Progress update and plans for the future (2020/08/30) (Patreon)

Hello folks!

Here's some important news as well as some reminders to posts we made in the past.

Deathblight RPG:

More progress on Deathblight RPG is being made.

Above you can see one of the new sprites for the combat graphics.

Meanwhile I (Wolf) am implementing the Catheline Job.

So hopefully it will be done soon-ish.

And with Esmoda already being on the way, the subsequent update will most likely drop with less of a gap to the Catheline Job.

As always, no promises though.

It will be done when it's done.

(and I'm currently burried under a landslide of work due to what former teammembers left me on unfinished work, so I'm unable to progress swiftly)

Deathblight webcomic:

That aside, we have some exciting news in regards to the Deathblight webcomic.

Since we don't have a writer currently, and we do want to prevent any disasters like DB Guilty Raid in the future, we decided we neither have the ressources or the personell, nor are we willing to take any more risks in regards to a possible Deathblight Visual Novel.

We would be heavily reliant on a writer (which we currently don't even have!) and we'd rather not be putting the fate of an entire project into the hands of another person.

That being said, we concluded the best approach is to wrap up the Deathblight webcomic by continuing with one more chapter, and then ending it with a satisfying and more complete ending.

Keep in mind that this means that our original plans for the webcomic changed, since it's much shorter now.

There will be no Visual Novel for this story, and the webcomic will continue with 1 page per week until it's done.

The final chapter will also include hentai (though not the 25% ratio) and there will be a final boss fight.

Red webcomic:

As we announced in the past, we're going to expand into the SFW webcomic sphere due to many many reasons.

And yes, as you can see, I do announce things months in advance, basically the moment I know things are needing to change, but actually changing things and setting things in motion takes weeks or even months to plan and properly execute.

We're never doing things on a whim (even if some people on the internet claim that) or changing things without thinking it through carefully.

And doing things properly just needs time, thus our announcement "back then" is taking effect only now, months later.

We stick to our projects if there is no good reason to abandon them, like running out of funding (Geisterhand), or losing vital team members (DB Guilty Raid).

As the long running webcomic (currently 440+ pages) and Deathblight RPG prove we can stick to our things long term. But that's not the point.

Despite this new webcomic being SFW, we're still doing lewds (outside of the webcomic), so no worries there.

But the idea is to do a SFW webcomic in order to be able to upload it onto websites which don't allow NSFW webcomics, and by doing this we can draw in a larger audience and grow our fanbase and support.

The red webcomic will be the first one out of many webcomics we hope to make in the future.

It's only going to be one chapter with roughly 60 pages to test the waters.

Cres will start work on it next week if we don't run into more delays.

Small RPG Maker game:

This one is also in the works, currently "paused" since I (Wolf) am focusing on DB RPG though.

But the idea is to do smaller, easier to make RPG Maker games in the future and sell them on various platforms to earn some extra money.

We can't do that with DB RPG since it's supposed to be a free game.

Like webcomics, Cres and I can do these kind of games on our own, without the need to rely on pixel artists or other people too much, to avoid dependencies and delays.

We lately bought the new RPG Maker MZ, so we're going to use that one for future projects.

The idea is to create SFW RPG Maker games and provide NSFW patches, so we retain maximum flexibility in terms of being able to sell it on as many platforms as possible, while also getting the most visibility possible.

The Patreon campaign will also be slightly reworked in a month or two.

Once the Red webcomic goes online that is.

The reason for this is the following:

Throughout 2018 and 2019 (up to 2020 in fact) we tried to focus more on games.

Namely Dark Alley Elf and DB Guilty Raid.

In order to do this we used a lot of our private funds to hire people and have them work on these games.

However, not only did these projects horribly fail...

(Dark Alley Elf only made about 70% of the invested money back, DB Guilty Raid was aborted before a full version could be created, and in total we lost about 54 000 USD)

We also didn't grow our fanbase at all during that time.

For reference, we had a steady increase of new fans and supporters for 4+ years prior.

Then we hit a ceiling with the NSFW webcomic, and we tried to break through by focusing more on game development, but despite game releases, updates and a DB Guilty Raid demo version, there was no increase in new fans at all.

Our hopes are that with the SFW webcomic our fanbase will increase and we will be able to break through the stagnation, since as company we need to grow at least a little bit more to ensure long term stability and possibly trying to hire new people in the future.

Because of this, our Patreon will be restructured to have different milestones than we currently have. (The tiers will probably stay untouched)

The new milestones will be adjusted to account for a possible increase in the fanbase in regards to webcomics.

This is due to the fact that if our Patreon grows in the future, it will be due to the SFW webcomics and other things we will be setting in motion "now".

So doing this only makes sense.

I hope you understand!

Have a nice day and as always, feel free to ask in the comments below.