I’m so glad you find it cute and creepy, cos that’s definitely the kinda vibe I was aiming for with this :D Thanks so much for checking it out!

I’d be lying if I said things were actually going okay cos it’s been quite the disaster of a year so far xD BUT, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel at least :3 After many years of searching, I’m finally getting some effective help with my depression and stuff, so for the first time in a long time, I actually have hope, haha.

Hope things are going great in your world + that you get to have a happy rest of the year ahead :3

I’m glad you had fun with the demo :D Thanks so much for taking the time to check it out!

The good news is that there will definitely be more at some point :3 

The bad news is that I can’t really say when >.< Cos the project is currently on hold while I finish another project of mine that’s shorter + closer to completion… but this year has been kind of a disaster so far, haha. I haven’t managed to make much progress on anything due to a series of unfortunate personal circumstances.

However, I’m finally getting the right sort of help, and I’m hanging in there, so there’s that at least :3

It’s probably going to take me a long, long time to actually finish this particular project, but I plan on making sure it’s completed eventually ^-^

Aaaand my autism brain cannot detect which part of the game you're referring to xD So we're both screwed, haha.

Anyways, silliness aside, I hope that the content didn't cause you harm >.<

I always try my best to list like warnings and triggers, etc., but I often forget a lot of things because I don't realise that they might impact others since they don't impact me >.<

Cheers for checking out the project anyhow!

(and a *high five* for autism :3 I was diagnosed with ASD almost 2 years ago now, and I'm still struggling to process everything + better understand how the heck to undo all of the damage that was done to me over the years for living undiagnosed for so long >.<" It feels like it's gonna be a loooooong journey to being kinder and more accepting of myself, cos I spent my entire life trying to live up to neurotypical standards and thinking I was a failure for always falling short T_T haha.)

Hey hey! This is so super duper adorable!! You're so talented!!!

Thanks so much for sharing <3 I've been feeling pretty crap lately, but just seeing how cute this is makes me smile :3

I wanna poke their cheeks, hehe.

This is gonna make me sound so old, but I don't use TikTok >.<

I have no idea if I can even check out anything on there without an account or the app, but I have stayed away from it so far just cos I find all kinds of social media quite stressful and overwhelming.

I'm a bit like a grandma when it comes to trying to navigate social media x3

If not for that, I would absolutely check out yours! :3

Hope your weekend is an awesome one!! ^-^

I really appreciate the fact that you liked the look of the game so much back then that you were kind enough to support it :3 And also appreciate the fact that you care enough about the game to still be here to even make this post!

But please understand a few things:

(apologies in advance cos this is gonna get really long >.< and people keep telling me I don't owe anyone explanations, but I always feel compelled to try and explain my situation cos I don't want people to get the wrong impression!)

1) No one has technically bought the game, as it was never actually for sale. All money given towards the project is basically a donation towards funding the project as a whole, and, unfortunately, it's still not even close to being fully funded >.<

I currently have enough to commission some CGs for the start of Castor/ia's route and pay voice actors for fem + masc versions of 1-2 full character routes, but yeah, it's a looooong way off of the whole game being funded still :(

I'm not gonna lie, I haven't really had much in the way of donations coming in for a while. There's the odd one here and there which is very much appreciated, but it's slow going in the grand scheme of things.

2) You're right that I've got other things going on, largely being completely burned out, depressed, and suicidal.

I don't know if you follow me over on Ko-Fi but that's where I try to post regular-ish monthly  updates on how things are going in general. You can find those posts here: https://ko-fi.com/melancholymarionette

The most recent one I wrote was back in May, which you can find here: https://ko-fi.com/post/A-Long-Overdue-Update-A-Series-of-Unfortunate-Ev-I3I31F2S...

But if you don't already know and don't want to trawl through those recent posts since they're quite long, basically...

I've been inactive (as far as dev stuff is concerned) since the end of March this year, meaning I've made zero progress on any of my projects.

I managed to finish a visual novel assets jam in March where I made a BGM pack, but that's about all I've achieved so far this year!

On top of that, my chronic headaches and migraines have been increasing this year, and I've been put on new meds for that which are full of side effects. I got the flu which destroyed me for over 2 weeks, and then broke my arm >.< My arm is still currently not in proper use, but I'm supposed to get the splint off soon and start physio. Still, my mental health is a faaaar bigger issue than any broken bone!

So yeah, it's been a lot of time away from my PC lately just recovering and trying to survive pretty much. I did post about all that over on Ko-Fi, but I don't think many people check there to see updates.

