Nb. The following post has been copied from my itch.io page and is about a year old, but still accurate.
Hello! How have you all been? I hope life has been treating each and every one of you as well as you bloody well deserve, you glorious humans, you.
If you don't mind politely excusing the (two years of) radio silence, I may explain myself in a little bit. But in short, things in general have been, well, vastly overwhelming, in lots of areas of my life, (both work and personal) and to be perfectly honest, I desperately needed a break.
Lots of adventures have been had, both great and small, and all over the world, but those are tales for another place and time.
You may have some questions, such as :
Where are you at with Jo's Bar now?
Fitting all the characters and storylines together. A lot more writing and editing is going to have to happen. There are currently 35 dancers, 49 regulars (with varying degrees of essential value) each having anywhere between 1-12 events that are unique to them. And sure, some of their stories intertwine - you'll get to see characters evolving throughout the game, and that's all going to be exciting and wonderful, but it's all being held together via a bunch of post-it notes in one of my notebooks for the time being (as well as an eyesore of a spreadsheet).
But isn't that stuff you mostly did back in lockdown?
It is, but I left it all for so long I'm having to go back over it and (thankfully) haven't changed my mind about much of it at all. So that's good.
And after that?
Rebuilding it.
Wait, what?
The prototype I made using RPG Maker 2003 (which is still available to download on itch.io) was only ever destined to be that. A prototype. I had heavily romanticised the idea of using something really old to make something modern in content, with a retro feel, but the constraints that came with using a program that old were becoming more and more cumbersome, and it was becoming more and more clear that the game I want this to be, just won't be, if I was to stick with it. Not without making a fair few sacrifices I'm just not willing to make.
That sounds er...
Yeah. Yeah, I know.
Ok so like...?
Thanks to a huge (and I mean HUGE) amount of help, guidance, and support, from my nearest and dearest, I am continuing to pursue this passion project of mine, and will see it through to the end. I'm setting a highly ambitious personal deadline of December 2024 for the release and will be constructing a plan to make that happen. (Before getting on with connecting all 35 dancers and 49 regulars' lives with bits of string across a wall of course.)