The future of In Her Own Hands (Patreon)

I'll get right to the point: active development of In Her Own Hands is officially "On Hold."

As Patrons, what this means is that I am going to suspend payments for October.

Despite promises to the contrary, the writer seems to have disappeared again. It has been several weeks since she has responded to any communication at all. After the last post that she wrote promising a quick update within a week or so, she told me after not delivering that she was having a tough time getting back into it. That was the last time we talked.

This is not the death of the game, though.

In Her Own Hands is my baby as much as it was the writer's, if not a little bit more. So I'm not quite ready to give up on its development yet. There is of course an outside chance that the writer could reach out to me and everything picks up where it left off. I doubt it will happen at this point, but it's possible.

Assuming that doesn't happen, here are my plans:

1. There is a lot of sloppy code from the beginning of the game that just sort of compounded over time. I want to clean up all of that and create a cleaner code.

2. I will be working on In Their Own Hands, the spin-off game (described here) as a way to refine my writing skills. I will eventually pick up the writing myself and finish up the story so that it is never completely abandoned. Once I feel confident enough to capture the voice of "Becca" I will likely start to alternate months in developing the two games. If I don't feel confident, I may try to find a new writer to help out with parts of the writing.

3. Due to the way in which parts of the story evolved, some of the original vision for the game also changed, leaving some extraneous content. Locations with no purpose, etc. As some of these are identified, I will take polls to see whether they should be left in or taken out. The goal being to create a more streamlined game with fewer unnecessary distractions.

4. I will have to decide which endings I am going to continue. We originally had just shy of a dozen endings sketched out. There are some paths that I just am not capable of doing justice. I will have to figure out a way to naturally close those plots. I will use to polls so you can help me decide what to do.

5. I will revise the Patreon levels to reflect that the other game is the primary game under development. The $9 support level will be reserved for the walkthrough for new players/supporters of IHOH but will not be intended for long-term support.

I want to finish the game. That's the bottom line. This started as an idea I had of creating a game without some of the toxic tropes that I saw in a lot of other games. I told my friend about the idea and we were off and running.

Losing half of the team is a pretty major set-back, certainly. This is the best way forward, I believe. If anything changes, I will let you know as soon as I can.

I want to say thank you to all of those of you who have supported us and given us the benefit of the doubt in creating this game. I understand that some of you may not want to continue, and there will be no hard feelings toward anyone who chooses to discontinue your support. If you do, please consider "Following" this page so that you can see public news updates and future public releases. As I said, I will not be charging in October and expect to release the new game that month.

Thanks again for bearing with us this past year. I hope that the solution will be met with some understanding and patience.

S&D