Happy 1st Birthday to Conway!

Yep! It is the 1 year anniversary of the release of version 0.01 (or whatever the versions were called back then)

Let's have a talk, shall we?

February 8th is when I uploaded and released it on itch.
Why February 8th you may ask?
Well, I had only planned January as an experimental month for myself, with the oil painting and the VN test. So I'd release it on february 1st... And then it, naturally, took longer.
But I guess it works out so that we don't have the anniversary right on update release days.
The past

And yeah, what a year it's been! Thank you to all of you first of all for making this possible.
Quite simply it wouldn't be possible without the support of all you generous peeps here. As it turns out, developing a game is a fuckton of work, and if I would need to pay the bills through commission work or what have you there would be no way I'd find the time and energy to work on Conway on the side.

And I've mentioned it before in a few places, but for a while around May, June-ish it did look really dicey. The first half of the year I was bleeding about 500-700 bucks a month of my savings. The game didn't really pick up and a good amount of my walks were spent contemplating just when I'd have to see a sign before pulling the plug. End of June? Maybe it's worth to stretch it to July?
At the lowest point, we were about a month away from pulling the plug on Conway. But right around that time, the trend in people subbing here started to pick up. While it's only in the past month or two that I've reached the point where I'm not actively bleeding money each month, the trend was the bit I needed to see that maybe people are interested after all!
The present

I've attached the itch stats of the past year. So those of you who would like to have a peek can do so. As you can see, Update 10 was a massive success at least in terms of numbers for the game. Update 9 was already the first one to break the record for downloads that the release day set, but Update 10 got picked up by the algorithms and sat in the most popular furry games for a while. Soooo, yeah, quite chuffed with that spike! We'll see what the long-term effects are, but for now I just enjoy the aesthetic of -BIG SPIKE-.

And yeah, the game as a whole is just sitting in a good spot. We've had about 12k downloads in total, around 80k page visits, and a rating of 4.8/5 with 127 ratings (which btw, easy way to help, is to leave a juicy 5* rating on itch. Does wonders for the placement of the game in the different categories on the site, plus it gives me a fuzzy feeling in my tum tum.)

It's also been such a joy to see that all characters end up having their share of fans judging by comments and that nobody is left in the dry. Of course, some of them have a bit of an easier time, like Samuel and Julian being the more sociable lot they are, and just the screen time they've had so far. While others like Raj or Arthur are slower burns and even they get some mentions as the favorites of some people, and that just makes me chuffed.
Naturally, they're designed to cover different interests and preferences, but I'm always nervous if the characters are good, resonate with people and hope that they can be fun to be around. So any time someone mentions a character it just makes me so goddamn giddy.
Some of them will be difficult to handle with grace, and I'm not perfect, so I'm sure for at least one of the main cast what I've planned will fall flat, or I mess it up in some fashion. But fuck it, I'll try.

Not everything has been peaches and roses recently though, so I have to admit Updates 10 and 11 have been/are a bit of a struggle. I just messed up planning for my support writers, and it's been more or less just me handling everything for both updates 10 and 11. That's why art has been a bit sparse... Because most of my time is just taken up doing writing duty, and I'm not the fastest writer, unfortunately.
Like, at this point, with the game having all the branches and 125k in total word count, the story for the characters and how they've interacted on the two initial days. It makes it a bit more difficult to actually get people on board in a timely manner. I can't just go and say, "Hey, write me a scene where this character and that character are involved, and they do that." Since a new writer knows absolutely zero about all the stuff that's been there before, all the stuff that's planned for the characters and all that jazz.
So if one support writer is busy or just has writing block or whatever, it may be, my solution so far has just been going, "Well, shit." :')

Not the fault of my writing buddies, of course. They've been absolutely invaluable and I can't offer nearly enough to expect to be the highest priority for them. I'm just happy they want to help out AT ALL for what I can pay them in return. I should have planned contingencies but didn't. Simple as that.

So, I've made the decision to bring on another writer in Televassi, and also want to hopefully integrate Robert Baird more again going forward. With more of them willing to help out I will be able to assign things to people as they're available. Which hopefully will avoid me having to do whole updates on my own and take the pressure off of wonderful peeps like Rubric. So yeah, I learned my lesson there, but since it just takes time for people to get familiar with the Conway world and characters, it ended up with me being a bit swamped with EVERYTHING for Updates 10 and 11.
The future

Speaking of what's planned, then?
Update 10 closes out day 2, and Update 11 starts after our first time skip. I don't know if you've ever looked at how slow these ships were, but if we ever want to make it to Cape Town, then we'll need those time skips.
Not only that, but it also allows for characters to just develop in the meantime, and also their relationship towards the player character. While Characters like Nomax and Julian ended up having some raunchy scenes right away, it wouldn't exactly fit to have others throw themselves at you on day 2. So skipping ahead just keeps things moving, keeps things interesting because we can focus on specific parts more, and just show the development of characters at a more natural pace.

So the next sections are this first post-time skip section that subbed patrons already get a taste of in the WIP update, and then next up on the itinerary will be Morocco.
Both sections I'm really stoked about! And I hope you are too. :)

Stretch goals?
Patreon did away with them a while back, but we'll just make our own stretch goals, with blackjack and hookers.
Just instead of blackjack and hookers, how about we talk Animations?!
Hell yeah! I'm no animator, and it's not really a discipline I particularly enjoy either from the times I tried. So, since Patreon is currently about break-even, we can start thinking ahead a little, and I think the first point I want to tackle is some simple animations.
Stuff like moving tails, ears, and eyes. Stuff like that.

So how about that, we're currently floating at around 1250 USD a month, and if we're crossing the 1500 USD mark, I'll be holding out my feelers to get these small animations into the game.

If you like to contribute to making animations possible, consider supporting the Patreon over here: https://www.patreon.com/Nomax

Possibly animations, an exciting new section of the story, some more v2 character art, some more maritime menagerie characters. Sounds good for a year 2 plan?

I certainly hope so and hope that you all will be along for the ride, as it's been an absolute blast, and I can't thank you enough for making it possible. I just want this thing to be the best it can be for all of you. :)