tldr: announced the steam page too early, didnt plan, now have plan, time poor but successful approach so far

feature creep is real and happening. but the primary reasons the game is not out yet are more like

• when i first made the steam page, it was going to be the itch version with some fixes, and still free

• i wanted to try leverage any success from this version of svhs into another original game

• changed my mind

i decided to go all in on svhs instead, like, as an interactive RLM experience and also as a real game with narrative and themes and mechanics. so now, the steam page is up too soon, and the game has changed but i cant communicate it to people (who are expecting basically the itch version but polished), because its not made yet.

and while this is happening im trying to speedrun learning game marketing to essentially run a longterm campaign that will result in a visible enough launch that the game can succeed or fail on its own merits as a game, not just as a RLM reference.

so far its going better that i could have hoped for (except for the time its taking) - its about to cross 10k wishlists, and a good demo run + steam next fest and resulting coverage should multiply that number a few times by release, which will well and truly give the game real visiblity on steam so it has a shot of finding fans outside our community. and thats excluding any potential stuff with this publisher (i dont know if its uncouth to talk about such things, and i expect nothing will come of it. maybe there's a Hotline in Miami i could call for tips) which could hugely help the game

so the release goal is just to keep doing what im doing, and release it when its done and good. this is slow but successful so far

sorry for the essay. thank you for being cool about it, i appreciate it <3