Auden's Update - Apr 30 2024

Hi there! Auden here. I hope you're doing well!

Thanks so much for keeping up with what I'm doing, And thank you especially to the backers who've helped make it easier to keep making games! I truly appreciate it.

The TLDR update is in the picture above, but I'll elaborate further down below if you're interested in the details.

Title Change

I've decided to call the working title of the game I'm working on Find Love or Die Trying: Til Death Do Us Part, instead of Find Love or Die Trying II. Why?

1. It suits the story of the game better! It's a pretty dramatic plot ahead, with an incredible challenge ahead for you and your chosen lover from FLODT.

2. I think a sequel with subheadings will create different expectations compared to a "II". I don't want people to expect this game to be as big as FLODT, especially with a significantly reduced budget (elaborated on further down).

3. One day, I'm hoping to do something similar to what Final Fantasy does with Find Love or Die Trying - e.g. numbered sequels with different casts of characters and worlds, but similar themes. I want to reserve the title FLODT II for that game. I like to think that if I do that, it'll help inspire me to get back to a place where I can make a 'bigger' project again.

Progress

Despite not having a lot of time in the past month, I've been immensely productive! Writing is going really well. I've started by writing Kat's route, and I'm actually almost halfway done it! That said, I'll need to do a lot of editing before it's presentable. I'm expecting to wrap up the first edited draft in July, which is pretty amazing considering how slow I wrote the original.

Art has been rather unfortunate. The artist from FLODT has been sick for the past while, so no progress has been made on this front since the last update. I'm hoping he gets better soon.

I'll most likely finish writing all the routes months before the art is done.

Sequel Length, Console Release, Lowered Budget

Unfortunately due to delays and issues in the console publishing process, the console release of FLODT is indefinitely delayed. I'm hoping we can wrap it up within the year, but given the delays and my family situatin, I've had to reduce the budget for the sequel to make up for the lack of a revenue stream that I thought would be established months before. If you can believe it, the publishing process started for this back in December 2022...

With a reduced budget compared to the original, the game is naturally going to be shorter than the original. That said, I'm hoping to make every moment of the game hit hard - the story will start rolling a lot faster than the original!

I've always believed that you have to make the best of what you got - and I promise I'll do the best I can with what I have.

Musings on the Future

Despite some sticky challenges, I'm looking forward to what's to come.

It's been a blast revisiting the characters I love from Find Love or Die Trying and continuing their story to the climax I'd imagined. I can't wait to show you the game.

I'm also looking into creating new additional revenue streams that would help me keep creating, as my mom hasn't found a new job yet.So far contract work is going well, but it's inherently a bit unstable. I'm hoping to wrap up development of the FLODT sequel before any 'dips' in that affect the project, so I'm going as fast as I can.

After seeing how inefficient game publishing & porting is, I'm kind of interested in learning how to do that myself so I can help other game developers avoid the kinds of problems I'm running into, as well as have another way of putting food on the table for my family. After the sequel's published, I think I'll take some time to learn how to do that.

It's a faraway pipe dream right now, but I'm really excited to think that maybe one day, I'll be able to create FLODT II and a FLODT Anthology series, or even all new games! I've got a lot of skills I have to improve on before that's possible, so I think I'll spend a good amount of time learning new stuff after this project as well. Maybe 3D animation? Not sure. There's a lot of cool stuff I want to learn.

More to come here soon.

End of Update

It was a massive one, but that's my update for April!

I hope you enjoyed taking a look into what I'm doing.

Thanks again, and let me know what you think in the comments!

Sincerely,

Auden Cho-Wong