July 24 Update (Patreon)

Energy high, motivation skewed, inspiration uncooperative. It's a weird state of being. =/

Way back when, a short time into TLS, I took a month off to recharge myself. That period (plus some later work) produced Ouroboros, which people have generally been happy with. Unless you were around then, you probably don't know that I also put out a build of a project that was left behind instead of completed.

My original reasoning was wanting to show patrons everything I'd worked on to justify the break, but I think it created a (reasonable) expectation that I would finish that project. I didn't for a number of reasons. For that reason, since then I haven't put out a partially finished project unless I was quite certain I would continue with it.

Earlier I mentioned that I worked on a number of things during my bleakest period. I'm going to talk about them briefly, since I have some perspective now, but please take this as a "State of Sierra" instead of an announcement of future projects.

Yandere Simulator Type Thing: I have never really followed the saga of Yandere Simulator very closely, but I'm interested in the trope. During this period I dipped further in and became engaged by the idea of making a concept like this work. For me the intriguing part is less insane ways to kill rivals and more the design puzzle of having meaningful consequences given such player choices. I had the start of a build and a ton of notes... but I've decided this project is probably ill-advised. I'm not sure there's really a healthy audience for it, even if I succeeded at the design challenges. I don't regret spending time on it, since it felt healthy, but that time is probably best written off.

Idle Game: Trying something I've never done before, which was refreshing. Thanks to some help from a couple kind patrons, this one is actually playable, it's just not fun yet. This would probably be an idle side project at most, but I'm not sure if I'll complete it. I'm running up against the limits of the system I'm using often enough that it sometimes feels like I'd just need to devote a chunk of time to building more programming knowledge, which is probably not wise for this end. So this is likely a permanent backburner thing.

The Third Project: This one is likely to actually become something, so I think I want to say more about it once I can offer fewer promises, more results. It's also something new, an underserved game genre where I think my sensibilities have something to offer. Also a project that I think a significant number of patrons are likely to enjoy. Hopefully I will have a more detailed post about this at some point in the future.

Anyway, that is the current state of things. My plans for this year got really knocked askew by the death in the family, but I am committed to moving forward on TLS and everything else I've promised you guys. Thank you for your continued support.