Status Report
Hey everyone, Devian here.
First off, I want to thank everyone who has stuck with us through a pretty long and unexpected quiet period for digi daki. It’s been over half a year since our last update, and I know many of you have been waiting and wondering. You deserve a proper explanation.
After the last update, we took a planned break to settle accounts and let the team rest. The sheer amount of content we pushed was not something we could afford to pay for when we published it, but we all persevered because we wanted to bring it to you. Everyone has since been fully paid off. However, things became a lot more complicated than expected.
Our project director plushii (and my business partner) ran into serious personal obligations and academic issues outside of the project. Despite waiting for things to improve, and his intentions to get back toward work, he ultimately became unable to contribute or manage things further. He was responsible for organising our visual assets, finances and teamwork whilst I was responsible for putting all of our hard work together into the project you've all enjoyed.
On top of this, I’ve had to spend a lot of time away from development to support my family, as my mother has been in and out of the hospital for months. It’s been an exhausting time, personally and professionally. For a while, I would rely on his intent to handle everything and simply focus on my own personal development of skills and tooling, as I’ll be honest; organization and management have never been my strongest suit.
We were also limited on the art front. Our sole artist Joseph had to move on to a large project soon after finishing Lucario, so we couldn’t add new visuals even if I wanted to keep things moving. For a while, I would rely on his intent to handle everything and simply focus on my own personal development of skills and tooling in what spare time I had, as I’ll be honest; organization and management have never been my strongest suit.
All of this put me in a place where it was nearly impossible to keep up with how much time had passed, and I’m sorry for the long silence. This was never what I wanted for the project or for the people who supported us.
But enough time has passed. It’s time to press forward. Plushii is always welcome to return, but we can’t keep waiting for that “perfect moment.” when he does at your expense. I’m grateful to those who kept supporting us financially; you'll be happy to know we haven’t withdrawn funds in a while, and therefore we have enough set aside to ensure the that our team gets paid and the project can keep moving.
Will the project be updated?
I’ll be adding some new voice lines to the our favourite character, lucario, based on a type of interaction system I finished prototyping shortly before the hiatus. This will involve rolling out a new interaction mode. This will add grooming options and dialogue based on where the character is touched. These updates won’t have or need new visual assets, just new interactions and voice work.
What happens after that?
For those of you who are unaware, my self and Plushii where working very hard on a 3D title under the name of Project Eastwind. I’ve spent the past year overhauling my workflows and tools to be able to create and ship new content faster than ever before without losing quality. Much of this tooling is dedicated to modelling and animation pipelines, massively boosting the capabilities of those who would create that content. That project had no income and unfortunately was put on hold as well.
I've decided to shift the next character into 3D. I’ve managed to pull together a small group of really talented and motivated people who are seriously, the best I could hope for. With this new team and new talent and technology, we’ll be able to bring in more user suggestions, alternate outfits, new environments, and even different body types, all animated to the same, if not higher high standard.
The core experience isn’t changing. The game you backed and supported is still the same at its heart, just with way more possibilities ahead. I genuinely appreciate everyone who stuck around and supported us during this mess. I know a lot of you wanted to see more communication and progress, and I’m sorry I couldn’t deliver sooner. I hope this new chapter will make up for it and I’m excited to show you what we can still accomplish.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or just want to check in, our discord is always open with a dedicated channel for everyone regardless of pledge. https://discord.gg/5VjvQN2sH
Thank you for being here,
All of us