Merry Christmas from Tango Fiction! + Dev News

Taylor is here to crack some nuts! Or maybe the nuts of guys who hit on her? 

Merry Christmas everyone! Apparently everyone opens their presents early anyway!

I suppose this is as good of a time as any to post the other big piece of dev news for 2022.

I recently had an epiphany which basically crystallized my thoughts of the past couple years.

The short version is I’m working my beak off. It’s a bit frustrating because that hasn’t translated into income that I can use to grow as a developer or patch up my rickety equipment but I realize that’s my fault. I should have done things differently. Live and learn.

When I first started I would write every day and then nearing the end of the month I would grind out an update no matter how many hours it took. Even before I had a patreon page, I put in months of full time pre production work. So it never really mattered if the page income was $30 or $3000 since I would have put in the same effort. I was hoping it would balance out but it never did.

Around 2021 after about three years it was getting more difficult to continue to put those hours near full time dev hours in and justify doing it with such a modest page income. Since if I continued at that rate I would literally die of starvation and there wouldn’t be a game for anybody.

I had quite a number of readers and some sites were racking up enormous view counts (and theoretically ad revenue) plus I had lots of cool patrons and enough reviews and compliments that I really felt like I was on to something but I had to scale back my efforts relative to the page income in order to avoid the whole starvation and burnout thing.

It's been hard but creatively rewarding.

After chatting with several other game devs recently it really hit home that I made things very hard for myself by by changing Transfigure from a 12-15 ending game to 100+ ending game. That has made it difficult to complete without a lot of resources and time but thanks to the generosity of the patrons of Tango Fiction, it’s almost done.

Being a solo dev is the most difficult job I’ve ever had for by far the lowest pay but I enjoy it.

Right now my motivation level is the highest its been in years. The addition of 3D graphics will finally allow me to produce a finished game that I can monetize and then hopefully I will be able to afford a tiny pair of hummingbird pants and continue to make cool games for years to come.

In the end it’s up to me. I need to just suck it up and put out a commercially viable project. So that’s what I’m working on. Every single day. Both versions of Transfigure are going to be finished but I only really theoretically get paid for the Ren Py one and I’m poor so I’m trying to do as much on that as possible while doing everything I usually do plus more. Please be mindful that completing one will mean finishing the other version too.

In other dev news I’ve done hundreds of render experiments, learned how to use a whole bunch of tricky software and solved (and created and then solved) dozens of tech issues. I have begun putting together the Transfigure Ren Py demo in earnest and it looks pretty slick.

The coolest thing is that I think everything is working together in a surprisingly synergistic manner. I thought a Python project might distract from the html Transfigure but it has only improved it. Seeing the game from a new light has allowed me to spot and fix a lot of minor issues. It is also highlighting the areas I need to work on more so I’ve written an above average amount for the game to finish it up. It is also waaaaaaaaay easier for me to keep track of dead ends to eventually complete them and wrap up the game.

Despite the difficult dev cycle, I still strongly believe in Tango Fiction so I’m taking my recent check, some saved page income, the uncashed subscribestar funds, and my work Xmas bonus and investing about $4,000 into Tango Fiction. This will increase the budget by about 66% and get me the upgraded system I need to brute force my way through Transfigure and set me up so I can render a lot of the things I’ve created lately to finish a complete title (and make art for the many other future projects I have planned).

Thanks for believing in me! I will continue to give Tango Fiction my best effort in the new year to finish this game and then we’ll see where we end up.

Happy holidays!

Love,

Tango