Official Departure from Project Enso: A statement. (Patreon)

Greetings from Project Ensō, and farewell for the final time.

It has been a little more than a year since the Kickstarter campaign for Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack, where I (BáiYù) became acquainted with you all. It is simply a fact of the matter that visual novels are a niche medium: even as a seasoned veteran of visual novel development with over a decade's worth of experience assisting various teams in shipping their indie titles, I was amazed to see the passion many of you held for indie titles of the yandere genre. It is so rare for indie developers outside of Japan's mainstream narrative games industry to receive such attention and even rarer still that such attention would translate into consistent and significant monthly financial support. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all for your generosity in supporting indie developers.

I imagine you all may be confused by some of the recent updates on Patreon, delayed customer support on Patreon, Kickstarter, and/or itch.io, or why I said my goodbyes at the beginning of this post. The majority of these invisible tasks signed by the general "SnaccPop Studios" moniker were handled by myself on behalf of the whole studio as I believe in transparency over the state of development, especially when so much money has been given to us by our audience, as well as an obligation to take care of those who make our work possible.

I personally founded Project Ensō in 2021 because I was tired of the pinkwashing and virtue signaling from companies who stopped caring about queer folks each time a holiday ended or a major event exited the news cycle. As a publisher, Project Ensō values the well-being of the individuals we interact with, placing emphasis on community over profit, and holding a strong belief in the power of a nuanced story that represents those who have fallen through the cracks of society. Project Ensō believes in games as art and expression, games as political statements, and praxis over theory; even the belief that certain groups of people deserve basic human decency can be seen as a radical stance in the face of bigotry. A strong vision from the outset provides a clear path to follow.

Working with a team who can openly give and discuss feedback and constructive criticism is crucial to realizing these ideals and is the chief reason why The Groom of Gallagher Mansion has been so positively received: I took extra care in ensuring that people like Elias could see themselves as desirable and loved even in the face of self-doubt and a lifetime of mistreatment. Disabled characters are still a rarity in all forms of media and that representation was important for us to depict as accurately and realistically as possible. I personally poured countless hours into fine-tuning each detail of the game because I knew how much it would mean to fans to get it right the first time. Your love for Elias proves that our attention to detail was not for naught.

But that attention to detail was not without cost, and not just in terms of finances; as I went from Producer to Co-Writer, Scene Director, Programmer, and Marketing Strategist for The Groom of Gallagher Mansion after several other team members backed off the project for their own health, I was still handling my other duties at SnaccPop Studios. Payroll, Accounting, Producing for Sunny Day Jack, Internal Communications, External Communications, Human Resources, Conflict Management, Customer Support, and countless other small roles I cannot remember to list here. All of this on top of my day job working at a warehouse doing physical labor for 12 hours a day, 3 consecutive days in a row, then attempting to do work for the various other studios I had signed onto work with prior to SnaccPop Studios. My own personal projects at Tofurocks and Project Ensō fell further down the list of priorities to the point where not even my close friends could remember what they even were, to begin with.

Something had to give, and eventually, that was my personal health. Physical, mental, and emotional, all facets of my health began deteriorating rapidly, and I already had chronic fatigue to begin with. There was no easy way to replace the roles I picked up to deliver The Groom of Gallagher Mansion at the quality you all expected without onboarding additional team members. At the same time, there was no one else to manage the high-level tasks that I took care of at SnaccPop Studios from the top. Various other factors contributed to my poor health as well but I did more than I reasonably could. I operated on the belief that those who placed their faith in SnaccPop Studios deserved nothing short of excellence as well as timely releases as promised. Your patience in this regard is much appreciated.

Internal discussions over the course of several months and the past few weeks continued to reveal a mismatch in priorities between SnaccPop Studios and Project Ensō when it came to development, especially in regards to Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack. When the original members of SnaccPop Studios initially approached Project Ensō in May 2022 and presented the original project thesis and demo to us, Project Ensō saw a concept with high potential that needed a guiding hand in reaching the finish line. I personally studied the demo, the audience, and similar titles to gain a deeper understanding of what Sunny Day Jack was at the time and what it could be; and as preparations for the Kickstarter ramped up, each element of the campaign page was mutually agreed upon.

I set milestone goals for Sunny Day Jack that needed to be met in order to keep development on schedule. As had happened with the team for Gallagher Mansion, multiple team members assigned to Sunny Day Jack fell sick or were unable to report progress in a timely manner due to various factors in their personal lives. Milestones for Sunny Day Jack continued to be missed as a result. As the Producer, I wasn't supposed to take on direct development tasks for any of the Gallagher Mansion content to begin with; the constant delays on what was meant to be a small game were unacceptable to me however.

Sunny Day Jack's organic evolution from the original project thesis, combined with SnaccPop Studios' differing set of priorities and values, as well as my own declining health have led to the decision for SnaccPop and Project Ensō to part ways. Project Ensō hopes that handing the reins to those most passionate about the concept will invigorate production again and that a more cohesive group priority will lead to a release.

I thank you all again for making my time here possible. I believe you all deserve the finest quality games for your generosity, and that you are owed nothing less than creative integrity and transparency in this matter. Please continue to support the indie developers you believe in, and in the event that you are interested in the works of myself and many others who helped develop The Groom of Gallagher Mansion, you can find our websites on the links provided in the credits of the itch.io page.

Sincerely yours,

BáiYù

Project Enso



In addition to this statement provided by Project Ensō, we would like to state the following. N.B.: It's been brought to our attention that the earlier draft of our statement was poorly worded; we would like to clarify our perspective here. Project Ensō has been a remarkable working partner to SnaccPop Studios. Our projects have benefitted immeasurably from their experience and expertise. Between SnaccPop and Project Ensō's shared perspectives, the vision for not only 'Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack', but also other properties such as 'DachaBo' and 'The Groom of Gallagher Mansion', have evolved far beyond their original scale and have become greater than the sum of their parts. We cannot thank Project Ensō enough for their invaluable work and tireless efforts, even at times when the work we've shared has been hard. Life is a series of greetings and partings. When partnerships such as ours proceed as they do, there does occasionally come a time when there is nothing more we can impart to each other. For every person that comes into our lives and leaves footprints in the sand, we should always be grateful for what we could give each other for the precious periods that we knew each other. For that reason, we respect Project Ensō's decision to part ways with SnaccPop and our projects. We will always look back on the time we spent working together with fondness and gratitude. And even though we and Project Ensō are parting ways, we will do our best to live up to the standards and expectations that their support has helped us to achieve together in the past.

We wish nothing but the best for Project Ensō in any and all future endeavors, and we cannot wait to see other developers' dreams and visions brought to life under their banner.

Finally, we want to emphasize that this parting has been done in good terms, with both parties agreeing upon the terms of said parting. Thank you Project Enso for all your help, and we'll keep doing the best game we can make from here on out.