A quick note before I begin: I see this narrative spread around in a lot of RPGMaker communities, and I really hate it, so I thought I'd get this out of the way before I continue:
No, I'm not hugely disappointed in Beetle Ninja, and I'm not bitter about the fact that it didn't skyrocket in popularity. Expecting such is an idiotic method of games development that I deliberately try not to engage with.
My disappointment with Beetle Ninja was originally solely in some of the mechanics not being explored to their fullest potential or they were delegated primarily to the hub world, and because development of the game was a constant tug-of-war creatively, wherein I wasn't able to include everything I wanted to in the game.
My disappointment with it now is that I handled release extremely poorly and made it into this huge sob story where the primary reason for buying the game is rooted exclusively in myself as a person, and I'd much rather you buy it/donate to it if you actually liked the game and felt it's worthy of being paid for- not because "poor prosciutto is down on his luck :(" or anything like that. Actually play the game before you recommend it to other people, I think it should stand on its own independent of the development and release process. It's a game after all, not a Twitter account.

Beetle Ninja was an extremely interesting learning experience for me...
It marks many firsts for my career as a game developer, and it's honestly one of only two games I've made that I actually really enjoy replaying, therefore it wasn't really a difficult decision for me when I sat down to ponder if I'd like to make a sequel: of course, I'd love to keep exploring this interesting world and enriching it with a new story!
Beetle Ninja 2 will definitely be happening, I've actually spent a solid chunk of time now implementing new overworld movement systems and creating brand new art assets. PostElvis will once again be composing music for this game, though outside of this the internal team has gone through a bit of restructuring: I still do most of the sprite work and all of the artwork for tilesets, but ToonyRab and Sooshy have joined to assist with some of the character design and artwork duties so that I'm not tempted to rehash old ideas from Beetle Ninja character-wise.

This time, Beetle Ninja (right) is replaced by "Uropygi Ninja" (left), the whip scorpion.
ToonyRab and Sooshy both had an eye for detail not unlike my own, having rather similar ideas game design-wise to myself and therefore pushing me to improve Beetle Ninja "just that small bit more". Their criticisms very much echoed my own when it came to Beetle Ninja 1 and their present work on the game has been rather strong! I can't wait to see what we come up with next!
Rest assured, this isn't just more of the same; that would make little sense, and at that point I might as well just pump out a ton of DLC for Beetle Ninja. Rather, Beetle Ninja 2 aims to be a subversion of your expectations, featuring an array of differences to its predecessor that I'd like to keep secretive for the time being just so that not much is really spoiled: it's really an experience I think will both appease fans of most aspects of the original game, while expanding off that foundation to draw in many more people who may otherwise not have cared about the game.
I will remain tight-lipped on the game outside of posting small weekly updates on my twitter, but I'm very happy to be working on this game, and I hope you'll stick around until I finish it!
-ProsciuttoMan/16BitKing