Half a year of Conway. Let's talk about it! (Patreon)

Hey everyone.

It's been roughly half a year with the game, I started it back in January with my experimental month, and sure, there was the month where I've worked to collect some funds, but let's just keep it simple.

Are you ready for some rambling? Well, you better! Stream of consciousness time here, so strap in.

For the most part this post really is a thank you post to you all. Especially these past two months it's picked up some steam and we've made very good progress in making this game sustainable, which is just fantastic to see! Again, genuinely thank you all so much for this.
It's not quite at a point where it's self-sustaining, but we're getting ever so tantalizingly close and if the trajectory stays similar to what it's been these past two months, then we should be good pretty soon here and I'll have to worry less about that whole aspect of watching the money slowly drain and think roughly when it'll become critical.
Even now it should be at a point where side income from prints and gumroad can help cover things as well, and it probably won't be much of an issue.

But yeah, not gonna lie, there were some months when it was looking raaaaather dicey, and where the decision to call it was 1 or maybe 2 months maximum away.

Then June came around, and now July, and currently we're sitting at around $ 919 a month. For comparison, going into this month my general expectations were a minimum of hopefully catching up to the previous number (as memberships have a tendency to dip at the beginning of every month. People getting new cards and forgetting to update, life changes happening and they may have to bail, or of course  they just realize it's not for them anymore) and as an absolute maximum top-end expectation i thought that reaching 1k would be the absolute most that would be conceivably possible.
So look at us! We're pretty much scratching at the pie-in-the-sky number that i thought potentially-but-not-really possible for this month!

All that boring gushing about numbers is to say that I'm really really happy with where things are currently, and the trajectory is rather healthy looking for the game!
And you all are to thank for that. So once more, thank you all so so much for hopping on this thing and helping me do this.

That's also why I've slowly but surely been opening new commitments for the game.
Like the 25$ tier, or the Twitter account for it. I was a bit scared to do so before because well what if have to shutter things in a month or two? Kinda silly to make a big announcement for a Twitter account that people can follow.
But now that's all starting to feel more secure, which is really nice.

Another thing I wanted to talk about is that I'll be doing the first picture for the 25$ peeps really soon! Just finished a scene artwork for this upcoming release, and I might still have time to squeeze it in before the end of the month. If not then next month. And the plan for it is to fill out one of the sailor roles. You know, give a face to one of those brief interactions with nameless sailors here and there? Why not get a few character illustrations for them not just to have it be a voice from the void!
So that'll be the first one for that new tier, and I guess in a way actually quite a bit more than a background character as they'll receive the same treatment as all the other character sprites. Excited to see how that goes!

What else does the future bring?
Near future, as in this month up to the release, I'll of course publish the new scene artwork for the 5$+ folk, and I'll probably have some time to polish the lighting for some of the characters more.

As for next month. I do actually want to take some time next month and redesign some of the characters. Nothing too major, I actually like the overall feel that they have all in all. It's more a case of with some distance to them now since I painted em, there are some bits and pieces that I feel could have been done stronger.
So I want to go back in and just push things as best as I can to have them look as good as they can.

I do kind of want to sit down and make a proper "cover artwork" as well. It's all a bit scattershot currently. The itch thumbnail is an old painting, the Patreon header is still the wolf (which is still my favourite painting I ever made ngl, but having something Conway-related would be neat) and It would just be good to have some artwork to post that just works as a bit of a cover image.

We shall see. For now, thank you for reading my rambly mess. I hope you all have a great day!