Unfortunately, I can't really give much of a solid date for anything because I've had a couple of pretty big setbacks in the last 6 months that have meant not really getting to work on anything at all other than the thing my friend and I managed to submit to Yandere Jam earlier this year. Aside from that, I've essentially made 0 progress with my other projects >.< Aaaand, I have less time nowadays in general to work on things for a number of reasons.
But yeah, after I released the most recent update in November last year, all I've been able to do since then is commission LPB for the first lot of CGs, which she's currently working on :3 I personally haven't been able to touch the project though.
In December, I caught some kind of nasty superbug that knocked me for six until mid-January. So I spent all of Christmas ill. When I was finally well enough to go out again in mid-January, I had to meet some friends and family that I hadn't been able to see over Christmas. I just about managed to get back on my PC during February in time to team up with LPB and make Bitter/Sweet for Yandere Jam 2023. Once that ended at the end of Feb, I began trying to catch up on my inbox, but in the first week of March, a dude on an e-scooter crashed into me while I was walking to an appointment in town, the result was me winding up with a broken arm (and my dominant one at that >.<) So my arm had to have a cast put on and I was told to rest and wait for it to heal. In that time, I couldn't really use it to do anything, so I was completely off of my PC for almost 2 months waiting for it to heal up. I couldn't even hold my phone or a controller or anything properly in order to try and stay on top of my inbox or play any games.
I finally got to take the cast off at the end of April and start doing more serious physio, and once back on my PC and able to type again, I began trying to catch up on my replies. I pretty much spent the entirety of May responding to messages and stuff from a mixture of friends and people who had recently discovered my games and gotten in touch. Now we're into June and I still haven't managed to finish typing up replies to everyone >.<
I'm almost caught up with itch aside from a few older comments which I need to go hunting for because I can no longer easily access them from notifications. But I'm still waaaay behind on emails and discord dms, same goes for anything on tumblr. I have some longer messages from all the way back in December that I still haven't managed to get a response typed up to yet because they're part of long conversations where I need a couple of days to actually get the entire thing finished.
Honestly, I'm not even sure how to cope at this point x3 I was already struggling before my arm got broken. Being forced to spend so much time away from my PC has just meant that things have piled up even more. But even without that, I'm frequently overwhelmed by everything I'm trying to juggle, haha.
I don't want to start ignoring comments and messages and stuff because it would just feel so wrong. I've always thought that if a person has taken the time to check my stuff out and then cared enough to sit and type out a message of some sort, then the least I can do as thanks is reply. I'd never want anyone to contact me and then not hear back ever >.< I want to be able to show that I appreciate the support.
The dilemma is that, the longer I spend typing up replies, the less time I have to work on the projects themselves. And since I'm just one person, I can't do both at once x3 I dunno, maybe people wouldn't really care all that much if they never got a response from me? But even if it didn't bother them, it would bother me >.< I've always tried my best to reply to everything.
And even if I were to start ignoring all comments and messages related to my projects, that still wouldn't change the fact that I struggle to keep on top of replying to my friends over discord and email x3 It's become a running joke now with some of my friends that being friends with me is more like having a penpal because they have to wait a few months to hear back from me >.< Which is okay as long as they're cool with that, but I don't want it to get to the point that I wind up losing some of the friendships I have because I can't manage to stay in contact consistently :(
Aaaaand, then we come to the fact that these days, I sometimes don't get much more than an hour or two on my PC, which isn't really enough to achieve much >.< I really need entire days to myself without any interruptions to be able to get decent progress made. Days like that are rarer now though. I've essentially become my brother's carer even though I can barely look after myself x3 He has a lot of physical and mental health problems, so he has quite a lot of appointments and such to go to. My dad used to be able to afford to either take a morning off to take him or finish work early to, but he can't afford to do that nowadays with the cost of everything skyrocketing. He needs to work every hour that he can >.< So on top of the usual household chores that I do, I now have to take my brother to all of his appointments as well, which can take up the entire day sometimes because I don't have my own car (can't afford one), my brother refuses to use public transport, and so we have to walk to them, and they're all over an hour's walk away x3
Sooo, yeah, I'm in a state where I'm just constantly knackered pretty much, haha. And I've learned to stop setting myself schedules and timed goals because life keeps throwing so many things at me lately that it just got increasingly frustrating to repeatedly fail at all the targets I set myself. It's easier to just try and do what I can - when I can, and that way I beat myself up a little less for not achieving as much as I would like x3
At the end of 2022, my plan for 2023 was to release an episode of Masked Marionette every couple of months, with the first being at the end of Feb/start of March, then the next at the end of April, and then a few bigger gaps. Alongside that, I hoped to participate in Yandere Jam, O2A2 Jam, and Spooktober VN Jam. And I wanted to get at least 1, but hopefully 2 updates out for DD, along with hopefully some coding progress on CiQ.
