So now to your income question. I think you should do both. Use patron/subscribe-star as a potential for partial income but have a itch "supporter" download that
gives new updates a month in advance. Make sure however to keep an updated free version to attract new players and keep investment alive. Just look at the biggest
players on itch/steam (You should get it ready to be placed there if you can, even with what is going on with credit-cards :(. A huge market you can not leave
untapped.) they tend to uses a hybrid system to get new blood in, good for people on the fence especially for NSFW games. If people like your game and how you
present yourself/project they will come to support you, but don’t look at that right away you need to show that you are going to stick with the project more more
that a few months. I have seen people jump on this to quickly and lose out in the long term, right now you are trying to make a sales pitch, why should we come back
to your game when there are plenty more out there? It sucks but if you think of it like an investment it can pay off big in the long term, but how you go about that will be up to you.