Thank you for the kind words and feedback! I think the upcoming updates will do even more to show the originality of the story, but I think you've put it perfectly - first impressions matter. It's a hard choice, and I want to focus on upcoming updates rather than taking away time to revamp previous content... but I'm banking on people being willing to give it a chance all the way through.
Maybe wishful thinking.
The way I see it, this acts as a kind of filter that only a percentace of new players get past. Though on the other hand, too long intervals between meaningful updates make it harder to retain your current player base, especially in the beginning.
I've seen quite a few projects, like Ripples and Evermore, do a lengthy rework at some later point, to iron out their early flaws. You could consider this too! Or, you could do just a bit of rework with every update, to maybe get the best of both worlds. It depends on how impactful the problem actually is, which I can't really estimate from my POV. Maybe you can do a poll? Don't forget to account for bias though. :P
Promise kept. Eye-focus posted. As an aside, the examples given in this post are not encouraging. Evermore is essentially abandoned, and Ripples artist seems to be growing tired of the assholery of the free masses. Seems to be friendly with the Sad Crab guys though, which, while parts of that game are very good, at the time I first found it, Innocent Witches was a masterclass on how not to do a rework.
Thanks for posting it! You're right, Evermore got abandoned a few days after I posted this, even before the dev was able to publish the rework for it. Not necessarily encouraging, but let's not get superstitious.
It's possible that I am too optimistic about reworks. The thing is, if I were the dev, I'd try to go for it at some point because I want my work to stand on its own, without it being accused of it being overly derivative. On the other hand, who are those people that make this a dealbreaker? Do I really want to cater to them? And yeah, there's always the risk of a rework making things worse. I dont know what the best choice is, this is a decision that only the dev can make. Fingers crossed.
I'm pinging you right now because the dev mistakenly responded to my post instead of yours, here you go: https://itch.io/post/10550449
