Around February of this year I changed positions at my job, and the new position has been very taxing on my time. On top of this, my son has started potty training. On top of this, I've had several personal issues arise that have drained my time.
To top it all off: whenever I did sit down to work on Trope Tales, I found myself fiddling with the first 9 chapters (balancing bosses, fixing bugs, adding new items, adding new interactable objects, etc) instead of pushing the story forward.
I'll be real: chapter 10 is about 35% done (half the maps are in place, the story is planned, and the first area is mostly complete) but there's still a full chapter 11, chapter 12, chapter 13, and chapter 14 I need to finish after that.
For chapter 11 I only have two out of seven maps done, and none of the quests/events/interactions.
For chapter 12 I have a rough draft of the story, but nothing built. The same is true for chapters 13 and 14.
I thought long and hard about what to do here. I could try to buckle down and rush out a game in a month, but that would mean a severe drop in quality. I could release it as "Early Access" and roll out the later chapters as they were done, but that felt like a cop-out and who wants to pay for an unfinished JRPG? I could try to pay a third party to finish the game, but then it wouldn't really be my vision.
Ultimately, after a lot of hair pulling and frustration, I've decided to extend the release date.
For now I've tentatively set the release date to June 2027 (one year beyond the original release date). This gives me roughly 2-3 months per chapter to try and finish the story. However I also want to set expectations properly: there's a chance this will get delayed one more time to December 2027. My reasoning is simple: in August 2027 my youngest will start going to school, which means I'll finally have 2 hours every morning to dedicate to working on my game.
Right now my daily schedule is:
7am: Wake up
7am - 9am: Watch the youngest until he can go to day care
9am - 5pm: Work
5pm - 9pm: Watch the youngest until he goes to bed
9pm - 10pm: Desperately try to get some house chores done before bed
Repeat
There's no time in there to work on games. But if I haven't finished Trope Tales by the time school starts next year, I'll definitely have time to dedicated on a daily basis!
6am: Wake up
7am: School starts!
7am - 9am: Blissful JRPG happy times
To anyone who has been dying to play Trope Tales, I sincerely apologize for the delay, but hope you can still enjoy the demo while you wait!