Hey Everyone, it's Casey here. I'm really sorry for the radio silence on my end, things haven't been terribly great for me lately. The game will never be cancelled, but I have missed out on a lot of promises that I have made in regards to the games progress, and I want to let everyone know what's been holding the game back a bit.

TLDR SINCE IT'S ALL TEXT

Things are changing. The way I've approached production has shifted completely. Mechanics are my main focus now. Nothing has been finished as I've not been in the best mental state, meaning that I'm not confident enough to show much off. Scrap Day was also late due to my emotional state.

STORY CHANGES

Starting off with some relatively minor stuff, I announced this project will be a part of a planned series, and this hasn't effected this game a whole lot, it caused some relatively minor changes to the games story as the game is completely open for interpretation. It has the ability to achieve multiple endings, and a minor mechanic, but I'll go over that more in Scrap Day. Some bits of the story that involve canon FNAF lore had to be rewritten as some of it was inaccurate and needed to be fixed. The story has been changed and improved, but it did cause some needed changes that took some time

MECHANICS AND AI

In the next section, I'll explain in more detail on why this is happening, but in short, I've switched gears in how I've been approaching production due to visual elements needing some reworking. Instead of working on and finishing camera rooms, I've instead been reworking, adding, and refining mechanics planned to be included in the game, and I have been working on changing the UI, player movement, and input to be more readable, usable, and quicker. I've also been working on the prototype for AI, just so I can save the trouble on trying to figure all of that stuff out, when the camera rooms are completed. I figured it would be a time saver, and prevent an absolute headache if I make sure everything works before I finish making the visuals look nice. This has caused a delay as nothing is closed to finished and I am unable to show any of it at the moment. Why did I decide to shift my focus on things? Well...

VISUAL OVERHAUL COMING EARLIER THAN EXPECTED

When I started this project, I was already proud of my skills as an artist. I was so confident that I decided that I could make this game scary and creepy enough through my art, and pull off a unique look without having to make 3D models. However I have quickly become unhappy with how things look as they do now, as while it's good for testing, it does not satisfy or help guide my vision for what I want the final game to look like. I want this game, and my first step as a developer to be decent, and give people a good impression of my skills. I've greatly improved as an artist, and my style has changed a lot, and I want that to be represented early on so it can be expanded upon in the final release. Working on this games visuals has been inconsistent and was muddying the game's vision, and I want to change that. I want to refine the mechanics though so that the transition can be as smooth as possible, and things don't shit themselves completely.

CHANGE IN DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

I've been studying game design independently when I was about 8 years old. I'm 17, turning 18 in 18 days by the time I'm writing this, meaning I've been learning game design for over half my life at this point. So making this game was and still is sort of a big deal to me. My passion is to lay foundations to ideas for games that are exceptional, or at the very least, experimental, and refreshing. I also want to tell stories that speak to a specific audience, and use games as a medium to tell it. Even though I've been studying game design for a while now, I'm still learning on how to improve my skills and my knowledge of how to design games, and since I'm taking college course that focuses on that, I've learned some things that change how the game functions a bit, which of course, has impacted development.

CONFLICT BETWEEN DEPRESSION AND AMBITION

This is the heavy one, and the big reason as to why things have been quiet. I've made it no secret that I suffer from depression. While I'm dedicated to seeing this project to completion, I have had some extreme depressive episodes that have slowed development to a crawl. Sometimes I don't work on the game because I'll just go through my classes, and then do nothing for the rest of the day. I also can be a bit too ambitious for my own good. Not only has this affected this games development, which resulted in a few elements being cut from the game entirely. This also ended up killing my other game, Finn and Friends. In short, my over ambition caused some people to feel overwhelmed and they left the project, which caused development to cease, and eventually be cancelled entirely. I don't want that to happen to this game. While it is just me that's working on this game, I don't want to overwhelm myself or add on to my work load. My ambition can also go beyond one game. I often have loads of ideas bouncing through my head, and I come up with ideas for other projects, which has made focusing on this one a struggle. However I will push through, and take care of myself when needed.

This game will come out. I cannot stress enough how dedicated I am to finishing this project. This doesn't mean development will be a smooth ride of course, but no matter what, I'll try my best to push out a game I'm confident in, and learn from it's problems. Thank you for those who read this all the way through, and thank you for supporting this project as well. I know I've been inconsistent and frustrating, but it means a lot that you support this project simply by giving it your attention. See you whenever I make the Scrap Day post.

-Casey :P