A new year begins...

And so here we are. 2023. The first post-SLARPG year of my life. Things are going to be different around here!

For one, this Patreon needs some retooling now that the game it was funding is out. I already unpublished the old $5 tier that promised a Beta copy of the game, and I don't currently plan on doing that again for the next game. It was a very odd way of doing things for a game without a long early access period, kind of halfway between a Kickstarter and a Patreon, and I think continuing to offer copies of a nebulous "next game" would be even weirder. So my Patreon will become more of a typical tip jar, and as such the tiers may get reworked in the near future.

I also don't currently know what our next big project will even be. I have many ideas for more stories set on Reverie, but I'm not committing to anything less than two weeks after release of the first game. As I've said elsewhere, though, whatever comes next will probably not be a direct "SLARPG 2" that's another big RPG, because it turns out spending almost eight years making one of those takes a lot out of you!

Ironically, though, not having a big game to work on in 2023 will probably mean this Patreon can become more active! I'd like to share behind-the-scenes stuff from SLARPG's development on here, now that the whole game is out there. There's a lot I could post - behind the scenes info on the writing of the prologue comic, the original story outline for the game, character concept art, and who knows what else. And, of course, don't think I've forgotten about the last two stretch goals I promised all those years ago. The digital instruction manual for SLARPG and the pixel art tutorials are going to happen! (And maybe now I can think of some new stretch goals to aim for? We'll see.)

Beyond this, I also hope I'll be able to post art more regularly again, be it original or fanart, now that the vast majority of my Art Energy isn't going towards SLARPG assets. And outside of this Patreon, I'll be updating Thanks Ken Penders again, and maybe streaming on Twitch every now and then, and of course I'll be looking into learning a new game engine (probably Godot) so that I'm no longer bound by the confines of a decade-old RPG Maker engine. You may see me experimenting with some tiny little Baby's First Godot Project type games as I follow tutorials.

That's a lot of stuff on my to do list for 2023! But for now, I'm taking things easy as I continue to keep an eye on SLARPG for post-launch bug fixes. And, again, thanks to everyone who supported SLARPG over the years in any way, be it through this Patreon, drawing fanart, sharing it on social media, buying your friends copies on Steam, anything. The launch has gone well, and we couldn't have done it without you. Here's to the future!