Okay, let me try to answer of all this, apologies if I miss a point:
- There's a discord? Could I get a link? I've read a bunch about That Which Sleeps, ever since I found the SA thread, but wasn't aware of a discord for it.
- We intend to roughly continue development as we are. Neither of us want to increase commitment to the project, including actually becoming published by a real publisher. I don't want to talk for my co-author, but I personally am very committed to my current career path, and while I love working on the game, wouldn't want to make it a full-time thing.
-If the direction the project goes in is that this means that we become slightly sidelined by a more active developer who forks the project and makes it their own, that's a good thing in my book. I'd be happy retaining credit for the original foundations and become a contributor to another lead dev's work. Or, possibly, two projects would exist side by side, and we would be happy to share and co-ordinate with our sister project so they can use any of our work going forwards.
-Shadows started related to That Which Sleeps, but isn't a clone by any measure. It's its own thing, for a variety of reasons. Some of these are: 1) We can't say how TWS would actually play, as we have no true implementation. 2) I do this mostly for fun, so want to work on stuff I find fun to put in and think about, and so try to balance what will be fun to play and what will be fun to implement. 3) It's just plain bad form to straight up copy someone else's idea, regardless of how they may have behaved, it's just a bit creatively bankrupt to not try to give it your own flavour.
-That all said, I do agree with a desire for a more personal and narrativelike structure. This is part of the driving force behind the new agents. The enemy would perhaps have a kind of RPG mechanic, in which your actions influence their growth. They'd individually learn about your individual agents, so would have personal connections in a one-to-one way. Hence giving them faces, which hopefully would add to that.
-Events and suchlike are cool and interesting, and would definitely enhance the game, but I also try to play to my strengths, and I don't feel that artist is one of them. Events in, say, Crusader Kings II, have a cool picture attached, and I don't have the talent to really give life to some of these things. As such, I tend to naturally gravitate towards stuff I feel I understand.
-Events also rather depend on foundational gameplay loops to be in. We'd be more comfortable adding 'fluff' to a working game, than adding it first and hoping that the gameplay adds together afterwards. While the gameplay needs a bit of work, expanding and definitely balancing, it at least has its shape now.
-Expanding the community is interesting to us, but not necessarily our greatest desire. It would be nice to have maybe three times as many people here as there currently are, but as a hobby game, it can't receive the degree of attention with maybe Tynan is able to devote to Rimworld, and we wouldn't be able to cater to such a wide audience in a way they might hope for.
Hope this answered at least some of your queries. I think you're right on a number of fronts, and hopefully we actually share more thinking about the future of the game than you might have feared.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you too, if we don't chat before then