Awesome August

Hello everyone!

Last month was a trip. Well, there was a trip, but I'm not really talking about that. I get home from the UK and immediately get sick because airports and airplanes are unfortunately disease boxes. Combined with jetlag, this put me down for a few days, but luckily I sprang back up pretty quickly. I figured I'd give myself a week or two after that to acclimate, to get back into my routine, to let things get back to a certain degree of normal.

It was a pretty nice two weeks. It was good to be home, honestly. My cats, familiar smells, familiar food, a familiar routine. I caught up with friends, told them what had been happening, lightened the emotional load as much as physically possible... I wouldn't say that I was doing great, but I was doing better. The future was starting to make sense.

Then the thing with itch.io happened.

I don't want to spend too much time talking about it, but for those unaware, itch.io recently delisted every single NSFW game on their platform. Why did they do this? Many reasons, really. I don't really want to go into them because I don't want to stir the pot, and frankly I feel underqualified to talk about the whole thing anyway. There are other places where other people are going into it far better than I ever could.

This is not a permanent decision from itch.io, or at least, it does not seem to be. My games are still available on the platform, they're just unsearchable. With that being said, though, it is a scary decision. It's a decision that paralyzed me, that threw the future into question, that crippled me. It was yet another fight that I had to pick up, and I am already so very tired of fighting. I just want to be able to exist and do my thing.

Eventually I started thinking about what I wanted to do next. Like I said, I don't really want another metaphorical fight in my life right now, so the most compelling thing to do was to just give up. I've made some good games, wrote some good stories, created content that people enjoyed. It has been a good run. Do something normal, something that people won't say is immoral, sleazy, or gross. Lay your head down and rest. Let it go. It makes the most sense.

But I really don't want to do that. For one, I feel like I'd be betraying everyone who has ever stood behind me. Every patron, every reader, every supporter. More than that, though, I would be betraying myself. I wouldn't be able to rest anyway because I wouldn't be able to rest easily: the things that I want to do, the happiness that I want to bring, the creations that I want to create. Unfulfilled dreams.

So fuck it, we fighting.

It's August. You might even say it's...

I am back, everyone. I am not going anywhere. I am not down, if anything, I am more fired up than ever. It is time to get back to doing what I do best: which is making content for all of you lovely people to enjoy.

First of all, stories. I have a few that I have yet to release on here, plus a few more in the works. There's going to be some big ones, some small ones, some not big but not small ones... I'll be aiming to post these a couple of times a week, as in two times a week, so with four weeks in August that means that there's going to be about eight stories. Writing is something that I would like to do a lot this month, it is absolutely something that I need to get back into the saddle on since I've mostly been focusing on art and programming stuff.

Second of all, big game update. Yes, that is definitely coming this month. If there is one thing that I truly feel bad about it is the bait and switch that has gone on with the final version of v1.3. Thinking about it forms this strange void in the pit of my stomach, a void that grows and grows the more that time passes. The only thing that will erase this void is the release of the game, and the thing that will help me ignore the void is working on the game as hard as possible. There's a fair bit of work that needs to be done, but not an insurmountable amount. I am aiming for a release around the middle of the month. There will be a few extra surprises in there as a thank you for the wait.

Third of all, more game updates? Not in the form of playable content, but in the form of development logs. I have been working on a mystery project for the past few months. Yes, even if I've been down, I've not been completely out. At first it started out as a test for a bunch of stuff that I'm planning for Tiny Furry Quest, but over time it has become it's own thing. It's not quite release ready yet and won't be for a while, but I'm excited about it and I'd like to talk about it a bit. It's definitely something that I am hoping will be out before the end of the year, because I would like to have a great capstone to what has been a fairly dark year: something to be proud of, I guess. So I'll be pushing to make that happen.

Fourth... I hope everyone is doing okay. I am definitely doing better, and, despite life doing everything that it can to try and knock me down, I'm still standing. I am not sure what to do about the itch.io situation yet. There are things that I could do but they feel a bit knee jerk and reactionary... kinda like delisting all of your NSFW games from your website overnight or something. So instead I'm going to see how the situation plays out over the next week or two and then plan ahead from there.

Thank you to everyone for the patience. I always said that I would pay it back, and now I am going to live up to that promise.

I think I'll leave it there for now! There's much to be done, and I'd like to get started on it. I'll be back in a day or two with a story for everyone! Until then!