Let's talk about those last two goals that we achieved

By this time, the fact that we have reached both the $500 and $1000 goals is old news, and we are steadily creeping toward $2000. I posted updates when we hit each of those goals, but I haven't said much about them since. To remain transparent about this campaign, I thought I'd talk a little about what we achieved.

The $500 goal was mostly concerned with getting the campaign off the ground and paving the way for things to come. When we reached it, I went ahead and purchased a license for Adobe Creative Cloud. This gives me, among other things, Photoshop to play around with, and it has seen plenty of use already. I don't know how I would have been able to keep working on this game without it. I also set up not only one, but two backup solutions, one off-site and one local, both protected against ransomware attacks. This also provides me version control, which means that I can, at any time, restore a fully working copy of what my development folders looked like at any given date. Simply put, there is now little risk that I will lose more than a single day's work if the worst should happen.

The  $1000 goal is a bit vaguer, and I realize I may have talked too little about it. Allow me to clarify. My vision for Long Live the Princess includes a bunch of characters that we haven't seen yet, but few of them are truly vital to the game. When I set up my plans for this Patreon campaign, I prepared for several kinds of situations. One plan covered what I would do if I got minimal support. In that case, I would have implemented the minimum number of characters and locations needed to complete the game, and then moved on. The second plan is what the $1000 goal is all about. Achieving it means that we will now see a bunch of characters in the game that would not have been part of it with less support. I'm hoping to include one of these new characters in version 0.5, but we'll get back to that at the end of this month. The third plan is what the $2000 goal is about, which expands the story, character list, and locations significantly. Once we reach that one, the game will become what I had always wanted it to be, with nothing held back.

Not long before we hit $1000, I added licensed music to it. This is something that could take a little time to implement. I have built myself a list of music I feel would enhance this game, but this costs a lot of money, up to $200 per track. As a result, I need to be careful with how I approach this. I am capable of composing music myself, but this would take valuable time from other kinds of development that I suspect you would prefer that I focus on instead. I don't think we'll see any music in 0.4, but 0.5 might change that. I'll keep you informed as the situation develops and my thoughts solidify.

Last, but not least, hitting these goals convinced me that there are people out there who enjoy what I'm making. This is more important than it might sound. When I developed version 0.1, I had nobody who could tell me if what I was doing was right or wrong; fun or dull. The tension built as I got closer to release. Was I making a fool of myself with my attempt at game development? Would anyone actually care about the game? While the jury's out on the first question, the second seems to have been answered with a resounding "yes!" Not only does that feel incredibly good after all this work, but it also means that I can feel more confident about the mechanics and stories I've put into motion. The feedback I've been getting from players has allowed me to reflect on the game in a more constructive way than before, and I believe this has helped (and will continue to help) tremendously with the overall quality. This is thanks to all of you who so generously decided to donate to the game's development. While we're still quite a ways off from leaving the red in terms of budget, the future now looks bright and promising. So thank you again, everyone.