Things to Come (Patreon)

Hetros here,

It has been a tremendously long time since I was able to communicate with all of you directly. Various obligations, duties, and frankly, just base survival took priority over what has become the passion project of very nearly a decade for me. Duke has also been struggling with the same things, while fighting off burn out and keeping the lights on for the project.

I hope to be able to tell you that your patience will finally have paid off in the coming weeks. We are currently in negotiations with a second programmer who will, if all goes well, be taking over the programming tasks for the project. Duke will not be leaving the project, nor will he be leaving Chivalric Games, but he will be taking more of a back seat to work on other projects of his, and to focus on his own goals. In time, he hopes to return more fully.

Some of you will have already heard that something is going on with the team in the background. In truth, we were approached by a publisher. The last few months have been in figuring out where to go from there. The publisher in question will not be funneling money into the project directly, but assisting us with outreach and handling Steam integration when the time comes, if it ever comes.

I've been working behind the scenes, ever since the end of the lawsuit, to try and get us ship shape contractually, legally, and with all of the various things that any business enterprise concerning more than a bare handful of people always must see to. In addition I've been working with our core team members to figure out exactly what we are going to be doing with the game going forward, because it has become obvious that when we began the project, our eyes were bigger than our mouths.

With that in mind, I want to announce to you the changes going forward. How this plays out will determine whether or not the Towergirls game continues to be made, or if we shutter our doors on almost a decade's long project of love.

In the first place, we intend to create a stripped down version of the game based on the original Towergirls CYOA (Kobold, Human, Insect, Skeleton, Slime, Merfolk, Knights, Harpy, Field, Orc Princesses). This will be a Helltaker-Esque 'demo' game, focusing on what we plan to make the core aspects of the game going forward. Empire siege battles, and cute as fuck dialogue sequences with cute princesses. This will be released to you, our patrons, as we work on it for free, and eventually be pushed to steam as an early project to hopefully draw in more attention to the primary project. This part of the project cannot take longer than 4 months. Literally. If we're not done by then, then we have to shut down until something drastic changes.

At that point, we will have to assess whether or not we can continue. If enough attention is drawn to us by the demo launch, and we can afford to keep the lights on, we will proceed to stage two.

Stage two was not an easy decision to come too. We had to take a long hard look at what areas of the game cost us the most in terms of time, energy, and effort to make, and which ones could be paid for and get us the most content the most efficiently. Originally, Towergirls the Game was intended to allow players to play out any sort of Sir (or Lady) Knight they wished to play out. You could be a king, or an adventurer, but always the goal of rescuing princesses would be available to you. Given the team's examinations, we've had to decide to cut the more adventurer focused aspects of the game, including things like the JRPG combat segments. The existing dungeons will be converted into Visual Novel style dialogue and story sequences not unlike Golem Princess' rescue. 

Once Stage two is completed, we will be moving with the publisher to head to early access. And from there, we will work at all speed to complete the game as we intended to complete it originally. The Gen I Princesses, the story of Red Dragon Princess. If enough popularity is generated, and we're not entirely burned out, we will then begin to investigate multiple things. Firstly, obviously expanding the number of princesses. Secondly, the possible reintroduction of the original JRPG system with the 2.5d dungeon maps over time.

Now that I've laid out our plans, I want to say this.

Every day I've had this project in my heart, part out of fucking stubbornness, and partly because I really think it can go places if we just find the way to pull it out of the quagmire it has been in for so long.

I cannot express how much of an anchor you guys, the Towergirls fandom in general, has been to us, and to me in particular. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for sticking with us this long. I hope we will prove worthy of the truth and patience you've invested in us up to this point.