I'm not dead


Hey everyone

Where do I even begin...
As you have noticed, there's been a lack of posts lately and that understandably birthed some confusion.
So in fact, as the title says, I'm not dead. If you are a member on the Lewdlab Discord Server you already know that. It's a good idea to hop in, you can see I'm online there and I usually answer questions there, if it's a legit question of course. Here's the invite link.

You probably want to know what's been going on lately and why the radio silence here.
It's a complex issue and I'll try to do my best to break it down.

First of all, I have to admit that I bit off more than I could chew with DoD:DE
I thought I'd get this done in no time and move on with MP. I was wrong.
Just to put in in perspective: Midnight Paradise so far has 178 animations, and a big chunk of that came this year with the 0.14 release. For Dreams of Desire: Definitive Edition I have made over 450 animations already, and more on the way, it's going to be above 500.

That's actually a gargantuan task in itself, but there's a ton more work going into it. It really shows the game wasn't made with a steam release in mind. Making sure there isn't anything in the game that can cause problems down the line with steam and changing those is another thing and of course creating the new content are all very big tasks. And the perfectionist in me doesn't let me half-ass it.

Now the scope of the work alone wouldn't be that big of an issue. And this isn't why I have been quiet lately. In my "prime days", 4 years ago I could have chewed through this maybe not super fast, but fast enough for it not to cause problems.
But we're not in 2017 anymore and here comes the second part of the problem.
The problem - which is a culmination of the past 4 years - is burnout. A lot of artists and content creators suffer from this and I didn't realize that's what has been going on with me at first.
Spending most of last year in quarantine only made it worse and add on top of all that all my health issues this year. I don't like to talk about that because I don't want to seem like a whiny little bitch. But it's been really taxing mentally and physically, especially the damn covid, and that's only one item on the list. I've seen people say I'm lying about my health or that who cares if I'm sick, they go to work when they are sick too. So I rarely share anything about what's actually happening to me, but let me tell you, it's been a rough year so far.

Now a bit about the psychological part of things:

Ever since my whole journey as an adult games dev started, I've had a constant level of stress. There's always the next deadline, there's always the competition to beat, there's always something going wrong. It is a high stress job, at least for me.
But the worst is the feeling that if I ever stop to take a break, I'll lose it all. The fans, the momentum, my creativity - my job. Like a voice in my head was constantly shaming me every time I was trying to do something that's not work. In the end I always felt guilty when I was away from the computer, but feeling drained and trapped when I wasn't.

And in the end, look where that lead me.
I stopped releasing anyway because this whole thing paralyzed me. This caused me to not post, partly because I was depressed, and partly because I couldn't offer you guys something new and flashy in a post, and I didn't want to post about not getting work done fast enough.

Now this doesn't mean I didn't work these past months. It's just that some days I did good progress, but on other days I considered my progress garbage. I set internal release dates though for the past few months that I always had to push back. The intent was there, but I wasn't in a good enough state to fulfill it.

What am I doing to restore everything to 100% ?

First of all, I took a week off. I packed up my stuff and left the country. I've been to museums, seen some churches, and just generally been outside a lot. That did wonders to me. I came back refreshed and refueled.

Second, I'm not taking any chances and I'm going back to therapy. I've told myself I'll go this past year, but I didn't make myself commit. Now I did, I'm starting tomorrow. It has helped in the past and I'm sure it will help again.

Third, I'm adapting a work schedule that's more fitting to the goal of reducing constant stress. The goal here is that you wouldn't notice this change if I wasn't telling you about it, meaning in the future I'd release new content consistently, but it'd be less stressful to me. This is something like not working on Sundays and distributing the workload smarter.
I'm also making other changes to my lifestyle to make sure this won't happen again.

I'm feeling a lot better now... You know what - I actually feel pretty good now. I'm having the itch again, to make new content. Ideas are coming to me again. It feels good to be back.


That being said, I owe you guys an apology. I've been keeping you in the dark, although not intentionally, and I'm sorry.

But to end this post on a positive note:

The release date of Dreams of Desire: Definitive Edition is the 20th of October.

I know that date isn't close, but at least I can assure you: whatever happens, DoD:DE is getting released on that date and it will be followed closely with an MP release.

And as always, thank you for your great support!
-Dr Sin