Shooty and the Catfish: Fully Reloaded

Hello everyone, sorry for the radio silence over the last few weeks. There has been a lot going on and without boring you with the details they range from family members in the hospital to freelance work and home renovations (actually after this post is finished I will be moving onto restructuring my home studio, so this stuff is still ongoing).



First up, an update on the game development. I have still been slowly chipping away at it and the next devlog. Episode 4 is complete and relatively well balanced. Despite its large size it wasn't overly broken which was a nice surprise. Episode 5 is also about 1/2 completed and I am hoping to get more work done on it tonight to bring it up to 3/4 completion. Once Episode 5 is done... well all that's left it to send the game out for testing and to put together a trailer, the finish line is in sight. This also means the next devlog will be the last one for this particular project.



So, that brings me to my announcement that Shooty and the Catfish: Fully Reloaded will no longer be a commercial release. I have had quite a few people DM me about why this change is occurring and its something I want to go into much more detail here.



First and foremost, the decision is due to time restraints, which might sound a bit odd. The reality is I am now working more hours at my day job which has slashed the amount of free time I have for development (and now freelance work is starting to recover from COVID19 as well). While I will be trying to make the final release as bug free as possible I know some will still slip through but I will not have time to offer the sort of support that I personally feel a commercial release should have. Obviously, as a free release, I will be trying to squash any missed bugs as best I can, but I'm not going to feel the same level of mental pressure (I hope).



Second of all, I really like my job and don't have any interest in pursuing game development as a full-time career, indie or otherwise. I genuinely appreciate and value the risks that not developing for money allows me to make creatively and I want to keep taking those risks. I know that if I start developing with a financial return in mind it's going to affect the choices I make for my projects during development and I just really don't want that to ever be a factor.

Lastly, I have been releasing entertainment online for free for almost 20 years now and I really feel like its kind of just a part of who I am at this point...



That said, any donations via itch.io made for the game, much like my Patreon, will be put towards the soundtrack for my next game Stripe: The Last Tiger (which you can see some very early preproduction on in the next devlog). I am fully committed to paying any and all contributors to my games and any additional income that can go towards that will always be incredibly appreciated.

As I mentioned earlier I have a lot of freelance going on, the timing is pretty annoying given how close this project is to having its development wrapped but it is what it is so I will once again be disabling payments for this Patreon account until development can kick off in earnest once again. Expect a new upload of source files if your a Patron on July 1st.

Thank you, everyone, for reading, I hope you are all well. Stay strong, stay safe.