I actually know the dev behind Sapphire Safari, and they are doing VERY well, their previous games set them up for success so that they could take a risk on developing a lot of the bones for the game.
I took a risk on this one because I wanted to try to emulate even a portion of the success, but I missed the marks on too many of the parts that they did well.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I appreciate you posting your thoughts and feelings on the matter. Things like this certainly help me frame outside perspectives and reasons as to why some things didn't go as planned.
I think in the future I'm going to be limiting my 3d stuff's scope by a significant margin until I can set up frameworks to iterate and develop more quickly (especially on the animation side). But that won't happen until my next 2d project is completed.