Posted July 25, 2024 by prikarin
Hello, everyone!
It's been a good minute since my last update, hasn't it?
A lot of people have been asking me about Killer Trait updates and when the full-game will be released so, after a lot of thought, I decided to make this post.
Here's the thing: my Patreon hasn't been doing well. It hasn't been doing well for several months now. While the decline started after Where Winter Crows Go's release in November of 2023, it's gotten progressively worse from February 2024 onwards. And because of this I'm going to have to pause my billing for my current patrons from August onwards—at least until I have something new to post. EDIT 1: My Patreon is closed now!
It'd be a lie if I said this didn't affect me, I'm only human after all, but I'm also well aware that Patreon is a tough thing to maintain in a way that's consistent and interesting.
Unfortunately, since I live in Argentina, my only real way to get funds for my games is through Patreon, donations on Ko-Fi & purchases and donations on Itchio. While it definitely helps that I hire some people from Argentina for certain art related things (so I pay them in Argentine Pesos), most of the people I commission are from overseas, so it's always a must to be able to pay them in USD.
And that's the issue: since I don't have that much money anymore and I can't commission people as often... this inevitably delays my progress on both Killer Trait and Potion Pleasing (DEMO out!) indefinitely. It's sucks for me too, but it's the reality: making games costs money.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Killer Trait will have re-designs for most of the characters (not counting Carl because his design was originally my own) since the ones in the DEMO were stock sprites I bought from an artist, not my own designs. And I want these characters to be 100% my own, which is why I decided to have them re-designed. I've talked about this in the past in more detail when I decided to have Crowe re-designed, you can find that post HERE.
Of course, for these new character sheets (with the exception of Oz's, which has already been finished) and the new sprites, I need game funds in order to commission the artist. Even after the sprites are done, there are a couple of backgrounds—the characters' rooms—that I'd like to have originally made (especially since the ones I bought from Minikle are very limiting and don't really fit with the characters' personalities). And this doesn't even account for CGs, which I'll probably have to postpone for a while because the sprites and the backgrounds are way more important.
Some might be thinking "What about Where Winter Crows Go?". While I was lucky that WWCG's first demo was so well received, I still spent a whole lot of money from my own pocket to make it. I bought a lot of assets and, when I got a few donations, I commissioned a few artists to help me. WWCG was NEVER a game made with only free resources.
Making the art book for WWCG was a way I found to get a little of that investment back, but I'm well aware that I'll never get all the money that I spent back. And that's okay! To this day, I don't regret having invested my money to make WWCG because it gave me a lot of experience, perspective and made me learn a lot.
Be that as it may, however, I can't realistically make all of my games free. As I mentioned before, game development is expensive in both money AND time. Without funds, it's a given that things are going to be delayed.
So... where does that leave things?
Well, after pondering on it for a while, I came to the conclusion that I'm not really ready for a crowdfunding campaign right now. Those are extremely hard and ALSO cost money to advertise well and make sure everything's in order. So... the temporary solution I arrived at is setting goals on Ko-Fi!
How would this work? Basically, I would set a monetary goal of the amount of money needed for a certain asset in a certain game that needs to be made. For example: sprites & character sheets in Killer Trait. Once that goal is met, I'll commission the person in question so they can start working on it! After that, I'll set the next goal and so on 💪
I'm thinking of setting the first Ko-Fi goal once August starts. And from there... I'll see how it goes! If things don't go well, I'm also considering making Where Winter Crows Go paid for a while—don't worry, I would make an announcement first—because I honestly have no more ways of getting game funds for Killer Trait and Potion Pleasing and, as mentioned before, making games is really expensive (and I'm only one person). EDIT 2: WWCG is paid now and the first 2 Ko-Fi goals for Killer Trait have been reached!
Thank you so much for reading until the end and I hope you have an amazing day!