Touching base (Patreon)

Hello everyone! First of all I want to give all of you a huge HUGE thank you, I'm genuinely blown away by your generous support. I know the thank you's can kind of blend together after being said so many times but just know when I say it I really really mean it.

I'm so glad people are liking the Kurger Shorts, I'm starting to get a better handle on making them, and they're a ton of fun to write, though they do demand some time to make. I think it's safe to say that they're kind of the main reason many people are here, which brings me to my main topic.

Visca's Earth Conquest is a pretty hefty time commitment, more than I had anticipated (shocker, lol). The biggest issue is that Game Maker's implementation of Spine2d is really janky and cumbersome to work with (because the runtime is not made by the Spine2d team themselves), and the issue only compounds with each new added sprite and animation. Another big issue is that I don't think the game loop scales very well with long play sessions. The idea sounds good on paper but in practice I think it can feel a bit bland after playing for more than an hour, and the solution would probably be something like adding more complex combat, which would end up overcomplicating what is meant to be a mechanically simple game. That's sort of the nature of game development though, things that sound good on paper usually don't work exactly the same once it starts coming together. I think as the game is now it works better as a relatively short experience.

The original plan was to make it pretty content-heavy (a big world with lots of areas) and then charge a few bucks for it on release, however at this point thanks to how many wonderful people are willing to support my work, I'm going to scale the game down and release it for free. My hope is that I will be able to get it done on my original vague release date of "end of 2023" and be able to move back to working on Lilith's Lair, which is a game I think plays more to my strengths.

That being said, you guys are the reason I'm able to do what I'm doing in the first place so if you have an issue with this change please don't hesitate to let me know. If you're giving me your hard-earned money you deserve to be heard. You can do it in the comments or a direct message if you wanna keep it private.

Thank you again, really and truly.