Happy Anniversary! Where Do I See Things Going? 🗺️ (Patreon)

Happy one year anniversary everyone!

I didn't realize until this week that I opened up this Patreon on May 2nd 2023

First let me say I'm thrilled to have so many that appreciate my work enough to support! Compared to virtually any other creator in this genre I feel like you have blown away the competition.

But before getting into the big picture, let me fill you in a few things coming to this Funday Friday - A week of Gabbie!

⌨️ Keystroke has another addition to the TOTS zone with her angel friend Angela. This is Gabbie's first time to meet the player and Angela's second foray in this world. You might as well sit back and let the angel duo do their thing.

💗 Trials of the Succubi has another nap event due to popular request and partial commission. Because I have a bad habit of trying to combine hotly requested items, there will also be the opportunity to start Gabbie's corruption road. She is quite new to this whole angel thing, what if you subbed in for Lana to educate her?

😇 Fall of Haven has a new slime enemy coming above and beyond all of the general changes. I also expect to have a decent "glow up" of the first forest stage. I'm still spending much of my time killing bugs and adding core features (still a ton to go) but I can't wait to eventually shift into "creation" mode and give you new stuff at a faster pace!

The slime girl was a new artist from Fiverr but I'm even more excited about a sprite artist I'm hiring from Venezuela! They are excited too and it's a more affordable rate!

🗺️ Where are we now and where are we going?

Due to your generosity, Patreon currently estimates my monthly income at about $1420 per month. In reality, I am doing a little bit better considering new pledges and cancelations that often happen. I am also on pace for this month to be my best one yet!

So how do I feel about this number? I feel like I'm probably in the 95th percentile for one person teams in the adult game space!

On the other hand, it puts me earning about $6.70 per hour before taxes which is unsustainable unless I can grow it. As of February 2024, I left my career and elected to take a shot at pursuing this full time and see if I can make game creation my new job. I am completely aware that growth comes with time and have big goals that I am targeting. I was caught off guard by the Q1 Patreon woes that seem to be so common because I was otherwise hoping to continue growing at a decent clip.

We will likely be fine financially with or without Patreon but this is also my testing ground if I can truly turn this into a living.

Fall of Haven has over $10,000 budgeted for art, sprites, sound effects, music, misc expenses, and the game engine itself. I am betting big on the vision and I hope you all trust me.

❤️ Milovana

I imagine that the majority of my supporters came to me through Trials of the Succubi and the remainder came for Keystroke. I am fully aware that Fall of Haven having no real images will be a big stumbling block for that audience.

I have every intention of adding to both Milovana projects EVERY WEEK for the foreseeable future. However, I cannot reach my goals or sustain myself in the long term with continued sole reliance on Milovana. Not only could the website go down and bring the editor along with it, they have blocked most ways to play their teases offline. This is a serious blow to any method I have to distribute it beyond the Milovana crowd and I must grow beyond that crowd.

Further complications with Milovana are how to monetize it. Though I have done quite well doing so through Patreon and Ko-Fi, a single copyright claim could bring it all down. Using real images is a bit of a grey area and to grow where I want to I think would bring too much unwanted attention.

The audience outside of Milovana has not been too kind to the Milovana engine either. It is a severe limiting factor to me in what I can pull of in it. Not only that, but size limitations have slowed my progress on Trials of the Succubi for over a year now. There will be a day when it ceases to be even less editable than it is now which would stop me in my tracks.

This is why I determined months ago that my third game would have to be a standalone game that could eventually be distributed on steam or elsewhere. I am super proud of what I've done with no video game background but my vision of how Fall of Haven will play is still a long way off. I can only say if the temptation of my Milovana games is what brought you to support me, there is much more where that came from planned in Fall of Haven.

☀️ Near Future

I expect to release updates to all three games virtually every week at Funday Friday! I still have TONS of plans for all of them. As tempted as I am to shift even more of my time to Fall of Haven, I am aware that it is not what you are all entrusting me to make.

We have been attempting to adopt 3 children at the same time. This date could be this month or it could be in early July. Whenever this happens, we lose our childcare support. On top of this, summer is 7 school days away. These events will require me to step away much more and not allow me to put full time into the NSFW side of things.

We never quite took our 10 year anniversary trip (anyone want to watch kids for a week haha?) so if that comes up, it would also slow the pace of things down.

I am writing these uncertainties down because being consistent is incredibly important to me so I want to be transparent with expectations.

📝 In Summary

Thank each and every one of you SO much for supporting me! If I haven't made it clear before, each and every single one of you has a direct line to me to discuss anything you want!

• I will continue Funday Friday posts for new content EVERY WEEK!

• I need to find a better way to monetize if this is to become my fulltime gig.

• Fall of Haven or games like it will be my inevitable future gambles.

• Trials of the Succubi and Keystroke will continue receiving updates until Milovana stops letting me. 

• There are a few events coming up in the next few months that can slow me down a lot but nothing on the horizon that will stop me!

🎊 Here's to making this year much better!