Heya,
First of all, a thank you to those for adding AO to their wish list on Steam and helping me spread the gospel of Natasha! 😁
It's currently sitting a little above 500 so far. If you haven't already, give it a follow and add it if you can, I really need all the help I can get to get this number to grow. According to various sources, the ideal self-marketing number for Steam to do its magic is around 7000, so its got a long way to go. I don't think it needs to reach exactly that, as according to other devs between 3000 and 5000 works as well. Still, that's a very long way off yet for us. I don't even expect it to get above a 1000 to be honest, but that's the jaded, cynical (but probably realistic) me speaking.
In the coming months, I'll have to spend time on some active marketing, and try to participate in upcoming Steam events. We can then see how much of a potential impact that has, and hopefully raise the numbers, and my spirits a little.
I had a plan in my head how this was going to work. But I didn't consider some factors and made a mistake. (No really, dumbass Ezy making mistakes? Unheard of!)🙄
The original plan was to release the game on Steam as soon as all the rework was finished (which is not far off!), but I didn't consider the amount of time required to build a following and gather enough wishlists. So I think I'll have to tackle this a little differently to give it enough time. I may have to release on Steam much later than originally planned, to get the maximum effect. That means I'll likely have to work on EP5 first, and potentially consider releasing together with that new bit of content. This doesn't really affect you, as you'd be getting EP5 anyway, but I'll just have to be in survival mode a little longer. Yeah, this stupid idiot dev doesn't give up, does he...
Meanwhile, I finished one of the gym scenes and making good progress on the hospital scene. Since I didn't have enough renders ready to keep feeding the dedicated render rig, I've also taken the opportunity to render the Alpha branch from EP4 again. That basically never got a quality boost since its original release, as it somehow broke the lighting when updating the engine before, and I didn't have time to redo it. Not a huge difference, but it was rendered at a low amount of samples before because I was rushing it to get the release out the door.
Ezy ❤️