Should I Remaster All In Love And War?

Hello, lovely patrons. For those of you old guards in my audience, you might remember that All In Love And War was the first Visual Novel I have ever released. For those who aren't aware of the VN, it's basically a somber story between two men serving in the military and having a secret relationship. Starting development in October of 2021 and being finished in April 2022, it had a pretty short development time of only 7 months. It was made at a time when I wasn't planning on making anything furry-related.

Over the past few years, it has garnered a lot of fans, garnering very strong and positive reactions among a lot of people. However, it's also clear that this was not only my first visual novel I had ever worked on, but also my first major writing effort. The prose is amateurish, the dialogue is somewhat immature considering the ages of the characters, and some of the art looks odd. I still think I did a decent job for my first visual novel, but I struggle to reread the VN today. Admittedly, though, I tend to be overly critical of my old writing. Even Every Date Has Its Progs And Cons's hard for me to edit, and that came out less than a year ago.

Anyways, the reason why I bring this up is the recent itch.io delisting (which they thankfully went back on for at least free NSFW games). I felt inspired to put my games on other platforms besides itch.io. I started out by putting all of them on Newgrounds, which you can check out my account here, and now I'm looking at them on Steam. I'm already in the process of putting By Your Hands on Steam (I'll explain more in a later post), and now I'm looking into my other VNs.

Capturin' the Booty, EDHIPAC, and Farewell Wanderlust are all short jam games that wouldn't warrant their own entry on Steam. For those who are unaware, Steam requires devs to pay $100 for every game they put on Steam. For paid games, this isn't really a big issue, as the revenue you'll make will at least make up that for that fee and usually make more than platforms that have no such fee, such as itch, due to its large user base. For free games, however, that is a steep payment that can easily rack up when putting multiple games on the platform. Because of that, it would make much more sense to have those smaller games in a compilation, such as Edmund McMillen's Basement Collection, so I only have to pay the fee for one game instead of several. This compilation would polish these games to something more to the standard you'd expect from a Steam VN and be intended for fans of me.

That leaves Barachoda Bloom and All In Love And War left. BB is unfinished and is currently in hiatus, so I'll definitely wait until it's in active development again before I even consider putting it on Steam. I also want to at least rewrite a few parts of the game, if not rework them, before I continue the story. AILAW, on the other hand, is more or less finished and is a good amount longer than any of the jam games I've mentioned. It also doesn't have any unfinished assets. It could reasonably be put on Steam without any changes being made to it. Obviously, I'd be open to making minor fixes, such as fixing any typos, when putting the game on Steam, but the point being that major changes wouldn't be necessary.

Here's the thing: I'm not sure if I want people to read the VN in its current state. Some people will read the VN, not knowing when I made it, and just assume that it's representative of my current writing and drawing skills. There's also the fact that there's more incentive to read it than my jam games, as the protagonist is a major character in Barachoda Bloom. So when I start to work on BB again, there will be more people who will want to read AILAW. I am interested in reworking the VN so that the game has better writing, better art, and is just better in general. Redo the CGs, make the game longer, and reveal more about the characters in the VN.

Now, there are two main issues with this proposal. The first is that many people, both artists and audiences, are hesitant about people remastering their old work. While it's nice to see work you enjoy get improvements, it's not anything new, and it often feels like it comes from a feeling of insecurity from the author. And while I can't speak for everyone, that is certainly the case for me. The second is that this would take time away from my other projects. Even if I worked on remastering the VN after finishing my other projects, that's still time I could have used to make something new.

Like with the adultery VN concept I shared a few days ago, this would be something I'd do in the background, while focusing on my main projects. Even if I started work on a remaster today, it would likely not see the light of day for at least a year. Another thing to consider is that the remastered version of the game probably wouldn't be free, maybe cost like $3-$5, depending on how long I work on the VN.

That's where you come in. Should I work on a remaster of AILAW? Or is it better if I just leave the game alone? Let me know what you think in the comments, and participate in the poll.