Hello everyone!

Did you miss me? I miss you very much. I'm sorry that I haven't written anything for a long time. You know – work, work, work. It is very difficult to squeeze out at least something when coming home in the evening. Although it has become a little easier now.

As many have already noticed, I am gradually returning to the development of TIF. And yes it is TIF, not a new game. (Later, in the next post, I'll tell you more about the new game and show you screenshots.) I came back to TIF because of you. Because you've been writing comments and personal messages all these six months. Thank you for not forgetting and sorry for the long wait.

My health is very good right now. Although in the first month after the development of game was stopped, I had two attacks. December 14th, on the eve of my birthday, and December 29th, almost on the eve of the New Year. So I spent the two biggest holidays bedridden. It was especially fun to take two sick days in the first month at work. 😅 But everything is fine now. I haven't thought about the pain at all for over a month. It's even kind of unusual.

Everything is more or less fine with money too. I have fully paid off the debts that I have accumulated over the past year, and even bought some useful things. For example, from the first salary I bought a table with a lifting mechanism, and from the second a new chair. I think this was the reason that my back stopped hurting. So now, thanks to my official job, I have no problems with money.

Why did I decide to come back now? In fact, it was an accident, or rather my forgetfulness. I was planning to return only in September, but I forgot to extend the pause on Patreon. If someone doesn't know, you can pause the page on Patreon only for a month. That is, I went to the page every month and extended the pause. But the last time, it just slipped my mind. I remembered this too late, when most of the funds had already been debited. I'm sorry about that. But! Thanks to this, I decided to return to the game early. Since the funds have been debited from you, then I have to work them out.

And yes, about the support! As I wrote above, I don't really need money right now. Of course, I don't swim in them, but I have enough for food and shelter. So you should only support me if you really have free funds. Although I would like the support to remain at least at the level of $ 250-300 so that I can pay for translation services, pay for the necessary assets, pay for MEGA, Google Drive, and so on. I won't be able to pay for it all myself, and the game has no financial prospects in the form of a sale on Steam.

Okay, it doesn't matter. Once again it all came down to my health and money. The most important thing is that TIF is back! Let's finish this story together!

Google MEGA

Hey, everyone.

I won't take too long. I got a rejection from Steam.  

I knew from the very beginning that it would be like this. It was pretty obvious that Steam wouldn't like Alice, and they decided to reinsure themselves. It's still very frustrating though. 

The reply from Steam came over a week ago, and all this time I've been trying to finally decide what to do next. 

I've already mentioned my situation in the last post, now I'll try to explain it in more detail, telling you what happened to me for the last year and a half. But before I do that, I'll make it clear that I'm not writing this to make you feel sorry for me, but to explain why I have to close the game.

After I took a break last February and froze the page for 3 months to regain some health and nerves, I lost about 45% of my support. That's when I decided not to complain about life, and just keep doing what I can to keep the game alive. That's why I hardly wrote any personal posts like I used to do. And every month after that, the support on Patreon dropped harder and harder. I had small savings, and I could live on them. But gradually they started to run out too. 

Then, in November 2022, Payoneer, the payment system I used to withdraw funds from Patreon, announced that it was closing all accounts for Russians. And I then asked those of you who had the opportunity to subscribe for a year, so that I could have at least some reserves. And a lot of people responded. Thank you very much again! I then raised $2,489, which I stretched over the course of 6 months. Obviously, I wasn't doing so well, so I started borrowing from people I knew and doing part-time work to keep afloat somehow.

In June, I traveled to another country to open an account there and withdraw my Patreon savings. I had to travel three times before I could receive them. As you can imagine, traveling to another country is not cheap, and to save money, I decided to take the bus. And that turned out to be a big problem because of my back. 17 hours straight one way on a bus with a sore spine is hell. It's been five months and I still haven't recovered from those trips. I withdrew $3,287 dollars from Patreon back then - that's what I had accumulated in a little over 6 months. Which would have been a good amount, but I was already in quite a bit of debt at the time, and I gave away most of that money almost immediately. And don't forget that to get that money, I had to travel to another country 3 times, pay for the trips themselves and the hotel. Now I have 2900 dollars saved up on Patreon again, which will barely cover my current debts accumulated over the last 5 months.

I realize a lot of you math doesn't add up, but this weird stuff from Patreon. Right now it says on the home page that I have $739 in support, but I'm very lucky if I raise that amount. More often than not, I raise $100 less. I never figured out how this counter works in so many years. 

