WARNING: Post may be a bit long
Hey everyone, this is Dusk Golem aka AestheticGamer, or you can just call me Ryan. In the act of transparency, I thought I'd talk about future plans for the next year or so for Yai Gameworks.
Firstly, I'll tackle Red Haze updates as this can be kept a bit brief. I'll continue working on updates for Red Haze quite frequently for the next few weeks as I fix things people find, finish the Trafficking Dungeon and add in the Lighthouse Upper Floors and Final Door Area when you get all 26 endings. You'll see updates pretty regularly, might have noticed some have already hit recently, and the Trafficking Dungeon will be finished within the next couple days. If you find any bugs or typos, please post them in this thread (any ideas or discussion can be had in the discussion forum): http://steamcommunity.com/app/428860/discussions/0/135508833655990580/
Now, something I have to be honest about is I'm poor as dirt. I love making games, but in some ways I wish I was more talented. I can sort of do art and program, but if I'll be honest my skills are limited in those areas (I have been practicing and improving), and so I often struggle with the idea already if I can pursue my passions, if I have the right to, those kind of things. But I believe a life worth living is a life chasing dreams, so that's what I'm going to do until I can't no more. Red Haze I already knew wasn't going to change my money problems. At the time of writing, the earnings from Red Haze are almost enough to pay off half of my medical expenses from an emergency room visit I made last July.
In about a month or so, I'm going to launch a Kickstarter for a project named Noiseless Signal. You may have noticed its name among others in the credits for Red Haze. The reason for the Kickstarter is mostly to pay for the future of Yai Gameworks, so while the Kickstarter is for Noiseless Signal it's more specifically for funding the next year of game development for me, Rincs, and other people who help out in small ways on my projects. I also hope you guys find Noiseless Signal interesting, I'm just now starting real development, so it'll be rapid development between other things to get a demonstration of what that project has in store.
The reason for this rush is due to the recent Steam Direct announcement. If you haven't heard, Valve will be replacing its Steam Greenlight system with a new system where users can just post their games to Steam once approved as a developer, but the added thing is that each game will have a fee which is undecided right now (Valve says a fee for submitting a game could end up being anywhere between $100-5000 USD). The reason given is to stop shovelware, but there's a big issue with this for me as someone who is poor as dirt and how I make games. I don't have money, I certainly don't try to make shovelware and instead make game experiences I hope people will enjoy and I work on multiple things at once and try to make shorter but worthwhile experiences I release a bit more rapidly than the average indie developer but at a cheaper price point (as well as I like to release free things every once in a while)...
Basically, this system is extremely threatening to me, but I'm going to try to approach and work through it. But before that gets implemented, I want to get one more game through Steam Greenlight in Noiseless Signal, to make one less title I don't have to make a fee for. More so, I think you guys may like Noiseless Signal a lot once you learn more about it, it's goal is to have a dream-like desolate atmosphere. I'll have a lot more on it soon (obviously if I'm having a Kickstarter/Greenlight thing in a month), but also want to use it as an opportunity to secure other games coming to Steam through the fee and allow me to work on them, like Close Your Eyes 2 and the remake of Blank Slate.
Back in 2013, I did a crowdfunding thing on Indiegogo for a game named Complete Isolation that raised a little over $2000. That hasn't released yet, and I've been releasing every game I've made since then to the people who helped fund that until I release the game, but I want Complete Isolation to be something special. The money earned from that was 100% for music for Complete Isolation, but since then I've been using the funds from that to make the music I've made in all my projects so far. I thought I should mention this as while the funding campaign will be going through Kickstarter, four years ago I did do a crowdfunding thing for a game that hasn't released yet, but the reasoning isn't because the game was abandoned, it helped fund the tools, samples, and ability for me to do music for my projects in every project since then and Complete Isolation I want to practice to have the skill to fully make one day.
This campaign in comparison is for Noiseless Signal (a game that will be releasing sooner than later), but also more so for Yai Gameworks as a whole to allow us to continue releasing games on Steam despite being poor and to allow me to continue pursuing my passions. I hope it does well, and I hope I can continue to bring my little games to you guys if you enjoy them.
I'll be posting a lot more about all of this and Noiseless Signal to you guy's soon, but I thought I should mention this now as opposed to later to give you an idea of what's to come.
Thank you for your time.