What's going on with POPGOES?

The answer to this is... quite a lot! And also... not too much.

It depends on what you expect, or value, in something like POPGOES. Which has, thanks mostly to the Fanverse, become much more than just a fangame that you can download on Game Jolt. It's no longer just "not released" or "released". There are milestones between those states which I think are worth celebrating and enjoying. Especially this year.

I want to clarify something first.

What do I want to make, specifically with POPGOES Evergreen? What is my goal?

My goal is to finish and release a large, fun, impressive, high-quality FNAF product that people will want to buy. Something fun to play, share, discuss, make art of.

When?

I don't care. It doesn't matter.

My stance on that won't change. Mostly because I simply do not control how fast this game is developed. I am working on Evergreen with a team of very talented people, but these are still people with lives, responsibilities, and restrictions on how they spend their time. Same goes for me.

When I mention that modelling or programming is taking a while, and someone suggests that I kick a member off of the team and I model or program Evergreen myself, I have to remind them that not only would that be an insanely rude thing to do, but I am also working a real job, in the real world, for real money. I can't do that.

And though the Fanverse is an incredible opportunity and eventually a source of income for me, it hasn't magically solved the problems of game development, especially those that come from working with a team.

Evergreen is still early in development. Express your shock, express your disappointment - it won't change anything. We're all doing our best but this was an unfortunate inevitability. It's a big game, we're working on it, for free, in our spare time.

But here's the thing: Evergreen, and its release, is not ALL that POPGOES is now. POPGOES is a brand, a franchise, a part of Five Nights at Freddy's. And FNAF was never JUST about games.

In the year of 2022, you will see, or have seen:

• Long Popgoes - A cute side project by Emil and myself, made for the sake of practicing pixel art and experimenting with Discord server features (primarily for my BMC server).

• POPGOES and The Machinist - A paid expansion to POPGOES Arcade (2020) being released for PC and then eventually ported with the rest of the game to mobile, and then consoles. New gameplay, new lore, new enemies, new music.

• Popgoes Funko Plushie - Actual Funko plushies of Popgoes the Weasel and Candy the Cat, in the style of the original FNAF1 plushies, are confirmed. They have an estimated release of Fall this year.

• Popgoes Youtooz - An officially licensed FNAF/Fanverse collaboration with Youtooz. Characters from the Fanverse, including Popgoes the Weasel, will receive Youtooz figures around the end of the year.

• And of course, continued communication with me.

I will carry on with giving updates, teasers, answers, and interactions among the community throughout this year and onwards. Some developers choose to be entirely silent while working on their games but I think it makes more sense to be as transparent as possible. That's why I'm outright telling you that Evergreen is nowhere near done. Set your expectations looow. There's a reason I always thought Evergreen would be the last Fanverse game to release. I wasn't joking!

So why is Evergreen taking so long?

To put it simply: It is an ambitious project with lots of content and skills involved. And that requires a lot of time, and a lot of collaboration with different people.

The current plan for the game involves lots of models (including brand new characters), animations (including things you've never seen or heard of before), new lore (such as backstories, scripts, settings), and probably most importantly: new gameplay. There are parts of Evergreen that have NO equivalent from the original game.

And making these new things with no real reference is genuinely difficult. There are parts of the game that are taking over a year to plan out (and I honestly don't get much help with this kind of stuff unfortunately).

But the most important part of all of this, is that absolutely everything the team has produced... every single thing that I've seen for this game, that you will see in the final product, is EXTREMELY high quality. It is at a level that I would be comfortable selling as a product. My standards are quite high and you've gotta deal with the time that might take!

Thank you for your continued patience. You will continue to receive content, and Evergreen is still being worked on. There is no hiatus, or even any breaks really. The game is big and full of new stuff, and the members of the team have other responsibilities that come with being adults and all that shit.

Stay tuned. POPGOES and The Machinist shouldn't take that much longer, so I might show some more stuff for that soon.

- Kane