Anyway, that's all I wanted to say about finances. Once again, I'll make it clear that this is not an attempt to make you feel sorry for me, I'm just trying to tell you about my situation in life. If you felt sorry for me and decided to support me after this, you should be very wrong. I'm just a guy on the internet, and my situation is far from the worst. There are millions of people in the world with much worse problems, help them better. Also, don't forget that the holidays are coming up and you'll need to buy gifts for your loved ones. And I'll pay off my debts myself, since I've already found a job. But I am still very grateful to you for helping me for so long!

In fact, that's the main reason I gave up. Because I feel worse and worse. 

As I've shared before, I took a break for three months in February 2022. And it really helped me! I felt normal for over a year, hardly ever thinking about my back. But after the 3 trips mentioned, it got worse than ever. Especially after the last one, when the bus got stuck at the border and instead of 17 hours, I sat on the bus for 28. That totally messed me up, and I still haven't recovered even though it's been over 5 months.

In September I had a very severe attack and for 2 weeks I basically couldn't work, couldn't sit, lie down or stand normally. I was in a lot of pain and no painkillers helped. That being said, I went to doctors, got massages, had a bunch of shots and lay under IVs with painkillers. It was because of this that I was not able to get the October update out in time. And now every day I'm afraid that I can break down again and go down for a couple more weeks, or possibly forever. 

It was after the October update that I decided to close the game. I realized that with my health, I wouldn't be able to release even short updates every month. And if I don't release updates every month, support goes down a lot.

As you realize, it's hard to develop a game with these inputs. It's hard to come up with dialogs, jokes and other things when you're struggling with your own health and financial problems. And the motivation is getting weaker and weaker every day. 

Also, of course, it's frustrating when you look at some new game that in the first 2 months gathers as much support as I've been gathering for 3-4 years. That's a lot of pressure. And I can't even understand why it's not like that for me. I mean, I really tried. I tried on every word, render, animation and everything, everything, everything. Is it just luck? Or is my game that much worse? I know it sounds pathetic, but it still hurts.

I'd like to add a few words about Steam. I've already said I was sure about the rejection, but some developers I knew and just friends urged me to try releasing the game there, as it could bring in enough for me to finish the game without worrying about money. That was one of the reasons why I started reworking the first chapters. But unfortunately, what happened is what happened. It's hard to blame Steam, since the fact that it releases adult games at all is already surprising. But it's so fucking frustrating!

Actually, the most annoying thing about this whole situation, in my opinion, is that the game has enough content for a fully finished game. About 200,000 words! That's more than in two full-fledged novels. Over 6 thousand images! Most of which are well done. Cool animations. Yes there aren't many, but they're good. So good, in fact, that several developers have offered to let me do animations for their games for money. 

Now that I think about it, I'm really surprised at what a gigantic job I did. And how frustrated I am that I never got around to finishing it....

Oh, okay. Stop feeling sorry for myself, I already look like a whiner after this post. Let's summarize.

I have neither the health nor the financial ability to continue The Intoxicating Flavor. Therefore, I am permanently closing the game.

I am very sorry. I apologize to you for not being able to bring the story to the promised end. 

I have already taken an official job. I contacted a former boss of mine who we worked well with for many years, and he offered me a position with him. It seems to pay a good salary. Now I need to work at least six months to get back on my feet, pay off my debts and make at least some savings. But what will I do after that?

I really want to keep making games. I think I have pretty good skills for that right now. At least I have a good renderer, and the animations are getting better and better every time. I'm not so sure about my skills as a screenwriter anymore though. TIF was too unpopular... But, I still have hope to make an interesting game. 

I originally wanted to remove the pages on Patreon, Boosty, Subscribestar and all social media related to the game, as well as the Discord server. To completely disappear as PixelsLab. After all, even if I decide to create a new game, I'll still have the shadow of an unfinished project on me. But on the other hand, I've heard so many words of support in the last two weeks that I just don't want to part with you. Besides, many of you have become, if not friends, then at least good acquaintances whose opinions are interesting to listen to.

So there's no way I can decide how I should proceed. I'm still leaning towards closing the page, since even if I start a new project, it will be very different from TIF. But for now, I've decided to freeze the page until the new year so Patreon doesn't charge you, and closer to the end of December I'll either extend the freeze or delete the page for good. 

Unfortunately, there is no way to freeze the page on Boosty and Subscribestar. So you'll have to unsubscribe on your own. Anyway, at the end of December I will remove the support levels on these sites so that those who forget to unsubscribe will not be charged.

P.S. Would you like to discuss the reason why TIF never became popular? I'd really like to hear your opinion. I wanted to write a separate post about it myself, but more than anything I want to hear an outside opinion. I'm very interested.