Sitrep for April (Patreon)

Alright. I said I'd do one of these of this month, so...here it goes. 

First, I'm going to flat out say it. The last 4 months or so have been hell. December was fucking miserable because I was trying to squeeze the first real release of Left Hand Magic into a month where I was guaranteed to lose the better part of a week to the holidays. This, in turn, resulted in the first MAJOR overrun of a game release I've had in years. Between the initial delays, then piling getting sick on top of it, it was something like the 9th of January before I was able to release December's big content chunk. By the grace of God, I somehow still pulled off a fairly sizable build of Haven's Port for January...but I did so at the cost of running myself completely ragged for a second month in a row.

Then February, the shortest month of the year, just happened to align with the next Left Hand Magic release. One which was kinda critical since it would also see the first release of a public version. And I was already running on fumes. I did my dead level best to manage expectations and set myself up to catch up....but I failed at the latter. Left Hand Magic overran into March. Not as badly as it had into January, but it did still overrun. So, at the start of March, I'd basically been running myself ragged for three months straight. I was exhausted and starting from a position several days behind where I should have been. Only the fact that I'd buckled and paid through the nose in February for a second GPU salvaged the situation enough that I managed to get a full release of Haven's Port in, with only a very minor delay. But even that very minor delay meant that I was once again basically eating, working, and sleeping, and nothing else.

At this point, my mental health reserves are, to be blunt, kind of fucked. Worse, I'm looking at another month of the same. Not only am I starting from a moderate deficit (again), but I have a couple of events this month (such a friends I haven't seen in several years visiting) that are going to cost me a couple of days of productivity. 

All of this is an explanation for why I'm attempting to blunt the worst of the burnout. That started by taking a couple of days at least half-off. I've still been working on stuff, such as finishing last month's second short and doing April's wallpapers. But I allowed myself at least a few hours each day to do some minor gaming and read a couple of fun books. That helped...a little. Not as much as I'd like, since the time it took just raised my anxiety levels for the rest of the month. But I'm at least slightly less mind-numbingly, bone-crunchingly tired. 

Now, what does this mean for this month and beyond? It means the following:

1) As I mentioned in the story poll post, I'm only going to do one short story this month. Honestly, this doesn't actually save me that much time. They are easily the easiest and fastest rewards. It is, however, literally the only reward that I'm comfortable cutting out of a given month. So, only one short this month, sorry!

2) I'm not going to be super ambitious with Left Hand Magic. There simply isn't enough time to get in the build that I'd like to make. That said, even my minimum-acceptable-target is still a larger release than most developers manage. Probably because said developers aren't introverted shut-ins who prefer the company of books to people. Yay for me being a misanthrope, I guess? The goal for Left Hand Magic this month is going to be to cover Weekday content for the second week of the game. Originally, I was hoping to run a poll and also push through two of the four route options for the Weekend events of Week 2. That's simply not realistically plausible, at this point, however. So, I'm sticking to just the Weekday content for this next release. That content is as follows:

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A) One work event with each girl that is focused on non-sex relationship building.

B) One event with each girl that is a non-animated pseudo-H scene. In other words, suggestive content. Two examples (and these are actually scenes I'm planning to make) are going on an actual Date with Trixie to a nightclub ending in slightly-drunk shenanigans. And going on a Nude Nature Walk with Arianna. These scenes will have suggestive content, or even softcore levels of H-content. But they will be restricted to still renders only, no animations.

C) All routes (Each Girl, Plus the two Threesome Routes) will be getting 1 animated sex scene each. This scene will, without exception, consist of TWO animations, for a multi-stage scene. This means there will be 6 animated scenes, with a total of 12 animations spread between them. Only slightly smaller than the previous build which was, if I remember right, 7 and 14 respectively.

D) If, by some utterly unexpected miracle, there is extra time, a second masturbation scene (Solo for the MC) might be added. This was always intended to be an extra option during each week, though it's something that's been marked as lowest priority.

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3) The above gives a solid build. Fourteen total new scenes, 6 of them animated, with 12 new animations in total. Because Left Hand Magic is still in it's early stages and I'm attempting to draw the interest of new people to it, I am not willing to compromise the build size farther than that. This also means that I'm making it known NOW, that my policy for April is going to be the same one I had for February. If Left Hand Magic needs to overrun into May in order to reach the above stated goals. It will.  I will try not to have it overun, but I'm also not going to be half-killing myself this month, whatever happens. I simply can't keep not making time for maintenance of my own sanity and mental health if we don't want the wheels to fall off sooner rather than later. 

4) The Haven's Port Build for May might be shrunk in size as a result. Just like I can't keep killing myself to try and overachieve, I also can't keep delaying every month. I will NOT delay May's release. I will release on time, with whatever level of content I can make work in however much time I have in May. This may be a full, glorious, awesome build of Haven's Port. I hope it will be. But it might not be. If it isn't, then it isn't. I'm going to be making the end of May a hard reset point. Going into June, unless something changes, I intend to be operating from a clean starting position. And from there, reassessing what I can do and need to do. 

I...think that covers it? Hopefully, this doesn't disappoint anyone. I know the vast majority of you are here for Haven's Port, not Left Hand Magic, and may be a bit annoyed at the uncompromising focus I'm putting on it. That won't be the case forever. But the first few builds of a new game are basically all a Patreon developer has to establish a firm starting point. If I want to continue expanding my Patreon to the point that it's my actual job (and I really really do. Frankly, I can't continue to maintain both the hours I put into the games AND a day job for much longer), I have got to try and drive interest in the new project. And that means giving it priority until it has enough content in it to attract people to play and keep coming back for more. I hope outlining this all for everyone helps alleviate any anger over my choices of priority...