Lewd Town Adventures Three Year Anniversary Special!!!

Hello everyone and welcome to our third anniversary post!
This will be the last one that we'll do because Lewd Town Adventures is nearing its end. The game came out September 5, 2020 and after 3.5 years of development I think it’s enough. Read more on the how’s and the why’s below!

What have we accomplished since last year? Let's dive in:
- Over 8000 images and animations got added.
- Over 150 new events and easily over 700 pages of dialogue.
- The amount of code increased significantly.
- More music and sound effects got added throughout the game. (The game went from 125 songs to 160+.)
- Another 25% of outdated (lower quality, poorly lit, odd camera angle) scenes have been updated/remade. (Another 35-ish scenes to go.)
- Tons of interesting character moments, Easter eggs, and story twists we hope everyone enjoyed.
So yeah. pretty steady progression. Year one had about 8000 renders, last year about the same, and this year it's been similar. Surprisingly steady. That doesn't account for things like a new map, improved journal, more music, more sound, characters "thinking" and loads of other tweaks and remakes that have been made since then. Including scenes being a lot more impressive quality wise.

You can absolutely see the improvement from year to year when looking at the game which we're very happy about. For anyone that's interested in the full journey of Lewd Town Adventures here are some very informative posts:
The first year anniversary post: https://subscribestar.adult/posts/410865
Last year’s anniversary’s post: https://subscribestar.adult/posts/688651

Inception:
Usually all the posts I write are 99% positive but - since I don't want to only speak about positivity this time, like nothing bad ever happens and it's all roses and sunshine - I thought it would be a good idea to talk about some of the downsides of creating a game like this.

When I started the game it was not intended to be vanilla at all.
The plan was a corruption and training game with loads of dirty, nasty kinks the average wholesome person would squint at in confusion. What I found out quickly though is that the majority of the audience simply likes vanilla stuff.

While that means I was in the minority, I'm actually glad for it because it challenged me to rethink my kinks.They say the more one dabbles in naughty stuff, the more the fetishes grow to get that kick. Desensitization and all that.

Reception:
Not going to lie, it was a total shock to me reading so much negative feedback. I was honestly frightened to the point that I simply chose to go more vanilla. But I still wanted the heart of my idea to exist, so I split the game into basically two versions or 'paths':

The 'Dark' path is the game I actually wanted to make from the start and the 'Good' path is there to cater to the more vanilla crowd.

In hindsight this was probably a huge mistake. I was warned that I should only do one or the other but at that point, I was like "FUCK IT! I'll do both as there are not many others who do that."

The result is just so much extra time spent on making it happen - which for me was fun as I basically liked everything I did because it gives loads of creativity. I think it turned out really awesome, but one thing is for sure, the next game will be either - or, not both.
Overcomplication:
My reasoning is that LTA at this point has become very complicated overall. To even Xo, who has thousands of ideas and hundreds of imaginary characters chatting and flowing through his head every moment, it has become somewhat overwhelming to the point of stagnation and uncertainty which way to take the characters and plots. 
Thus, on the writing side as well as the execution side the whole process is overcomplicated with branching paths and over 50 characters, which is something I never thought of in the earlier stages of the game.

Some mistakes were made with certain scenes, as of now a new version (v0.14.4) that corrected all of those. When becoming aware of said inconsistencies, I always wonder how the hell that happened. I guess sometimes you just get lost into the sheer amount of work and miss a couple of things. 

Defection:
Anyway, creating games is fun for sure but also stressful. For instance the past two releases or so the game got pirated which resulted in a major loss for us financially.

The idea alone that the game easily had over a million players, the truth in numbers is that less than 1% makes a donation. There's nothing wrong with that but it also means that we're working for like a few dollars an hour.
After doing this for a while I can fully understand why successful devs become 'milkers'. While we do have a significant online community full of supporters and fans, a surprising amount of other players are either ignorant or just trolling who have no idea what it actually takes to create games. They are opinionated and vocal, determined and impatient, and they can drive developers mad and insane through various actions.

Dissection:
The sheer amount of one star reviews or shitty comments this game has gotten over the years is nuts. I'm just one guy and yet I've had the pleasure of reading hundreds of negative posts from people who never actually (or barely) played: they simply didn't like it for whatever reason which is fine as there are thousands of other games out there. BUT no need to attack devs for the work they do, especially indie devs.

