening all at the same time.

As we’re still in the process of tax filing SnaccPop Studios as a C-Corp LLC, the timeline we had internally for getting things up-and-running is unfortunately taking much longer than we had first initially calculated. We can’t go into extreme details, but right now we’re waiting on the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) and they’ve given us a wait time of 15-45 days to be processed and approved, at the time of writing this. And until that gets finished, we can’t really continue working without racking up some pretty insane IOUs. We’re keeping production to the absolute necessary things (SDJ development, mostly), but this means that smaller projects to satiate our ever-so-patient Patrons needs to be halted.

A Bit of Expenses Transparency:

We want you to know where your support goes. So, here's the deal: about 35% of our donations on Patreon go toward paying taxes. Kickstarter also requires that we pay taxes on what was donated to the SDJ Kickstarter — it’s just part of handling such huge donations. Then, we put away another 15% into savings for emergencies.

That leaves us with 50% of the Patreon donations, which we use to pay our amazingly talented team. Every single person plays a crucial role in bringing each of our incredible pieces of work to life and deserves to be paid at least $15USD/hour minimum wage, if not industry standard which can range as low as $25USD/hour and as high as $125USD/hour. Now, imagine a team of freelance contractors, each with unique hourly rates and varying work hours, dividing half of our monthly donations. Suddenly, our donations don’t seem quite as large, right?

Temporary Hiatus for Smaller Projects (CONT.D)

You may have noticed that no dates were announced with the smaller projects regarding the survey results; This is because all “smaller projects” (BOTM, GAOTM, PDB) will be placed on a temporary hiatus as we get things all back in order for proper production to better serve you all the tasty food you want! We have a few audios that still need to be edited for Project Drama Boy that we’re hoping we’ll get to you all as soon as we possibly can, but there’s no definite date for them at this time. We’re hoping we can start bringing these projects back come August, and at latest: September. 

Along with severe mental health issues and scares, physical health complications, and sudden unforeseen IRL responsibilities/complications, this has all resulted in some pretty nasty burnout from most of our key team members. We need a bit of time to rest and recoup, so that we can be in better shape to make what we wanna make, and what you guys want to see! 

We know we keep announcing delays and it’s always disappointing (even to us) but there’s been so many complications (former programmer, previous management, consistent unforeseen IRL responsibilities, etc) and the team actively working on just SWWSDJ is actually quite small; really only about 3-5 people currently (SP studios as a whole is quite small, in reality). These things unfortunately happen. They suck when they do, and it seems like we can’t really catch a break behind the scenes. But, we work to the best of our abilities to create what we want to create, and show what we’re proud of to you all when we can!

During this small hiatus, we will attempt to give updates regarding SWWSDJ development as much as we can, but please remain patient with us. We give these production updates to stay as transparent as we possibly can with you, and in reality, sometimes transparency means bad news. We don’t want it to always be bad news, but this year has been already quite draining on the SP team.

We’re working hard, we promise you!

We hope you all are understanding. ♥

Tobias
Co-Founder
SnaccPop Studios