Last year was quite unlucky too as my old PC finally died, and getting a new one was a long and arduous process >.< The place I bought a new one from shipped out multiple units that arrived broken or worked for a bit before breaking. Trying to sort out returns and exchanges was a total nightmare. I ended up without a PC for a good few months. So I couldn't work on much of anything. I also lost some project files in the process >.< That whole thing just made me really down and demotivated because, even now, the new PC I have doesn't work properly and runs into catastrophic issues on the regular. There's nothing I can do other than put up with it, though :( 

3) Darling Duality just isn't a priority project at the moment even when I'm feeling well enough to work. I haven't touched it since Manly played the demo and I re-released the newer demo that I think you previously mentioned playing.

My current active project is Lovestarved, and I won't be working on anything else until Lovestarved is fully finished and released.

Even when Lovestarved is finished, I haven't decided yet which project I'm going to work on next out of adding Blue Blythe's route for Bitter/Sweet, coding Clarity in Qualia, or writing for DD.

The reasons DD isn't a priority are as follows:

A: I have other projects to finish first that have shorter stories which are already fully written, so will be faster to finish and release. DD's complete story and character routes aren't even fully written yet.

B: I have nowhere near enough funding for DD to actually finish it with the number of character routes and content that I eventually hope to release.

C: DD is the longest project I have (it will ultimately be longer/higher in word count than my longest completed game, Solipsism Reigns)

D: I constantly get asked questions about DD, usually related to when is the next update coming out? Or when will the game be finished? And while I understand that people only ask that because they like the demo and are excited to see more, I have to be completely honest and say that I find it extremely demotivating >.< So much so, that every time I get those questions, it drains me of all energy and motivation to do anything related to game dev for a little while, and makes me contemplate quitting game dev entirely cos I just can't cope with that kind of pressure.

I already put too much pressure and unrealistic expectations on myself, so I can't handle having it heaped on even more by others.

I know nobody intends to make me feel that way, but it just does :( Maybe it's because of my autism, I don't know. According to my ASD diagnosis report, I'm 'demand avoidant' so that means I react badly if expectations are put on me. It just feels like I'm being hassled or rushed, and the more I'm poked about it, the less I want to engage with it because it really stresses me out. Sometimes, I get so stressed that it makes me wish I never released the DD demo at all >.<

I make games as a way to distract myself from reality because reality is too much to deal with. But when I feel pressure to work on stuff, it's not an escape anymore, it's a prison :(

And here's the really big problem, when I first started working on DD, it was as part of a game jam. I always knew that I wanted it to be a full game eventually, but for the jam deadline, I just wanted to make something self-contained that ended in a way where you could consider each ending as the actual end while also having room to continue it in the future.

BUT, because I knew that my vision for the full game would require a hell of a lot of time and money, I released the version I finished for the jam and then left it there. I figured I would return to it sometime in the future when I had (hopefully) become more of a "successful" dev and could actually afford to make the game the way I envisioned it.

At the time, putting the game on hold wasn't a problem because hardly anyone had heard of it or played it, so there was no pressure or expectation on me to continue with it. I just figured I'd return to it whenever it was more realistic to complete it.

Then, Manly ended up playing it out of nowhere quite a while after I released it for the jam, and, all of a sudden, waaaay more people had heard of the project and were interested in it thanks to Manly's video. That was, of course, awesome, but it also came with some downsides >.<

I kinda panicked at that point because I never expected it to get that sort of attention. Fellow devs that I knew and close friends advised me to try and take advantage of the surprise publicity. They said I should start working on DD again right away and drop everything else, but that just wasn't practical because I was already in the middle of other stuff, and still didn't really have any money to fund the project.

Even though a lot of donations and support poured in thanks to Manly's video, it kinda dried up after a while, and while it's amazing to have a big chunk of the funding covered that I never thought would be possible, it doesn't change the fact that it's still not actually enough to cover the costs of paying voice actors and the CG artist for the whole project :(

It was also tough because I wasn't used to having the extra followers and stuff + my personal situation of being unemployed and on benefits to support myself in daily life meant I wasn't actually allowed to commercialise any of my games.

I had to seek support from Citizens Advice regarding financial stuff. Like what I was allowed to do etc. in my circumstances.

They told me that if I were to make my games commercial or run a large-scale crowdfunding thing for it like Kickstarter, then I would lose my support money because the government wouldn't understand that the money is to fund a game's development and pay other people like voice actors, they'd just see a large sum of money going into my bank account, consider it as income, and I'd lose my support.