"Grow some skin"  was the advice I got early and chose to take even though it's difficult and also made me more jaded. I wonder if growing thicker skin and giving less of a fuck about what people think is actually comparable.
The game gets the oddest posts from random people, and I often have to wonder whether I'm surrounded by lunatics or if I'm the one going slowly insane.

Well, the internet is full of toxic people I guess, you can find them everywhere. Just look at rotten tomatoes, youtube vlogs, and online critique forums for games and movies: things are wild.

It's almost always 1 or 10 Stars - but rarely anything in between. They either love everything about it or despise the work or person who created it. All sense of nuance is gone; it kinda annoys me. Usually I'm the spectator. But in this case I have to deal with that which is a nuisance.

Exasperation:
Sure, donation-wise it's been pretty good, despite the game only having one option to receive donations. However it has stagnated over time, more so this past year which is probably because of economic and pandemic disparity as well as rising cost of living vs income in the world.
In many places around the world, paying $1000+ a month for a place to live has become normal. With inflation, rising food prices, fuel costs and - well, basically everything else... The world has gone mad and I have no faith in it getting better any time soon. Like in LTA, the tycoon CEOs have all the money and power and they're not going give it up.

The downside is, we can't pay our bills either. It's as simple as that. Time is money and we both would be better off washing dishes at our local restaurant which takes less hours and a lot less stress.

Interconnection:
Having said that, it's not all that bad. In fact, there are loads of fans, we're seeing a steady rate of downloads, and there are plenty of nice comments and reviews as well.

Our Discord has over 5500 people which is massive! Though not that many people talk compared to other AVNs I'm a part of. I'm not sure why that is, but lurkers will lurk ;).

In Conclusion:
I really think we've had a good run. I wouldn't have changed anything. Maybe I'm just tired and in need of a break or something... But overall, I wanted to be honest with my experience and thoughts after 3 years of development.

Plenty of you guys are awesome, helpful, and great which is absolutely what keeps us going.

Take for instance our last two updates and to put it in numbers:

Over 1000 hours of work = 3 reviews, 20 good comments, 20 negative comments (including some crazy takes), and like $500 in donations.

It's kinda depressing, seeing such a low interaction - or none at all - one week after a release. Things get very quiet and that messes a bit with our motivation.

Although we've never been able to see the true extent of the game we created, whether players think it's great, hot, funny, or whatever emotion. Very little to no reactions or interaction makes it un-fun because we sometimes wonder what we’re doing it for. If it is entertaining or just a disappointment.

On Vacation:
Maybe we're just a bit burned out. Maybe we just need to step back and take a wider view of it all instead of burying ourselves six feet under the surface, trying to dig our way out... In any case, I have called for a break - which Xo agreed on - so we'll be back next month.
This means we will be doing IRL stuff, not focused on the game, relaxing and refreshing our minds and numb asses after spending literally 8-12 hours every day at our computer writing, rendering, coding, etc. We will still be online, interacting, answering questions, but it will hopefully make the final update the best it can be for all of us.

Like always, every subscriber gets a free one-month sub. I think we're the only developers who do this but I think - if we don't do a lot of work we don't take donations either.

We're not 'milkers' like some devs who just say they're working on the next update and keep raking in donations, while instead they're not even thinking about the project. We will still think about LTA while away from it. We just have so many threads to tie up, characters to reach their final resolution, taking a small vacation will make it all better in the end.

Anticipation:
To those eagerly waiting for the next update, we apologize. As creators, we need a breath of air... So please bear with us.
Personally, I haven't gamed that much ever since I started on LTA. Two major releases came out lately (Baldur's Gate and Starfield). I kinda want to give those a go for a bit and get my mind off things. Xo is lost in Skyrim (a third playthrough but with some of the hottest mods available) so it's already in motion.

This post was originally way longer, probably too long so I decided to keep part two for another time.  Lots of more information and very interesting stuff is coming in the near future.

Since this is a public post and I'm not sure how many people are going to read this:
Lewd Town Adventures can use your help by reviewing the game. If you have some time left, feel free to drop a review on one of the following websites:
https://f95zone.to/threads/lewd-town-adventures-v0-10-jamleng-games.61000
https://jamleng.itch.io/lewd-town-adventures

Thanks a lot! It truly helps a ton.

Cheers for the long read. We'll be back on October the 8th. See you then.

~ Jam & Xo