Snack Sorrow

To put it shortly, I have made the difficult decision to stop working on Snack Story (as well as Research and Development). Instead, I aim to release a new game every 2-4 months rather than trying to manage long-term projects.

For tier 2 and 3 patrons, future games will have voting and submission opportunities similar to how it has worked so far. Tier 3 patrons who submitted ideas for the unreleased Snack Story update (those of you who are still here...) will be given the opportunity to give additional input for this first upcoming game as compensation.

I came to this decision for a handful of reasons. In a nutshell, I'm not happy with Snack Story, be it what's in the game now, or the unreleased stuff. In addition, I kind of just threw myself into two different long-term projects without considering how that would actually pan out, and it unfortunately took me this long to realize what a huge mistake that was. That's the gist of it, but if you want to know my full thought process, feel free to read on.

I started working on the next update for Snack Story after the most recent Research and Development update. The first thing I did was the writing, which I've learned is a very very draining process. Writing things like dialogue for the other games is fine and often fun, but writing entire paragraphs far more difficult... for me at least. There's only so many ways you can describe a character eating something or a character burping without repeating yourself, and while writing all the text for Snack Story I constantly found myself looking back to make sure I wasn't just writing the same thing over and over again. I'm sure a more experienced writer might not run into these same issues, but honestly writing long texts like this is very hard for me in general and something I never really intended to do with my stuff in the first place. Nevertheless, I went ahead with it and wrote just about everything needed for the next update.

Shortly after getting done with the writing, I unfortunately began experiencing some things outside of my control that cut into the time I had to work on the game. During this time, I could only afford to work on the game sporadically, which was both frustrating and stressful, as the time that had passed since I had released something only kept growing. This honestly soured me on the game even beyond the doubts I already had on it, and coming back to it over and over just started giving me a really shitty feeling. It's around this time that I started doing the videos, mostly because I felt really bad that I didn't really have anything to show. Eventually I let the videos become more and more ambitious, taking up more and more time, and then managed to get burnt out on them as well...

Around the time I made the posts saying I was burnt out on the videos, I was kind of at a loss for what to do. I made some post saying the game was still on the way, which was obviously a mistake. I should have just been honest about how I felt about it, but I still felt pressured to keep going despite feeling really shitty about the game. I ended up putting lachevite gallery together, mostly because I just wanted something else to work on, and hoped that I would feel better about Snack Story after some time had passed... but I didn't. Once again I kind of had no idea of how to proceed.

Then out of nowhere, my friend and I started working on what would become Regal Regale, and I immediately felt very excited and motivated to work on it. Working on something new was very fun, and the time I was putting into it felt justified because I knew it would lead to something new for you guys to play in the short term. The game ended up taking a bit longer than expected due to some scheduling issues, but I was (and still am) happy with how the game turned out, and I hope you guys were too. 

When Regal Regale was done, I had to start thinking about Snack Story again. On top of how I already felt about the game, enough time had passed to where I wasn't even really happy with neither the writing nor the art I had done for the upcoming update anymore. I never really felt good about what was in the first update to begin with either (boring poses, almost no backgrounds, I used a brush with no pressure for some reason so it all looks super stale...), so I was now stuck with an update to a game I didn't like with more stuff I didn't like. I actually had the idea to just... remake the entire game as a point and click thing, adding characters month by month until eventually getting to the upcoming update's characters, and I even started planning for this... but realized pretty quickly that I'd be committing to a project that would likely take well over a year to complete, which is to say, repeating the mistake that put me into this situation in the first place.

When I started Snack Story as well as Research and Development early last year, I was thinking about them in terms of how they could work as patreon projects... rather than how excited I was to work on them. I was trying to think of projects that I could continuously update with patron votes/submissions, but never factored in obvious stuff such as how passionate I was about them myself, how long they would take, and whether or not I would still want to work on them months down the line. It goes without saying that it didn't really pan out, and it feels ridiculous that I didn't think about this more in hindsight... I guess it was a combination of scrambling to find something worthwhile for patrons, and having no real experience planning something like this.

After a lot of thought, I've come to the decision to stop working on Snack Story and Research and Development. It hurts and I wish I had some better solution, but I honestly feel that putting all this behind me and focusing on things I'm excited to work on is the best way forward. If you're wondering why Research and Development is getting scrapped as well, beyond just not wanting to keep any long term projects going, I'm also not very stoked on the content that's already in the game so far. At lot of it was rushed because I was scrambling to get the first version out (you may remember how I had to redo a lot of the code for the second version...), and at this point it's almost been a year since the most recent update... I would rather just work on newer and better stuff for you guys rather than trying to cobble a bunch of old stuff together.

As mentioned earlier, I plan to release standalone games every couple of months rather than continuously working on one. With how fun Regal Regale ended up being for me (and hopefully for you too), I believe that this will be the correct way to move forward. These games will have voting and submission opportunities similar to what's been available so far. You'll get more info on this as soon as this first game gets off the ground.

For the tier 3 patrons who took time to submit content for the ill-fated Snack Story update, I'm very sorry. As an apology, I intend to give you the opportunity for a bit more input beyond the standard tier 3 submission for this first game. As to what exactly that'll entail, I'm not 100% decided yet, and I'll let you know when I have more to say about it.

I hope it goes without saying that I'm very very sorry that all this waiting didn't lead to anything. I've always felt that your support is not only for what I put out on the short term, but also includes an expectation that I'm working towards something in the long term, and in that regard, I have completely failed with this. If you feel that this is too egregious of a fuck up to justify continuing your support, well, I understand.

It is, nonetheless, thanks to your support that I can afford to work on any of this stuff at all. I don't think I can express how grateful I am, or how crazy it is that anyone would think that what I make is worth any money at all. I know my word doesn't mean much at this point, but I really hope that all the upcoming stuff, be it weekly drawings or future games, are worth your time and support. Thank you