Stopping work on SFBD

I apologize for even fewer updates than usual lately—for the last two weeks, I've had one of the worst colds of my life, and I'm still not quite over it. I feel awful, both because I haven't gotten much done, and because my insides are overflowing with phlegm.

Anyway, originally, I wanted to release another demo of Super Fuzzy Beach Dater by the end of the month, but that's not going to happen. I'm too mentally and physically exhausted to work on it for a while. While I made some decent progress on the game while my internet was out, I also created enough new problems that getting so sick for so long put me really, really behind, and now even getting a simple demo out in a few weeks seems like an insurmountable goal that could snowball into a lot of pain and misery.

So… I know this may irritate people, but I'm cutting my losses and stopping my work on Super Fuzzy Beach Dater. Among other things, I need to start thinking about my future, by focusing on looking for a dayjob, and/or working on smaller, easier to market projects I have a better chance of actually finishing. Super Fuzzy Beach Dater is a such an elaborate passion project I'm not sure how much meaningful progress I can even make on it right now. It's right on the edge of being practical… if I was healthy, and that was the biggest mistake I made while planning it.

To help give Super Fuzzy Beach Dater fans a sense of closure, though, I am going to open up about spoilers for the game's plot, and try to make some more supplemental content for the game, like standalone art of the characters and scenarios. This won't be as good as having a finished game, of course, but hopefully it will be better than nothing. I will get started on this quickly—I'm planning on recording a podcast about where the game would have gone as soon as tomorrow—and as before, patrons will get all of this content early, and will be able to influence some parts of it.

If you keep supporting me after this, thank you—to be honest, I'm not sure if I have what it takes to make a living as an indie creator, but I'm not going to give up easily, and I hope that by trying different things I will eventually stumble onto something that works. If you like the mood and style of Super Fuzzy Beach Dater, hopefully you will find my other work equally enthralling.

And, also… I'm listing the game as "on hold" instead of "canceled" on itch.io for now because I will likely still be posting some devlogs about supplemental content for the game, may come back to it in the far future, and some minor updates to fix bugs are a possibility.