One Year Anniversary!

Well, now, here's a thing. The Private Dick Demo is one year old TODAY.

That's right: exactly a year ago, I published the very first build here to itch.io. It looked like this:

And now it looks rather more like this:

There are a lot of very visible changes here. Better character sprites (although the old stuff still has its charm!). More expressions and dynamics. Better UI.

I've gone from a purely solo dev to a team with 6 active, contributing artists, a sound guy, and even a publisher.

In that year we've started and failed a Kickstarter campaign, but somehow continued to limp on. A brand new demo is almost ready for launch, with an early access build not too far behind (depending on how much I want to put in it, a strategic decision I have yet to make).

Over the last six months I've added a whole lot to the game - most of which you haven't seen! There are new CGs, new music, new voiceover recordings, a new intro, new background and character art, thousands and thousands of words of new story.

Here on itch.io we've had over 2,000 downloads of this demo, and over 7,000 browser plays. On Twitter I've gone from zero to 850 followers. I managed to find 150 Kickstarter backers. I've attracted one publisher (the optimal amount).

On the one hand, that's amazing growth for a year. My other, SFW projects have had nothing like that kind of exposure. On the other hand, I wanted each of those numbers to be multiplied by ten. I feel incredibly proud of the work I've done this year, but I also feel I'm an order of magnitude of the exposure I need to succeed.

Then again, with no playable release since June 2022, perhaps it's no wonder I haven't seen more growth. That's going to change soon  with a boatload of new content coming out in the next couple of months.

I do need your help though.

Development costs are spiralling - adding small details like expressions increases complexity and cost. Not to mention the addition of voiceover, which is really going to add up.

When the game hits early access I'm really counting on strong sales to help fund the rest of development. If you haven't already, and are comfortable doing so, please do Wishlist on Steam. It doesn't commit you to buy and it really helps boost the game in the Steam algorithm, which helps my sales, which enables me to keep going.

I'm really excited to develop the Private Dick story for the next year. So stick around kid, you ain't seen nothin' yet.