2025 Transparency Post

In January of each year, I write a post describing how I spent the money that I received through Patreon throughout the previous year, and my plans for the upcoming year.

There have been transparency reports for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. This is the post for 2025.

Here is how much money I received through Patreon over the course of 2024:

• January - $1,412.16

• February - $1,747.43

• March - $1,460.20

• April - $1,588.99

• May - $1,134.42

• June - $1,476.58

• July - $1,154.75

• August - $898.66

• September - $1,309.08

• October - $1,285.77

• November - $1,321.93

• December - $1,398.27

I made a total of $16,188.24 through Patreon in 2024.

In 2015, I stated that, on any month where I made more than $3,500 through Patreon, all income past the $3,500 mark wouldn't go to me; it would be be put into a fund that would used to compensate the volunteers who contribute to the game. I called this fund "the surplus."

From 2015~2018, I always earned at least $3,500 per month through Patreon, so the surplus eventually grew to over $20,000. However, starting in 2019, my earnings dropped beneath $3,500 per month, so the surplus stopped growing, even though I kept using money from the surplus to compensate volunteers. At the end of last year, the surplus was at $13,469.04.

On most years, very few volunteers asked to be compensated for their work. However, this year, a lot of volunteers asked for compensation, and one volunteer was compensated more than anyone else ever has been. As a result, this year, more money was taken out of the surplus than any previous year.

Volunteer names will be kept anonymous to protect them from harassment.

• Anonymous texture artist - $60

• Anonymous modeler - $70

• Anonymous artist - $40

• Anonymous artist - $345

• Anonymous modeler - $285

And then...the big one.

• Anonymous animator - $3,325

Yeah...the animator is expensive. In my Happy New Year post, I listed all of his contributions to the game over the course of 2025. He's contributed dozens of animations to the game, and there are many features / cutscenes that only exist because of him, specifically. So, I'd say that he's earned his pay.

That's $4,125.00 in total - the biggest hit that the surplus has ever taken. The remaining money left over in the surplus is $9,444.04.

2025 Progress 

Actually, I am just now realizing that the "Happy New Year" post I wrote earlier this month was already a progress report; I don't have much to say here that I haven't already said in that blog post.

2026 Plans

I'll summarize the conclusion I came to at the end of my Happy New Year post.

On May 1st, 2024, I released Amai without any new voice acting or animations. This was an experiment to discover if it was possible to deliver a satisfactory rival experience even without voice lines or animations.

A lot of players reported that Amai's week felt disappointing and underwhelming, but not just because of the lack of voices and animations; there were other problems, too. I received a tremendous amount of criticism / feedback / suggestions regarding various ways to improve Amai's week. Using this feedback, I re-designed most of Amai's events and re-wrote most of the dialogue in Amai's week.

After re-designing and re-writing Amai's events, I realized that it would have been a mistake to include voice acting or unique animations in the initial release of Amai, since all of those voice lines and animations would eventually have been thrown out and replaced after I re-designed her events and re-wrote her dialogue.

I have begun to feel that all rivals should initially be released without voice acting or unique animations so that they can be critiqued by the fanbase, and should only be given voice acting and animations after all flaws have been identified and corrected.

With that in mind, here are my new priorities, in order:

1. Now that Amai's week has been re-designed and re-written, I will work together with voice actors and my animator to make sure that all of Amai's events and cutscenes are fully voiced, while also making various additions / changes / fixes / improvements to Amai's week.

2. Once I am done making improvements to Amai's week, I will release a series of YouTube videos about all of the improvements that I've made to the game since the release of 1980s Mode. (I'll begin making videos even if Amai's week lacks some animations and voice lines.)

3. Once I have finished releasing all of the videos that I have planned, I will begin developing a "Beta Version" of Kizana that will intentionally lack animations or voice acting, so that people can review her characterization and the gameplay of her week before I begin requesting voices/animations for her.

It is difficult to predict when Beta Kizana will be released, because it largely depends on factors that are outside of my control. What do I mean by that? Well...

Factors Slowing Down The Game's Development

I've written an extremely long (over 7,000 words) blog post about this topic:

https://yanderedev.wordpress.com/2026/01/31/2025-transparency-post/

If you want a "too long, didn't read " summary:

Being subjected to all kinds of abuse, bullying, and harassment on a daily basis has made me severely depressed, robbed me of most of my motivation, completely depleted my morale, and destroyed my mental health, which has resulted in lower productivity and slower progress. If people didn't treat me so badly, I'd work faster and get more work done.

Also, every month, people sabotage the development of the game in a wide variety of different ways, most commonly by harassing team members until they quit.

The speed of the game's development is 95% dependent on the cruelty of other people, and 5% dependent on my own personal willpower and work ethic.

In Closing

I'm not in a good mental state right now, so I don't have many positive or optimistic things to say about the future. Because my circumstances are so dire, I am more grateful than ever before to have your support. I appreciate everyone who continues to support the game's development very much.