Dashingdon's Closure, and Next Steps

Hi everyone, so let's start with the good news: I'm no longer shadowbanned on Tumblr! 🙌

The bad news: for anyone who hasn't heard by now, the website Dashingdon is shutting down at the end of this month, just two weeks from today. This means all games currently hosted on Dashingdon's servers will be permanently deleted, unless someone (ideally their authors) migrates them elsewhere. I've written about the situation and next steps for Shepherds here: I recommend reading that post if you haven't already and then coming back here for the rest!

...All done? Okay, great! As hopefully most of you know, the Twine version of the game has been cooking in the background for..... a very long time. I've been seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for some months now and was planning for the launch to be sometime around April or May, sort of tinkering on the last steps in a leisurely and sustainable way while I worked on everything else at the same time, like updating the alpha build and getting Patreon stuff done.

However, the sudden shutdown of Dashingdon has necessitated a pivot in plans. I'm going to shift gears and turn all of my efforts into getting the Twine version ready as soon as possible, rather than as a background process running concurrent with everything else: that way, Shepherds will be back up and playable, just in its new planned format, sooner rather than later.

This means crunch time for me: in order to get the Twine version ready, I'm going to have to suspend all other operations--including work on my novel 🥹--in order to throw everything I have at this final push! This means no alpha build update this month as I try to scramble to get everything in order. I'm very sorry for any disappointment this causes! 🙏 It's been years since I haven't been able to do the monthly update, but I think this sudden loop we've all been thrown into necessitates 100% of my focus. It just seems more efficient and like I'll be able to get everything back to running at normal operation levels faster!

I'm estimating it will take me 5 weeks to get the Twine alpha build fine-tuned, refined of little QOL questions, and caught up to the end of Chapter 9. 3 weeks if I just push it out to you guys where it's at in the story now (the second trial of the labyrinth in Chapter 8), then continue converting the rest after I post it. I'm thinking Patrons will get access to the alpha build first, and then the new public demo will follow shortly after!

Just wanted to let you know where things stand! Thanks for sticking by me through all of this, and for lending your awesome support and encouragement to this crazy project all this time. I'm going to work as hard as I can to be able to bring you the new iteration of Shepherds as soon as possible! Thank you so much for your understanding!