itch.io

Thanks for your interest in the project :3 The page isn't particularly tidy at the moment and some of the comments where I answered similar questions to this have been buried >.< haha. I'll have to try and organise the page better when I next update the game!

I'll give you the short(ish) answer, and then I'll also be somewhat lazy and give you the super long answer copy/pasted from something I wrote previously :3

So the short answer is that the game is nowhere near complete right now. What's available is more like a little taster episode for one of many characters :3 I made it during a jam that lasted 1 month, so there's not a huuuuge amount of content there yet. My plan is to have around 10 characters for the full version of the game, with about 3 episodes each. So you could call what's currently released Castor/ia's episode 1 I guess. I'm currently in the process of writing the next character's episode 1 + some additional content for Castor/ia.

The $2 is basically a donation to help fund the project because I have no funding outside of that to pay voice actors, and while I can continue developing the game without putting any money into it if the rest of it goes unvoiced, I feel like voice acting is an important part of the project since it was originally supposed to be an audio drama. I write the scripts in a way that suits voiced better than non-voiced.

Aaaand here's the extra long version if you want it xD

Right now, the project is in a place where I don't even know what an acceptable price would be to charge for the game once it's eventually finished because I don't have experience with releasing commercial games. I kind of never imagined I would ever have the funding available to me to make something to commercial standards. What I do know going by my outlines, drafts, and the like, is that there will be quite a large amount of content by the time the entire thing is finished. Definitely more than $2 worth of content by a long shot.

If you do decide to get Winter Wish, it's more like a donation towards funding the development of the project than a purchase, but I don't think there's any way for me to show it as such here on itch >.< Because WW is quite short and essentially acts as the introductory episode to one character of many.

The biggest challenge in DD's overall development is that it's a project which is pretty reliant on voice acting. Without the VA, it wouldn't have the same flavour I don't think. But VA isn't cheap. For example, after speaking to my friend Anthony (the voice director for Winter Wish) he informed me that to get Castor & Castoria's next episode fully voiced will cost around $800. And me being unemployed means that the only way I can afford to pay the VAs is through supporters donating funds towards the project.

Right now, I'm quite unsure what the best way to proceed is because it's going to cost a lot of money to get each episode for each set of characters voiced. Which means probably asking for some form of money per episode. At the same time, I don't want to piss anyone off who has already donated towards the project >.< because I really appreciate the support and I don't want anyone to feel like their money is being wasted or anything like that.

The other option, of course, is attempting to run a Kickstarter at some point! However, I'm not really sure if enough people would back it when it requires quite a bit of funding. My social anxiety also means I suck at social media and promotion, which isn't exactly a great start to a KS campaign >.< Especially not when the game isn't yet close to completion. So it's a tough situation really.

One of the main reasons I didn't keep working on DD after the jam is because I figured I would never be able to afford to expand it the way I'd like to in a million years because I don't have the money. So I kept it as a side project to work on and continued developing my main project (Clarity in Qualia.) Unfortunately, CiQ hit a brick wall in that I was hoping to run a KS for that in order to fund VA and a CG artist, but there was very little interest in the game when we posted character intro videos on YouTube and stuff. And it's a shame because that one is fully written and if I were to work on just that, I could have the game finished before the end of the year. But I don't know what to do with CiQ when it seems like there aren't many people interested in playing it. So now that I've finished the last couple of jams I wanted to participate in this year (otome jam + Spooktober VN jam) DD is my main project focus.

I'm so sorry for rambling anyhow >.<

What I will say though, is that I hope to always be able to offer free copies of my stuff to anyone who can't afford to support with money because I have been in that position all my life and I know how much it sucks.

TLDR

•  The $2 for DD Winter Wish is more like a donation towards funding the full game than an actual purchase.

• I don't know what the full price of the game will be once it's eventually completed, but anyone who has helped with funding will get a discount off of the full game based on what they donated. And hopefully, some sort of extra goodies as well because I'd like to be able to give some kind of extra thank you to those who have supported the development of the game :3

• Character intro episodes will likely be released episodically for now based on what I can afford to pay VAs for their work. But if it gets to the point that a Kickstarter might be viable to complete the entire project, I may attempt that. If successful, I'll then just be able to work on completing the remainder of the game in one chunk.

• I will always try to offer free copies of my games for those who cannot afford to support with money for whatever reason.

(I realise that getting funding from various methods could potentially end up quite messy when it comes to issuing discounts and rewards in the end, but I'm not sure how else to deal with funding development right now. I'm willing to go over all donations from all sources manually in order to make sure no one is left out come the full release of the project.)