They said that unless I was certain I could make enough money from game dev to survive, pay bills, buy food, etc. Then the best thing would be to keep my games as non-commercial projects but accept donations because they said donations have different rules and I could accept those without losing my support money.

Well, I've never tried to commercialise my games after getting that advice, because I don't even get enough in donations to fully fund larger projects like DD, let alone enough to survive on, so it's just far too risky to attempt it :( Right now, all the donations I get go towards paying other people (like VAs and artists), so there isn't anything left to pay myself with x3

I can't work a regular job because of my autism, anxiety, and depression since most employers just aren't willing to make the adjustments required for me to be able to survive in a workplace >.<

So yeah, I'm still unemployed and surviving on government support money now. But every donation I get, whether it's here on itch.io or via Ko-Fi and Patreon goes towards funding my game dev projects.

If someone donates specifically to DD, then that money is put aside specifically for DD. If someone donates on a platform like Ko-Fi but doesn't specify which project they'd like it to go towards, then it goes towards funding for whatever I'm working on at the time. Or, like last year, I sometimes have to use donation money to buy things that allow me to keep being able to do game dev, like when my old PC died, I needed help to buy a new one.

Part of the reason I've done so many game jams isn't just because I love jams in general, but also because people are more up for working together without big monetary compensation during game jams. Outside of jams, it's difficult for me to afford the cost of voice actors and stuff >.<

Lovestarved is almost fully funded. It's fully written too. I just need to finish the code for it and hire a couple more voice actors to voice the feminine version of Erys and the masculine version of Loni. I may also need to recast for masculine Erys because the VA cast to play masc Erys has disappeared with only around 40% of the total lines recorded >.< So that'll set me back a bit as I'll have to pay someone else to re-record those lines + the rest of the script. All other voice actors on the project have completed recording, delivered lines, and have been paid though, so yeah, it's just waaaay closer to being finished than DD.

E: Even if I was actively working on DD, I have so many routes planned that it would take me a few years to finish the game even if it was fully funded cos I'm just one person with a lot of mental health problems >.<

In more recent times, I seem to burn out more and more. Nowadays, I seem stuck in a cycle of 3 months of productivity followed by 3 months or more of burnout and recovery. My family situation has changed as well in that I have to take my brother to more appointments, sometimes, that can take up 2-3 weekdays in a week.

Basically, nothing is gonna happen at speed >.<

F: The version of Nani & Unity that I used to make the original version of DD is so old and out of date now that I will need to remake the entirety of the demo content from scratch :( Everything will be broken by default if I upgrade to the latest version of Nani because massive changes have been made in the way UI works and how things like voice acting are added. All my old code will be defunct, so it will need rewriting in a way that works with the newest version.

That in itself is a big task in terms of how time-consuming it will be to do >.<

G: Certain things from DD have been fed to AI by people without my permission, and that in itself just makes me really angry and depressed.

So yeah, there's all that >.< and I'm really sorry if it comes across as a rant or anything negative like that. I'm not having a go at you at all, and really appreciate your support of the project. I'm just not in a good place right now.

Like, I love game dev, and I wish I could do more of it than I've been able to recently, but I just can't because I'm trying my best to battle my own mind and all the shit that comes from living in the society I'm stuck in.

Maybe if I was in a better place mentally, people's enthusiasm for the project would motivate me more, but right now, whenever I see people asking for updates, it just pushes me closer to wanting to end my life altogether because I can't handle the pressure of people expecting things from me >.< 

I hope I can manage to stick around at life because I absolutely adore game dev, but at the same time, trying to "make it" as a dev has been slowly killing me. I can't do the sheer amount of promo and social media posts required to become a "successful" dev, so I'm always gonna be stuck in a place where I'm poor and reliant on the government support money to survive. I'll probably never be able to sell my games, and that in itself sucks. I hate that I'm essentially forced to only ever have hobbies and never allowed to earn an income because of the way my autism and anxiety & depression impair my day-to-day life :(

Right now, I just have to keep doing whatever I can to keep myself away from the edge so I don't wind up doing something stupid that I can't take back. Although, I don't really see suicide as stupid, personally. I know people use that as a saying, but like, in a world that's so exhausting and hostile, a world that I don't seem to have a place in, a world where I can't be myself without being abused and bullied by people, I see it as logical to want to die >.< Death would at least be an end to all the pain. Living is too much effort.

Sorry again for rambling there and just generally being all doom and gloom. Again, I want to stress that I'm not having a go at you personally >.<

I just don't ever want anyone to get the wrong impression and think that I'm one of those devs who abandons projects or takes funding and then runs off into the sunset without making the thing the funding was supposed to go towards. Cos I know that happens a lot! Heck, I backed a Kickstarter years ago for a game I was super excited about, it was successfully funded, but the dev team fell out with each other and one buggered off with all the money, so I know how it feels to be burned as a supporter.

