Big Update - Release News, Engine Change?

Hey everyone!

Quite a bit of time has passed from the last major update and I wanted to talk about a few new decisions about the future of House Chores.

tl;dr: Progress will slow & be more behind the scenes for a while until the next major update is ready to release.  Future House Chores updates will stay on the same engine.

== Future Releases ==

After thinking about it for a while, I've decided that future House Chores releases will be on a temporary hiatus.  Meaning, I do not know when the next release will be but it will be a little while.

IMPORTANT: Progress on House Chores will still continue in the background.  I'll explain my reasoning:

Starting House Chores meant juggling 3 game projects at a time.  Originally, this sounded plausible but the amount of time needed to dedicate to both Town of Passion & Zombie's Retreat this fall has increased significantly. 

For the past few months it's been stressful knowing I can't physically put in the time that this game needs to progress smoothly. 

This also helps give Sassquatch more time to draw at a comfortable pace and be more flexible with his own schedule.

For clarity- I have NO PLANS TO CANCEL HOUSE CHORES.  I love the idea of this project and want to see it fully realized.  But for now, I want to be able to work on this project at a healthy pace whenever/wherever more free time presents itself.

I don't think following the same release schedule as ToP & ZR is a very feasible option.

== Next Build ==

When I find the time, I do want to basically re-do the start of House Chores.  The original build was more of a demo.  I want to flesh out the beginning stories with the 'Maid' and implement a more repeatable story with the first scene having an 'ending' this time around.

The release of it... will be whenever I can find the time haha.  But hopefully this lets you all know what I'm planning on doing next!

== Refunds + Pledges ==

While HC development is still continuing, I know many of you may have pledged under the assumption that things would progress at a similar pace as ToP & ZR. 

I believe you can do your own refunds on pledges if you want one but if not, for the next week I will be checking back regularly to acknowledge anyone who would like a refund for their pledges.  I will still honor pledges after that time period of course, but I won't be checking as frequently.  I believe you can send me a message requesting one.

Current/future pledges will still go towards the development of House Chores by funding art/animation.

== Engine Swap? ==

A while ago, I was giving various polls to Twitter and here about considering the idea of moving House Chores to the RPGMaker engine.  Results were interesting.  A lot of people chose RPG but I think they were assuming the games would be map based like Town of Passion.  I played around with this and immediately wasn't very fond as the original vision was lost.

I decided, I will be sticking with Visual Novel Maker for now.  I have some gripes with this engine maker but it accomplishes damn near everything I want to do in HC.  It's also the simpler choice which is the best option rn.  Renpy is much more code heavy which requires more time and debugging would be significantly more difficult.

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I'm sorry that this update may not be the best news for people to hear.  I misjudged my own ability to work on all of these projects at once and I have to scale things back a bit.   =/

I'd rather be honest with everyone instead of being quiet and attempting to find more time to work on HC when it doesn't exist atm.

I'll still be posting teasers when appropriate and if things turn around with available time, maybe this post will be pretty irrelevant.

Thank you all for your understanding and supporting!  I hope to have more for you soon <3