I appreciate your understanding, ATU is my game after all so it's kinda hard for me to not be aware of people's disappointments and distaste towards me.
Ultimately, it doesn't bother me at all. There's no one else in the entire world that has thought about at extreme depth about what I should do and the best decision I can make than myself. And the decision I made puts my happiness and mental health above everything else.
It's not just that I ran out of steam, I ran out of steam years ago, it's also the fact that I stopped enjoying developing for that game years ago too and I really can't say I'm "proud" of the game. But that is 100% on me for starting an overly ambitious project with the game-dev experience of a few days. I'm proud of myself for attempting it, and learning, and actually doing something big, but I can't say I'm all that proud of what I made to be frank.
The only reason I kept going for as long as it did was because I made a promise to finish the game and I tried so hard to keep it, even if year after year, the end was still far in the horizon. Like trekking through a desert on a treadmill type slow and painful. At the very least, I provided an ending, it's not the best ending and there's lots of plot holes but if my options were to provide a bad ending or no ending at all, I chose to at least try and have a full release.
There's so many things I wish I could change with ATU but the game's far too big to even tackle it, and just thinking about it is very off-putting for me. The list of things I dislike about my own creation now is unfortunately bigger than what I like about it. I liked that it gave me so much learning experience and the opportunity to try again with a new project but that's about it.
Sugar Service is unofficially the game I wish ATU could have been but I just simply didn't have the skills and experience back then and going back to old work is not a very appealing prospect for any creative person. We all wanna feel like we're moving forward, not being stuck in the past.
I'm also aware people loved ATU, way more than I could and I appreciate that. If I knew what I know now and started ATU today, it would be a much different, much better, but much different game. There's not much I can or want to do without jeopardizing my mental health so don't hold your hopes out for ATU. I'll do some hotfixes and polish but that's about it.