JPDE - DEVELOPMENT UPDATE

Dear All,

This is not an easy message to write but it’s something that must be put out there. And out of respect for everyone involved, I will keep things straight to the point. I’m not going to make it emotional or appeal to our common past as a community. I’m just going to state the facts.

I’ve been working on JPDE1 – Sonata of Fire for 7 years now. Since then, I’ve grown as a creator. I met so many great artists, so many people who I now call friend. But the ambition has also grown. Projects have been started and then suspended because of a lack of funding and time. I was stretching myself -and the team- too thin.

In recent months, a number of unforeseen expenses -alongside the expenses needed to get married [PAPA IS GETTING HITCHED NEXT MONTH AND I COULDN’T BE HAPPIER! ^^]- has dipped into my personal finances something fierce. And since a consistent slice of the game development funding for our projects has been coming out of my pocket since it fell below a certain threshold… You see the problem.

The situation has come to a point that I need to make some difficult choices… Thus, I’m making the following announcements:

• From this month, JPDE2 – Adagio of Darkness and GalaxiA will be the focus of our development efforts.
• JPDE2 – Adagio of Darkness will from now on be updated monthly, just as JPDE1 was before.
• An episode of GalaxiA will take between three and four months at the beginning. The game's assets are cumulative due to the story format, so past Episode 3, they should come out faster too.
• 40$+ Supporters will get new perks will make them able to vote on Quests and Storylines to add to the game. Past nominations for OCs which were to be added to JPDE2 RPGMaker Version will be added as characters in the Renpy version.
• 25$+ Supporters will get JPDE2 updates first. Other supporters, one week later. The public will receive the update one month after 25$+ supporters.
• JPDE2 – Adagio of Darkness will be able to have Lewds now that we are in Renpy again. But unless the funding reaches 2500$ monthly, we can’t afford the art for it.
• Unless the Patreon/KoFi funding increases above 2100$, or my financial situation gets considerably better, the next update of JPDE1 – Sonata of Fire will be the last full one. Following updates will be code only.

For full transparency, the level of funding each month will be updated and published in the Discord ⁠server's updates. I’m sorry that it’s come to this but I got to find a balance between putting out content, supporting my team and starting a family. Here’s to many more years of games together.

-Meinos Kaen