Greetings Single fans! It's me, [m.] - the developer of "I Just Want to be Single!!". I thought it might be a good time to do a Steam Announcement update for a change, reasons which I will get to below.
I often do regular check-ins and do small slices of updates every now and then in my Discord server, my Twitter and sometimes on my Kickstarter update blogs as well as replying to discussion threads on Steam community, although not everyone seems to catch those. (Our socials are all at the bottom of this post)
Often I get comments saying "There's been silence from the dev" or "No news at all, anywhere" from people demanding "transparency" which often times feels out of my control since I try my best to update people wherever I can, so I hope putting an update here will reach more people.
To get to the important part:
I've been pretty quiet since the Early Access launch in terms of updates. My plan was initially to quickly get out a content update in march of 2025 in order to fill in gaps of content and move from there. As you may know, that obviously didn't happen.
And understandably, this has lead many to believe that I've given up on this game or that I've abandoned it and "ran away with the money" as some put it. Even if you don't exactly call it that, I understand the frustration of not having content updates for a year even when I promised specific deadlines.
I'm not exactly sure how many people have that kind of sentiment or they are just a minority but I want to clear it up just in case some of you are unsure:
I'm still working on the game. I haven't abandoned it.
Although there are quite a few people who are patiently waiting for the next update, I often reiterate this point many times on my socials and in our community. And I understand why people want me to, waiting is one of the most frustrating and difficult things to do, especially for something you're looking forward to. I really do get it and I feel the same way about things I look forward to. This year we got Silksong and Deltarune Chapter 3 & 4 after waiting for many many years. I still haven't played them because I've just been too busy this year (we'll get to this soon below) and there's still many more things that were delayed this year that I'm also looking forward to. I just saw a tweet from the developer of Your Turn To Die saying that they apologize for delaying the game even though they promised the last chapter to be done this year.
Now, I'm not pointing this things out to say "hey, they did it so its okay for me to do it too". That's not it at all, but I'm just trying to say that game development is complex just as it is with any kind of job.
I won't bore you with the details of my personal life but I'm sure everyone is feeling the pressure and squeeze of a tough time in life with money and life stuff. 2025 has been especially very difficult for me personally.
Life just didn't go the way I wanted it to, and I desperately wanted to get some content updates out this year, I just couldn't and that's the honest truth.
There's a bit of that and there's also a bit of me wanting to make the best game I can. You might call it a "perfectionist" flaw, but I really do think I don't want to make something perfect, I just want to make something that's worth your time and money. I could have made something passable and 'okay' quickly, I just don't think that's something that you deserve to get after all this waiting and hype. I want to make something that's good and something I'm happy with. And yes, I understand there's an extreme side to that where I could spiral into an abyss where I never release anything ever but that's something I'm always aware of and that's not what I want.
At the end of the day, I just wanted to tell you that if I didn't care, if I wasn't going to release anything eventually, I wouldn't even bother to be writing this for you right now.
I do care.
Now, you may be asking - "Sure, but WHEN are you going to release any new updates?"
I've been trying to not promise any deadlines because I seem to miss them and disappoint people. I'd rather not announce an official date. That being said, I PLAN to get something out on February of 2026. That's not a promise, but that is my plan.
I'm sorry that I haven't been able to make any content updates this year, and as always I'm extremely thankful to all of my supporters and everyone who is understanding, patiently waiting for this game to eventually, one day, finish in all of it's glory. I hope you all will be there with me.
Happy Holidays
-m.
