I'm making this post to apologize for the delay on the v0.9 update. I owe you all an explanation for why it's taking so long and an update on my plans for the game moving forward.

I'm eternally thankful for all your patience and support despite the huge delay on top of an already long development cycle. As usual, feel free to leave a comment if you have questions or suggestions.

The biggest reason is, without a doubt, my lack of skill compared to what's required to get the job done. It's been years since I started working on MMDES, but the skills required for creating a competent, enjoyable experience haven't really improved. I feel like I'm always just barely winging it. Writing is always painful because I have no idea how to unravel the ideas in my head cohesively, the game is full of if/else statements because my coding skill is bad, and animating takes an ungodly amount of trial and error.

The initial script for the v0.9 update's main story events was more packed with complex scenes, but I had to constantly rewrite them because my animating skills aren't enough to bring them to life. I've been constantly headbutting instead of learning the required skills for the job since the first release of the game. It gradually burnt me out, making my already bad efficiency even worse, and I believe I'm at my lowest point right now.

In some ways, I feel like scope creep is catching up to me. I set the scope of the game too high. A fully animated sandbox VN is just beyond my skillset. There hasn't been a single day I didn't regret deciding to make a fully animated game instead of just doing short animations.

With that said, I'm not going to give up developing the game or animating. I just wanted to explain what's going on on my end and how I've been feeling.

Another issue is that I'm financially constrained, and I've had to work a day job for the past few months. Patreon income definitely helps, but it's not enough for me to survive where I live. I plan to move to a smaller place to save on rent so I'll be able to work on the game full-time again in the future.

New H-scenes and features for them are complete. There are 24 main story events currently written and being animated. 18 of them (mostly just conversations or simple scenes) are complete, and the rest, which are going to be the highlight of v0.9, are nowhere near completion, sadly.

The v0.9 update will be bigger than usual, but it won't be as big as two updates combined.

I'm afraid to say, but there is still no ETA. Originally, I wanted to release a smaller update back in March, but I proceeded to bite off more than I could chew and ended up here. My personal goal was to release it before October, but it seems impossible at my current speed.

I'm planning to rewrite the remaining events to make them easier to work on, and I've postponed parts of them to v0.10 so that I can at least deliver v0.9 without a cliffhanger.