Is re:Dreamer (Temporarily) Switching to Monthly Releases? (Public) (Patreon)

To get it out of the way and to put it bluntly, my health is not good right now.

As detailed in Friday Update #33: Break on Through (To the Other Side), I have Parkinson's and have been experiencing some alarming temporary advancements of my symptoms from a steroids course I have to take. I have stopped taking the HRT DIY dose to control my symptoms as it stopped effectively doing that and made me feel uncomfortable after a week and a half. The actual prescription medication I got to replace that stopgap measure, Ropinirole, has a lot of nasty and serious side effects, almost all of which I have experienced.

Not to get into the depressing details, but the medication made me deeply depressed, confused, anxious, and borderline senile. At my doctor's advice, I am off that medication and am on NEUPRO, a far more expensive medication I used to be on solely and am now taking in addition to my other DRIs. It's not got any side effects that I can notice (and likely won't as I was on this medication for a long time and never got any), but it is only providing moderate relief for my worsened symptoms.

This has a number of effects on my productivity. Besides the obvious mental stress this places on me (I basically feel paralyzing dread when I get tremors), I can barely use a mouse and keyboard after being up for 10 hours and my ability to think noticeably dulls after being up for 12 hours.

So, this is the perfect time for experimenting with a change that I've been thinking about for a while: monthly releases.

I have 4 months remaining in my steroids treatment for my viral asthma. My PD symptoms are going to be exacerbated during this time, and I am likely not going to find a better medication combination than the one I have now. The ideal answer to this period of medication is, "go take a hiatus from re:Dreamer (you idiot)," this game is my sole source of income and I am now spending a whopping $1,100 a month on my prescriptions and need to pay rent.

Assuming people are okay with a month of delay between releases, I am by no means planning on slacking off during those longer development cycles. I'd estimate that for each update, I am going to be able to do 1.5x the normal amount of work in 2x the amount of time. The longer development period means I will also let me be more ambitious per release.

Still, despite me thinking this is a good idea, it is not what many of you signed up for, which is why this poll exists. For full disclosure, if the votes are in its favor and the experiment goes well, this might permanently shift the release schedule to a monthly one, starting with a special release of re:Dreamer (0.11.0) on Friday, October 7th for this game's third anniversary with the full implementation of the Zach sprites for an introductory afternoon to see what his life was like before he discovered a certain phone game that changed everything for him.

This public poll will close on Friday, September 16 at 1:00 PM EDT, at which point the results will be announced in a Friday Update.

The votes from this poll will be takes into an account with 2/3 of the strength of the patron votes, but this change would arguably affect the free players the most and your input is not just wanted but requested.

Patrons, you have a separate poll to vote on with the same options. I can't stop you from voting in both polls, but I kindly ask that you do not.