Hey guys, I've had something weighing on my mind lately and I figured I would make a decision as soon as I logically could given how close we are to the planned release date of the finished demo. 

After careful consideration, I have decided that I want to release "The Dream of Shadowlands" episodically rather than one whole game. As much as I wanted to release one game to contain the experience and make something cool in that way, I think that episodic releases of each level will be beneficial for me as a beginner game dev. 

-One reason for this is that I would be releasing about 5 small games, which my goal would be about one per year or less. I could also expand each individual level or even add another level or two without fear of delaying the whole game's release for too long. 

-Undoubtedly one of the main reasons that I was in favor of this approach is because of how many large visual assets there are in the game already, with it only being about 1/5 done. From my tests, this seems to not harshly impact performance except on lower end laptops, but I know that with my lack of knowledge in programming this can easily start to impact performance on most devices the more assets I add. If I break the whole story into chunks per level, this would ensure that I could have high quality, large sprites while having it all be accessible to the most people.

-Another reason is that I think this would ground me in my narrative direction more, as I would have to make each level have entertaining and solid pacing as a standalone experience, as well as part of a greater narrative. I think this would help me not get overwhelmed by the big picture and focus on the story in segments, ensuring each segment of the story is good on its own.

-There is also the fact that this could likely help prevent hype from dying out as production goes on. I got a boost in attention and money when I first launched my itch page, but since then a lot of it has died down. While I don't know for sure how much multiple short releases will keep people interested compared to one long release, this is something I am willing to try because I feel like it can help renew interest by giving players something to actually PLAY versus just watch updates of.

-Finally, I am hoping that this would be a more viable funding strategy for me as I do not expect Patreon to reach a sustainable level for me in the near future. If I release the demo, re-edited to be Episode 1 and offered for free, and then have at least 4 subsequent episodes priced at say, $3.75, this could disperse the overall game's income over a greater amount of time so I would not go from making virtually nothing on the game to suddenly making most of the income I will ever make on it. Does that make sense, or am I kind of vomiting out my thoughts?

Alright, this is already super long so I better cut to the chase on where I'm going from here with this change. I think I'll push back the demo (now Episode 1)'s release by 2 weeks, let's go with December 28th. This will give me time to make any formatting changes I need as well as create an actual credits sequence instead of the little alert I put in the current build of the demo. I'm also gonna fix the save system so that saves should be transferable to the next episode when completing an episode. Normally this is stuff I could do within the current time constraints of the December 12th release date, but you know, finals are one hell of a drug. This week I'll make all the necessary changes on my current social media to reflect this slight change in direction, and then from now until the 28th I'll be reformatting everything within the game itself. I'm also planning to make a website to compile all of the episodes and their respective itch/steam pages, in order to make the whole process as user friendly as possible and create an email list for people who only want to track release updates and not every single development update that you get on my current platforms. As always, will keep you all posted every step of the way! Thanks for your patience.