I think you’re unfortunately missing two points when it comes to the relation between Santa Lucia and Homecoming.
The first, and pretty obvious point if you looked at the pages, the developers aren’t the same. While I (Devilizer) still help out time to time on Homecoming (though I’ll come back to this in a second), I work mainly on Santa Lucia, while Dzahn is fully dedicated to Santa Lucia. This leaves Frostclaw, Lesli-Chu and Nova as the sole people working on Homecoming, all with their own lives and busy schedules.
However, and this is my second point, Santa Lucia has a Patreon. While we do obviously love working on it, just like I love working on Homecoming, not having a monthly release would be directly scamming and breaking promises that we have made to people who have invested money in Santa Lucia. The promises being, of course, the various tiers the patrons can pledge to, and that we have a duty to uphold.
However, Homecoming has, as I’m sure you already know, no such promises to uphold. We accept no financial aid for the development of Homecoming, and every dollar earned for Santa Lucia is used to help us work on Santa Lucia. As such, I fail to understand what “promises” we appear to be breaking. Is it the unspoken rule of a monthly release? Unless I’m mistaken, no such promise has ever been made. In fact, the only mention of scheduled releases is on this very page: "Homecoming is a work in progress. Since we're a team of volunteers, work proceeds when we have the available time to spare. Because of this, it is unwise to commit to a rigid schedule. We will try to release an update at least once every two months, though with our rough schedules the periods can vary wildly. We thank you for your patience while we develop Homecoming!", which you can find on our development schedule section. However, an attentive reader would notice that it is mentioned again, ON THIS VERY PAGE that “the periods can vary wildly” and that while we try to release an update every two months, “it is unwise to commit to a rigid schedule”. I fail to see where the issue is, even more so with the fact that Frostclaw has been transparent about the delays on our discord server.
Last thing, and this time, on a more personal note, I do not appreciate you bringing up our other project as a weapon to use against us. We have worked extremely hard to never break our schedule on Santa Lucia, and pushed through some very tough times. Tough times that have prevented me to put in the work I would have wanted on Homecoming. I lost my mother seven months ago, and Santa Lucia has been one of the only things keeping me afloat, both emotionally and financially, through this difficult period. I would appreciate a bit more humane decency and basic respect. We work on these projects because we love to do so, and while I will always give an attentive ear to criticism, the idea that we have broken promises we have never made, and not even trying to understand the hardships we’ve been through is a breaking point for me. We’re not perfect, nor have we ever claimed to be, and it’s thanks to the people who’ve supported us, be it with encouragement or fair criticism that we have made it this far.
Thank you for reading,
- Devilizer.