Hi, everyone. I know it's been a (long, long) while, and I'm truly sorry for that, more than you know.
The past year has been full of extreme personal lows and losses, and that had me challenging my relationship with everything, including my work with games.
My mental health took a deep hit in March 2024, and it was basically all downhill from there. I lost my father suddenly in June, which is something I’m still trying really hard to deal with, and then my cousin who I was very close with took his own life in early December.
This all made doing anything (even getting out of bed, some days) really hard, and I didn't want to post an update just to say ‘I did it' when simply logging on felt like such a monumental task.
I realize that was incredibly selfish of me, especially when all of you, and everyone who contributed to our Call Me Under Kickstarter, and just supported us in general, gave so much to us and our projects. Leaving you and my team in the dark is my biggest regret when it comes to my work and this community we created.
I needed to give myself space to reassess my involvement with the game dev community and face working again when I thought I could cope with the feelings and memories that came with each simple action. I’m not a quitter, and I always want to finish what I start, and I will, no matter how long that takes, and no matter how much trust in me you've all lost that that will actually happen.
Since January this year, I've slowly been reimmersing myself back into writing with some script work, and that has really been an intrinsic part in getting me back on my feet and giving me the confidence to take the helm at Lunaris again and continue work on Call Me Under.
Thank you for reading, for your patience. I’ve read some of your old discussions and messages an embarrassing amount of times over the past year when I needed to remember why I love to make games and write.
I'm going to be posting a more detailed update on the future of CMU/Lunaris to the Kickstarter and itch blog next weekend (3rd/4th May).
I also want to quickly say that under NO circumstances was any money from our Kickstarter used for anything other than to make CMU. There was a pretty lengthy post in our community here that was full of a LOT of misinformation and conspiracy theories. I've explained in detail before, including in a Kickstarter update, that indie developers often ask for a lot less money than they actually need to complete a game this size just to get any funding. Anyone spreading rumours that say otherwise are fundamentally incorrect. Regardless, I’ll ensure that there's a detailed breakdown of our finances in the coming update. I also want to assure you that backers will still receive their physical rewards.
I want to give a big thanks to my team who were also in the dark. I reached out to them at the start of this year, and I can't express how grateful I am that they embraced me with open arms. Please don't allow anyone to take any of this out on them. All any of them have ever done is work hard and support me. Any type of hate, harassment, misinformation spreading, or spamming on any form of social media will always result in a block or ban.
This is not me trying to get sympathy by laying out my trauma, I just think that anything other than complete honesty in this situation is unfair to everyone. I'm not making excuses, I am deeply sorry for the silence and avoidance and for any stress I've caused you.
Kris x