Long-read status

Hi everyone.

I guess you noticed that the project is experiencing a lot of troubles - the whole team is burning out, there is a lack of releases/updates, etc.

What I want to do now is discuss the status and my thoughts with you. I'll add a few polls later as well.

First things first - the total team burnout. Most of the team is tired of the project, few people are leaving the project. I'm burned out myself and I honestly wish to move on and do something else - more on this in the end.

What I feel is wrong about the game now:

• repeating events feel bad and they are replacing big chunks of stories that happen just once. I personally keep spending a lot of time doing those one-time stories because I like them. And this is what I want to do eventually - short fun finished stories with 2-3 scenes in total.

• too much of everything happens in this game in parallel (which makes it hard to manage) and not enough of everything after storylines are done

• grinding mechanics obviously sucked and I don't like it - after completing events once there's very little 'repetitive content' left in the game, making the feel that the whole game content is shallow. If I were redoing the game, I'd split the whole game into blocks of stories that are pretty straightforward (a bit like Visual Novels with choices) - the player would unlock new blocks or have a chance to replay old blocks to get another route / open another scene. This way the game would keep all the content and each story block would be as big as it is planned (instead of 'repeating' leftovers)

• In the end, this leads to the circle - repeating events and texts are replacing big stories -> we make repeating texts/events shorter (so that the player need not read it over and over again) -> this neglects the importance of big story chains -> creative depression.

• same characters. Don't get me wrong, I love Casey, Lana, and other girls a lot, but I'd love to see other characters more.

• with artists' burnout, it is super hard to keep the same game style. I'd rather make a few smaller story-based games instead.

• too high arts level quality - at some point developing/drawing arts became a burden for artists, leading to many burnouts. This needs to be settled down in the future.

• doing two playable characters was just a bad move - Lana's part of the game feels way too incomplete.

• current project mechanics "everything happens at once" turned out to be too complex (burning me alive when I work with it when I add new stuff) and too shallow in terms of adding more diversity

• I've spent last week rethinking the project in 'what would I do differently' if I had to redo it - and the biggest thing is structure. I would remove all the grinding and repeating events and break the game into story blocks that the player can play either as new or re-play the old story blocks.

• the big pros for 'story blocks' are that I don't need to make entire game conditions for something to happen - the only thing needed is one or a few previous story blocks are finished. For example - oh, Lana and Jackie are now friends? Let's unlock another story block of them hanging out in Vault!

For example, this is how would Panthea story look like in story blocks

And just thoughts.

Well, apparently at this stage it doesn't look too smart to start rebuilding everything. What I think I'd do instead is finish the project this is the main 2025 goal.

I feel less to furry female characters while I like furry male characters a lot. We will have a poll on that.

What would I prefer to do after the project is over are small games based around some situations (like a couple going to the cinema, where the girl might meet her ex-lover, or else - yes, hello to Nikki). A game with a few big different routes, 2-3 scenes in total. A game that can be finished in a reasonable time! Something that tells a fun story and does not ask you to grind anything to get story unlocked.

Okay, let's get to some updates and a few polls in the next updates.