Two Year State-of-the-Game

Hey everybody! Can you believe it’s been two years since I posted the first version of the game on June 3rd, 2020? It’s kind of mind-blowing to me sometimes that it’s been so long. And I still love working on it every day.

I did one of these “State of the Game” posts last year, where I talked a little about my personal journey towards making the game, and what goals I had for the future. You can check it out here, if you want.

This year I want to talk about what has changed in the last year, talk a little about the goals that I made last year, and what has been achieved, and then talk about the goals for the next year and maybe beyond that.

Last year’s Goals

Trickle-down Renders

This was an idea I started last year, where instead of creating new renders for every level every month, I’d create renders for the top tiers and they would eventually trickle-down to the lower tiers. I think that this idea has been working pretty well so far. I haven’t heard any complaints about it, and I like that everybody is eventually able to see all these renders that I create. Plus, since I’ve been having to do more custom renders than I was a year ago, it’s definitely more feasible for me. So, I’d call this idea a success! As always, I love hearing ideas and suggestions from you guys and am always willing to change, but for now I think we’ll just keep doing this.

Beta Testing

Last year, I posted about changing the way I do beta testing, and I think that this strategy has worked out really well also. We’ve been pretty good about catching all the major bugs before they get to the patron-level or Steam. My alpha testers are amazing, and all the feedback I get from everybody else has really helped me make the game better overall.

Website

Last year, I announced my website, where I’d put the public downloads, gallery, character roster, and more. I’ve done most of that. I didn’t do the character roster, largely because I completely forgot about doing it until this moment when I’m looking at my goals, haha! The website has been a bit of an afterthought, and I still need to dedicate some time into improving it, but it’s there for people to download the public version of the game, if they want, or get more information that will lead them here, to Steam, or to the Discord.

Regular Updates

Some of the gaps between updates have been a bit longer, but I’m happy with the speed and consistency of updates that I’ve done over the last year. When I first started the game, the goal was to get an update out every month, then that grew to 10 weeks as the game became bigger, and the quality improved. Now, updates are the biggest they’ve ever been, and the quality is better than it’s ever been and so my goals have been more like 10-12 weeks. I wish I could get them out faster than that, but it’s just not feasible, with the amount of content in each update. 450 images and 40 animations takes a long time to pose.

Adding Features

Last year, I talked about adding music, re-doing the gallery to allow you to replay scenes, and then re-doing the UI to make it look nicer. I did the music and the gallery thing, and have been very happy with those. I didn’t really ever redo the UI though. So, two out of three on those goals.

As far as re-doing the UI, it’s still something I’d like to do, but it’s become less of a priority. I think the UI is functional right now, and doesn’t look AWFUL, and I’d like to just continue with the story and focus on finishing updates and adding content.

Steam

Steam was the big goal last year, and man did that turn out great. Steam has been amazing for me. It put my game in front of so many more people. About 350,000 people have downloaded my game. That’s incredible. And many of those became patrons here, which I appreciate soooo much. The DLC has done well also, giving me a good boost of income, which I’ll talk about here in a bit. Overall, I’m extremely happy with how the Steam release has turned out, and how supportive that community has been.

My Personal Life Over the Last Year

If you’ve been around here a while, read my ramblings, or hung around the discord, you’ve probably already heard how much my life has changed over the last year. When I released the first version of the game on Steam (I think that was Update 9.5) back in October, I had somewhere around 175 patrons and was making about $700 a month. By December I’d doubled that. Then by March, I nearly doubled it again.

What this money has meant for me, I can’t even explain. Last year, when I wrote the State of the Game, my earnings were around $450 a month. Most of that money went towards things like Adobe, Mega, Microsoft, Daz assets, Website fees – I wasn’t making near enough to support myself.

Now, I have health and dental insurance, I have a new car which I desperately needed, and I’m able to actually pay bills, buy food, and hopefully move into a nicer house in the near future. To say that it’s changed my life is an understatement. My life right now is so much different than it was last year and I’m so grateful for it. I’m so happy that I get to wake up and do this job. I never want to do anything else.

What’s coming in the future?

So, now that we’ve talked about everything that’s been done over the last year, what do I have planned for the future?

More content

This is the main focus for me right now. Just releasing regular updates for the game. I’m getting close to releasing Update 12 right now, out of 20 updates total. I want to keep releasing updates every 2-3 months, adding more and more content to the game, getting us closer to the end.

I also plan on adding more DLC for the game, as that has done well on Steam. I plan on releasing one or two DLC packages along with each update in the future.

Learn and Improve My Skills

One thing I feel like I’ve been slacking on is spending time to improve myself. I get so caught up in working on the game, that I don’t think I’ve spent enough time learning new things. Right now, I’d really like to learn more of Blender, for character and prop design, and Unreal Engine, for possible future games. But I have not devoted enough time to learning either of these to actually ingrain that knowledge. I want to change that, maybe spending one day a week just taking classes on these programs. It’s just hard for me to put aside working on the game, even for a day.

Conclusion

I think that’s pretty much it!

The last year has been amazing. Life-changing. I don’t know what the next year will hold, but I’m very much looking forward to it. I appreciate all that you all have done to support me. It’s incredible and means everything to me. I don’t know what I’d be doing know if I wasn’t making this game. I don’t even want to think about it.

As always, I welcome feedback from you all. If there’s anything you’d like to see in the next year that I’ve not mentioned here, let me know.

Love you all. Thank you so much.