I wouldn't ever want anyone to think that I was like that because I'm really passionate about all of my projects and intend to finish them all eventually when I can. I'd like to hope that the fact I've still been releasing shorter completed jam projects and posting regular updates about my dev work over on Ko-Fi would be enough to show people how serious I am and how much it all means to me.

At the same time, I can totally understand the frustration of anyone who has supported DD and is waiting to see more because I know it's been a long time since Manly played it and more people discovered it. Believe me, the lack of progress pains me far more than anyone >.<

But then again, as some kindly folks keep reminding me, it's important that I try to look after my health and go at my own pace. I'll probably never stop feeling guilty that I can't be as productive as I'd like to be, but I also have to try and accept my own limitations and be thankful for any sort of progress on my dev stuff across the board.

I know in my heart I will eventually be able to finish DD. Even if not exactly the way I originally envisioned. Heck, I'd still finish it and release it even if everyone who ever liked the demo had lost patience and interest in it, haha. I hate having unfinished projects and always finish things in the end. It's just it takes time. An excruciating amount of time >.< And, of course, I kinda have to be alive to actually be able to finish anything.

Progress on Lovestarved has been exceptionally slow this year while I've been out of action, but I'm in therapy and getting some support with my depression and stuff. Most of it isn't working >.< but I guess it's better than nothing!

As people keep reminding me, I just have to do what I can - when I can.

Anyways, I'll shut up now cos I went on a mad ramble! I just hope it at least explains everything >.<

Not if it was downloaded direct from the game page here on itch. The only way that could possibly be true is if someone managed to hack itch.io and replace my original uploaded files with their own infected ones.

I'm an established developer. I've been making games for over 5 years now. If there are any viruses in files, it's because they were downloaded from dodgy sources elsewhere. None of my uploads contain viruses. So if one of my games was downloaded legitimately from my game pages on itch and a virus scanner is saying there's malware in it, it's just a false reading.

I'd like to think most people could tell the game is an actual game just by the sheer number of comments by now.

But cheers for posting bollocks on one of my game pages while I'm ill! Just what I need right now.

Thanks for checking it out :3 I hope to eventually have all my games on Steam someday, but that $100 fee per game is a real killer >.< That's why itch is so helpful, cos they don't charge devs to upload their games here :D

I'm glad you like the look of the demo anyhow ^-^

Yeah, sadly that was an old Naninovel bug (which has since been fixed at least :3) that shouldn't be a problem once the game is updated. It's just that exporting an update with that fix in isn't an easy task >.< 

If it were quick to do, I'd release an update of the demo that fixes that issue + some other UI-related gremlins, but the version of Naninovel that the demo was made in is so incredibly out of date now that any update will break most of the code in the demo T_T

Basically, I will need to start the game from scratch with the latest version of Nani. But I don't feel that's worth doing until there's more actual content to add story-wise. So, for now, the janky demo will have to suffice x3 Sorry aboot that! And cheers for checking it out :3

Hey hey! Sorry my reply is so slow >.< I've been super busy with irl stuff all of October and haven't had a chance to go on my PC still (typing this on my phone while waiting at an appointment x3)

Firstly, thanks so much for checking out some of my games, and I'm glad you were able to play others without problems :3

Mac is a complete mystery to me as I don't own one or know anyone who does that I could borrow from to test stuff >.<

BUT... you're definitely not alone cos I've had Mac users in the past state various steps they've had to do to get different itch games to work while others seem to have no trouble.

It got to a point where I made a big list of everyone who commented and turned it into a megapost :3 I list it on all of my game pages, so you might have even have found it yourself by now, but in case not, it's this one here:

https://melancholy-marionette.itch.io/darling-duality-winter-wish/devlog/227880/...

Honestly, none of what's written there means anything to me, haha. But with you being a Mac user, hopefully, at least something on there will make sense to you and will work! :3

Thanks again for your interest in the game <3

So glad to hear it & thanks so much for checking it out ^-^

Also thank you for the well-wishes too! I'm chugging along, but I haven't been able to make much progress with anything since the end of September >.< Partly cos October is my busiest month of the year for irl stuff (scare attractions are one of my special interests, so October is the only month of the year I tend to go out a lot, haha), but also due to physical illness and general depression :( I'm hoping things will pick up soon!

Thanks so much for the support :3 it means a lot <3