The future of Tales of Rein Ravine (Patreon)

As the demo game has now been finalized, what does the future hold for Tales of Rein Ravine?

Going forward, my full-time job is to develop the official main game. The main game has no announced release date, but my goal is to get at minimum a beta version out during the year 2023. The main game is a significantly larger project than the demo, so there might come a time soon to start looking for artists to collaborate with.

The release of the main game will happen on either Steam or Epic Games Store (or both). Patrons who have supported the game development will be able to request something in return, as long as the release platform allows it - this could be for example a discount, or a certain number of randomly selected patrons getting the game for free. More information will be posted once I know what options the platform has or allows.

Thanks to your financial support, as of today the main game has already gained an overwhelming budget of €100,000 through Patreon. 😳 Thank you so so much for being so keen on this game project coming to life! 🧡 I started developing the original Horsegame.exe game around when covid hit in 2020. At the time I was studying media & arts in an upper-secondary school, and going into quarantine I decided to try out game development for fun. It has been insane to see how much interest the game has gained since then. If you want to see what the very first versions of Tales of Rein Ravine looked like, you can watch here. 😭

Speaking of the game's budget - due to some taxation and legal issues, during the development of the demo I was not yet able to withdraw any of the money you guys had donated. The demos you've been so keenly playing were developed with next to zero budget all the way from the first to the last.

If you are interested in hearing what happened, it was that none of the boomers in my home country's tax administration had EVER heard of Patreon. (Though to be charitable, I might be the only creator from my country who has even made taxable amounts on the platform.) Despite having recently moved elsewhere, I'm still obliged to play by my home country's tax rules. Patreon income is not clearly recognized as any of the income categories in the law, so I had to consult a bunch of lawyers and tax specialists to make sure I didn't accidentally commit any tax crimes. It would be rather embarrassing to serve time for making a horse riding video game after all. This legal stuff is what a lot of my time has gone to in the recent couple of months - I had to register myself as a business entity for instance.

I'm actually surprised that not that many people have complained about some things in the demo looking so inadequately made - a lot of the assets are literally stuff from free or very cheap asset packs. 😭 For example our homegirl's walking and running animations are such. The good news are that the main game is expected to look a lot better considering the astronomical change in the budget.

Going forward, my first task is to completely remake both the horse and the girl character to look polished and professionally made. The dollar store horsie does not quite cut it for me, especially the janky animations. I have already started experimenting on an improved graphics style as well - the video above is a quick test map I built using slighly more realistic assets. Whereas I do want the game to continue looking semi-cartoony, I feel like the graphics style so far has been a bit too tilted towards that.

I think this was everything I had on my mind today. Please give your opinion in the comments, do you like the cartoon graphics style or would you like it (slightly) more realistic?