Hello there, how are you all doing?

As you guys know, for the past few years I've been working on a Visual Novel called Just Friends. Overall progress is fine, I can write around 9 route segments, between 150-200 dialogues monthly for the game, and I'm very happy to know some people are indeed enjoying my writing and my storytelling. As a non-native English speaker, it's very hard for me sometimes to create something interesting but I like to think I'm getting better.

So far, Just Friends is my only source of revenue, truth is, working on a regular job would take away any free time to work on any game, given work hours here are around 10 hours a day, six days a week, and the wage would be awfully similar to what I make with my game. Problem is though, the amount I make with Just Friends is barely enough to sustain myself, to pay my bills, to make sure my hardware stays functional (after all, if a RAM chip or a GPU dies right now, I would be so fucked there's no way I would be able to recover, given the Crypto and now the AI stuff happening). Artwork, Music, Animations, those parts where I'm not proficient at, are very expensive, a single sprite set for the game costs between 300-400 depending on artists and I can't just change artist and hire someone who's doing something absurdly different in quality for the game just because it's cheaper, and even the artists that are "cheaper" in price are, in fact charging at least half of what I earn right now. I'm on a situation of life or death, if I invest in the game I won't have money to pay my rent, if I Pay my rent and food, I won't have money to invest on other aspects of the game.

So, I keep pushing with any way I can. I coded a new engine for the game with a friend's help, I made it sure it would work for other game projects too, and I even started a new project and will also take on another one. All so maybe I can make more money and finally be able to pay for content for the game.

Don't get me wrong: Royalty free content exist, I use them and I credit everyone, but royalty free content usually means the game lacks an identity, right? You won't listen to a music and think "oh that's Just Friends music" because it's a royalty free music I was able to get, it's good but it's not tailored for the game.

I was able to buy some drawings for the game, two cut-scenes (out of a LOT I want), and so on. But that's very rare, I need to save a lot of money, and in months I make less than he amount I need, I have to take from my savings to survive.

That doesn't mean I don't love what I do and that I'm not grateful to my patrons. Right now, Just Friends has 40 Patrons, making around 250USD monthly, which is a far cry from the minimum wage from the US (Which can get close to 1600USD monthly as far as I could make some math here and there), but it's almost enough for me to live with the bare minimum. And I'm grateful to that, because I do work 8 hours a day almost every day to push the best routes possible.

Today a Patron just gave me the most heartfelt message saying I was doing a great work with my text, that he felt invested in the characters, and that made me really happy. That's why I write, because I want to make you all happy with my stories.


Either way, no matter what happens, I'll keep on pushing. And speaking of that:


Just Friends will get this month the build 0.80, I never thought I would make enough money to keep working on it. There were times I thought I would have to stop but thanks for you all I was able to keep pushing, especially some Tier 4 patrons who helps a huge lot, they have no idea.

I'm also working on Luna Lake, this month it'll have it's build 0.5 released, it's another project, made with another artist, and this time he works with me instead of me paying for his work, so everything we make there is split in half. It's still a huge help whenever we get 40 bucks a month, splitting that helps us with groceries and stuff, who knows one day we'll have a thousand patrons backing us? One can hope.


Luna Lake will be a bigger and more complex project, and I sure hope I can move people with it's story as much as I've been able to move people with Just Friends.


I'll be working on a third project for another Developer as a writer, and probably doing some coding here and there, with three projects at once, I'll be needing to work around 8 days in each project if I ever want to have SOME free time for myself but with it maybe I'll start making end's meat and can buy all Just Friends needs to be finished in style.

Just Friends is set to have 8 main days, right now I'm writing Day 4 with two characters and finishing day 3 with another.

Luna Lake is set to have around 45 days, the first 15 days will be the ACT 1 of the game, and it's when you "Chose" what character route you want to pursue. By Act 2 you will be able to know more of their personal life and people in their lives, once in this act, you can't change route but you can fuck things up, ACT3 will be when you get to a turning point in their story, and ACT4 is only enabled if you had done the right choices, if not, you will get the bad ending. Luna Lake has six possible routes, and the protagonist is a Wolf who has a sprite and I really love the protagonist there.

The third project I can't talk much on, but I'll talk about it once it's out.

For now, I hope you all have a nice time, if you read this, thank you for being here and hey, if you can, consider supporting me? It means a lot, 10 bucks may be nothing for you, but you have no idea how much it is for me. So yeah. Thanks!