About the game's release (Patreon)
Content
I've ran an identical poll over at Discord if you'd like to vote on it there, of course.
Important poll and important thing to read, read before voting
-----------------------
In recent weeks, we've had a LOT of people tell us to do the two following things;
- Don't release the game until it's at least 99%/mostly complete
- Don't give release dates anymore, just release it when it's ready
We've wanted to stick to release dates as strongly as possible, obviously, despite missing them repeatedly due to a combination of;
- Wanting to make sure the game is actually high quality/refining things as needed
- Our own bad assumptions of how long things would take to do
- IRL things (family, health, things out of our control)
- Three people doing 20+ different jobs each/our two audio guys doing thousands of SFX and hours of music
Notably, despite what people have assumed repeatedly, scope creep is NOT one of these reasons; we haven't added onto what we wanted to do for the game in 4+ years & we've cut out LOTS of planned content.
However, due to a combination of three other factors...
- Us not wanting to release the game incomplete (even if it puts us even MORE in debt)
- Said large amounts of people repeatedly telling us to wait until it's finished
- Steam telling us they'll ban us if we keep submitting with builds not as complete as they'd like; this is the scariest reason
...we're considering doing what people have frequently asked, and delaying the release until it's ready to submit without a chance of being rejected/almost entirely complete.
-----------------------
For the record, here's what's still missing in the existing build; the WRITING and/or VOICEWORK for these things are done, but they haven't been injected in-game yet.
- All Faye scenes outside of electric
- All Game Over scenes outside of Electric
- Boss transitions (start/end of fight cutscenes)
- Blurbs/cutscenes during the True Final Boss fight
- Start of level events explaining the level mechanics for Earth and The End levels
- All unique NPC cutscenes, save for 2 or 3 of them that're in
- All "collected a fragment" scenes and h-scenes accompanying them outside of Electric and The end
- Gold Databanks
- Throne Room cutscenes
- Secret endings
- The enemy/level/object glossaries
- All NPC cutscenes in Earth and The End
Additionally, there's gameplay mechanics still not in, like;
- Gaining +3 Violence for each NPC killed (affects cutscenes)
- Gaining or losing Sexuality when having sex with/refusing sex from enemies
- Colorblind mode
- Finishing polish on the True Final Boss fight
- Sound effects in and linked to a number of things (100+ of these)
- Numerous bugs left to fix (150+)
The main reason why these things aren't IN-GAME yet is the reason noted above; we're a very, very small team.
If I'm injecting cutscenes, I can't write scripts. If I'm writing, I can't rip audio. If I'm on audio, I can't inject cutscenes.
And if I'm doing any of those, I can't market, bugtest, reply to questions, handle finances, write voice direction docs for VAs, etc.
-----------------------
We'd personally estimate sometime in January to submit again, but that wouldn't be an actual confirmed release date.
It'd just be an estimate.
-----------------------
So, after reading all that, here's four selections on the poll, split between two questions. You can pick multiple choices, so please vote for two things (once for each question).
QUESTION 1 - When should we release the game?
QUESTION 2 - Should we give a release date?
Yes, give us an exact or nearly exact date as to when we should expect the release
Don't give release dates, just say it'll be done when it'll be done (*Or until I run out of finances, whichever comes first, as I can only sell so much after my car/other valuables.)*