Hey, lads!

As promised, I'll try to make more frequent progress reports. They were supposed to be also shorter, but, well, I wasn't slacking, so I have a lot of stuff to share.

While with v33a taking care of majority of bugs game is rather playable now, it still has some annoying bugs, so I will be releasing v33b soon (Friday?) on Patreon, and then v33c with anything that didn't get fixed and with more content (late January). v33c should appear on itch.io around late January & early February.

I don't remember if I mentioned it already or not, but I stopped adding people to the credits list (aside for the Overaware tier), because back in the day, when project was still small and I didn't have many patrons, it was easy to manage, but now it's simply too overwhelming for a one-man-army to take care of this, too. But it's not like I don't want to, so if you supported me on any platform, whether it is Patreon, SubscribeStar, itch.io (or Steam in the future), simply contact me and I'll add your nickname, too!

I already found a writer (and with a very original nickname - Mr. Writer) and he will officially start working with the beginning of February, but as a test he will write a mentioned above (planned for v33c) scene.

Since I want smaller & more frequent updates, v34 will be cut into multiple updates. The first thing I'll focus on will be character art optimization (decreases RAM consumption and increases art quality), and buyable positive traits at the hospital with trait points (TP). I don't want to do something as dull as buying TP with money, so you will acquire TP in multiple ways by simply playing the game. Almost every thing you do will reward you some "experience points" towards unlocking a new TP. I'll also add a few more unique items across the game that will act as small cheats. These changes should make grinding shorter, less annoying, but also more rewarding & RPGish. By training at the gym, Jane will be able to unlock 2 new muscled body variants (optional, can be turned off) - you could see 2nd variant in the previous progress report, and you can see the 1st variant on the attached screenshot.

After some testing I can finally announce that - yes, in v34 game will get improved character faces (both female & male), and in higher resolution (including Android), while consuming less RAM at the same time! Rejoice, everyone!

I've bought a new PC with Intel i9 14900k CPU and Crucial T700 SSD, and damn, that stuff is fast. Both working & building speeds are noticeably faster. And in the last few days I've worked on a tool that will let me release & upload updates easily, with one click, without any babysitting. So ye, I just click "Release" and go sleep, while within 2 hours you have your update released. I will use it to release v33b. Thanks to it you will get gamebreaking bugs fixed faster and more frequent updates (as also promised). Don't expect daily updates though, because preparing the game for the release is a totally different thing.

So as people (mostly pirates) accused me of paywalling the game with cheats and making it unplayable without them, I decided to make a poll about the grind in v32c & v33, and here are the raw Patreon results (without weighted votes):

If I add weighted votes (from higher subscription tiers) and from other platforms, it looks like that (calculated in the Excel):

5/5 - 21% 4/5 - 47% 3/5 - 27% 2/5 - 5% 1/5 - 0%

Soo... Nobody thinks game is unplayable because of grind. 5-6% believe it's bad and needs a fix. 27-31% gave a neutral vote. 44-47% says it's in a good spot, although could get a few tweaks (and these will be coming), while 19-21% calls it perfect.

I'm sorry that some people may be disappointed, but the truth is, the majority of people don't believe cheats are necessary to enjoy the game. I understand that I might not change everyone's perspective. Even if I were to make the entire game free, and with cheats included, there would always be those who find something to criticize. I've previously worked on a few free-to-play games and mods, and this seems to be a common pattern. I acknowledge that my game isn't for everyone. If you strongly dislike it, the simple solution is not to play it or check back after a few updates. There are plenty of excellent games available. I'm not pressuring anyone to buy or play it. I believe my project is transparent - you can see my income, the number of patrons, all posts are visible, and everyone can comment. I've responded to every comment and tried to be helpful. I'm not actively promoting the game or engaging in share-for-share arrangements with other Patreon projects - I'm simply trying to work. However, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Despite leaks, cracks, or negative comments, I'll persist in moving forward and working on the project. I have no intention of deceiving those who support me with shady business tactics or models in the future, so no worries!

And here I wanted to thank everyone who supported me until now, whether you joined only recently, subscribed only once, or you are doing it for months/years - I'm really grateful! Despite having thousands of players (if not much more), it's thanks to these 400-500 subscribers monthly, and people who bought the game on itch.io, who have faith in my suicidal project, that's why I'm able to continue working on my game. Thank you! But I also wanted to thank everyone who contributed to the project, even if only a little, with bug reports, constructive feedback or by simply being nice and putting me in the high spirits and giving me motivation! Thanks for everything, lads! I really mean it!

And after talking with people in the last few days about creating the 2nd project, chances of me actually creating it gradually increases, so thanks a lot for the feedback, lads! I even found a programmer who is willing to slowly work on the project in his spare time for some pocket money. But to get a better idea of what to create, I decided to go with the Google Forms (currently for patrons and those who have paid for the game), but in the future I'll expand it to everyone. If you bought my game on itch.io, you should have get an e-mail with the link to Google Forms. Sorry for spamming (it was my first time using this feature), but it was the only way for me to give you an access to it.

And no, I am NOT abandoning the Unaware in The City project. This is why I want to fund a new team to work on the second game. My plan is to handle the design and supervision only, as 90% of my focus will remain on my first game - Unaware in The City. If I can't secure funding, the 2nd project won't come out. I won't be taking loans again, nor will I be doing the majority of the work myself, as I am already quite occupied with my current game.

Cheers!