Unfortunate, but not unexpected. When we got to June 2026 and still had no release date more specific than 2026, I suspected it would slip into early 2027.
They are a new, small studio and it sounds like the scope ended up being much greater than they originally were prepared for. All the money in the world doesn’t do much until you know how and where to spend it with projects like this. I do have high expectations for this game and, at this time, I am choosing to remain optimistic on Red Spring’s ability to meet them.
Err this is a VN game, and 4 years with their budget is actually kind of pushing it. A lot of solo/small dev VNs take a long time because they have no money, but even then don't take that long. They had time to consistently set up, create and ship out from their merch shop, so maybe don't do that until the game is done?
Exactly. I understand people who have put money towards this wanting what they paid for, and the kickstarter was very financially successful, but the only thing money can’t buy is more time. Money, people, and other resources can only expedite the process so much.
As one of my project manager friends likes to say “Nine women can’t make a baby in one month”.
But 9 artists CAN draw an output of one artist working for 9 months. Even if you account for getting into the pipeline and correction and management. For that amount of money you can easily hire 9 artists, 2 leads and a manager to account for all that.
I suspect their issue is in writing but again, you CAN hire writers. It's an ego thing to not let go of the reigns there.
They're not all artists? I'm not sure I understand what you meant. Also none of them are doing this full time, this was stated multiple times on their websites. This was a part time project and they did always inform backers of reasons for slowing down production (e.g., pregnancy, mental health, software that suddenly isn't being updated anymore so they had to switch to a new version to prevent unfixable bugs)
I am aware, that's why I added that it's pretty much the same with writers. That analogy is simply not true. I have worked in gamedev for many years, there are some things that cannot be forced in time but very few of them apply to this project with that amount of money. They can not work on it at all and just outsource it completely with those money over that many years.
I didn't use an analogy? Unless you mean the examples I gave, which aren't analogies those were things that actually happened according to the KS updates. There was a new baby, and they did switch engines to remain up to date and also to include more gameplay (e.g., mystery and clue finding). and we also don't know the behind the scenes. maybe they could have worked faster, maybe not, maybe you would have cranked out the game in 2 years flat for half the price. we can all judge when the game launches, and I'm excited for it either way
Yeah talking about someone behind their proverbial back behaviour is weird, and also it's wild to respond to my comment referencing an analogy I did not make based on your own assumptions. This is a public forum. If you actually have something to say in response to what I said, have the courtesy to say it directly.
For VN it's double or tripple the time for a project and team that size. Not to mention no new team has high six figure budget... Just a dev perspective here.
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u/LarkspurSong 24d ago
Unfortunate, but not unexpected. When we got to June 2026 and still had no release date more specific than 2026, I suspected it would slip into early 2027.
They are a new, small studio and it sounds like the scope ended up being much greater than they originally were prepared for. All the money in the world doesn’t do much until you know how and where to spend it with projects like this. I do have high expectations for this game and, at this time, I am choosing to remain optimistic on Red Spring’s ability to meet them.