Well, all that I've managed to do so far this year is participate in Yandere Jam >.< I don't know if I'll have the time to dedicate to the other two. I really, really hope so. I haven't got a single episode of Masked Marionette out though. And 0 progress on both DD and CiQ.
Everything is on hold for June because I'm participating in 30 Days Wild again since nature is extremely important to me and the UK is going down the shitter with our government not giving a crap about the environment or the wildlife that lives in it >.<
So it'll be July before I get back into proper project work again. But even then, I'll probably only get a few hours a day that I can work on anything rather than the 7+ hours a day that I used to have. And the summer is always my least productive time of year because the heat and bright sunlight never fail to make me ill each year.
At this rate, I don't anticipate me managing to get an update out for DD this year because while everything I wanted to include in it is already written, only a tiny fraction of it is actually coded so far, and I've still got the voice acting problems to sort out. Maybe a miracle of some sort will happen and I'll manage to make some good progress with it, but I really don't want to make any promises or set myself targets because I will more than likely keep running into setbacks that will hurt if I'm telling myself I have to get X done by X date.
Right now, most of my days look like this:
Get up, eat breakfast.
Do physio and other exercise for an hour (I put on a full stone in weight while I was recovering from my broken arm, so I need to do an hour's exercise minimum now to try and lose it again, as I have hypothyroidism and put weight on crazy fast when I can't workout >.<)
Do household chores (sometimes this might mean going out to get parts of our food shopping for the week, and since it means going to multiple shops by foot, sometimes it takes 3 hours+ >.<)
Have lunch (at like 3pm >.<”)
Finish any other chores that need doing or appointments my brother needs to go to
PC time – get replies typed up for a couple of hours
Cook dinner for my family
Eat dinner and watch an episode or two of something
Make any preparations for the next day that need doing, try and get a few more replies done if I have the energy
Collapse into bed
That's not what my days used to look like xD I used to:
Get up, eat, go on my PC to do a couple of hours of work on projects
Pause for exercise (but only like 30 mins workout cos I didn't need to lose weight)
Do any chores that needed doing (generally less time spent on that cos there was less to do as my dad and I shared them)
Go on my PC again for around 3-5 hours to do a mixture of project work + replies.
Cook dinner (sometimes my dad did that too, which would mean more time to work on stuff for me, nowadays, I cook every night cos my dad is too exhausted from work)
Eat dinner and watch an ep of something
Go back on my PC for another hour or so.
My dad would head to bed, then I would go back on my PC again until like 3-5am working on stuff again.
But now I'm too tired from having been running around all day doing chores or taking my brother to appointments, so come 11pm, I'm also exhausted and go to bed at the same time my dad does >.< And, of course, with my depression and stuff, sometimes I just don't feel capable of doing anything at all in a day, even feeding myself.
Heck, before I moved back in with my family after the pandemic, I was living with my friend, and I used to just get up at 7am every day when his alarm went off, shower, and start working on stuff, didn't even exercise or break for lunch. Cooked dinner, ate it, went straight back to working on stuff until like 3am. Then my friend and I would just kinda blitz the housework on a weekend after like a month or more of not having done any xD
That would not fly with my dad, haha. I keep on top of it at home for his sanity. And I know that if I left it, rather than asking me to do it, he would just seeth silently inside and do it himself, and then I'd feel awful because he doesn't deserve that when he's up at 5am every day, breaking his back at work, and then too tired to do anything when he finally gets home at 6pm, all to keep a roof over our heads because both of his children are too mentally crippled to actually get a normal job and help support the household >.<
My dad is extremely sweet and doesn't mind me being slower on housework and stuff when I want to work on a jam since he understands they generally involve quite a tight deadline, but once a jam is over, things are back to normal again, and I generally have a lot of catching up to do as well since I will have neglected so much while the jam was running.
I still don't even give myself more than an hour or two per week to actually play games because I know I can't afford to if I wanna get anywhere with my replies and with my project progress x3 and so my backlog of stuff I really hope to play someday continues to grow, haha.
I realise that was a waaaaay longer answer than was needed x3 I just can't be concise >.< and this is one of the reasons why I get behind on my messages and stuff xD Cos if someone types me 1 sentence, 99.9% of the time I will type back a paragraph or more, haha. So you can imagine what happens if people type me a few paragraphs... I then type back with an essay x3 I'm gonna blame that on my autism cos I dunno what else would cause me to be incapable of stopping rambling and oversharing on stuff >.<
Anyways, I also realise it's not a very helpful answer either! More just one giant explanation of why things haven't been going particularly smoothly. But that's all I've got. It is what it is. I just have to keep going and hope that I eventually get somewhere.