Potential Early Access Change

This is more or less a public version of the poll that went up for Patrons last week. There are some other changes I want to make, but I'll talk about that after I get through the poll info. There are two options, and Patrons seem pretty split on which they prefer, so I'm curious if the change might be enough for some of you free followers to become a Patron.

The general idea is that I can either keep things the way they are now (VIPs get test builds a week early, then everybody gets early access on release day), or switch to a tiered early access system.

The tiers would look something like this:

Gratitude tier - same as now; access to complete early access builds.

Supporter tier - mostly-complete test builds 1-3 times per release that might have more bugs while builds are still in development; effectively what VIPs get now.

VIP tier - largely incomplete test builds that are likely to have more bugs and will only have small sections of content completed, released every week or two based on how much development I get done.

Doing early access in tiers like this lets me add a little more value to the higher Patron tiers in a more tangible way without adding a bunch of work for me or taking away value from the lower Patron tiers. There's not a lot of ways to do that, so I'm curious to see what the general public thinks.

As a note, if this changes, it won't affect any of the other benefits (like getting into the invite-only Discord, free itch keys, or opportunities to get your suggestions into games), and there are still some upcoming changes (it turns out I earned eligibility for annual subscriptions, and I want to make those itch keys a little more accessible to people that should get them). Those changes will be happening next week, which is when this (and last week's) poll will close.

If you're a Patron (or become one before then) make sure you get your vote in on the Patron-only poll if you haven't already.