Retrospective and Future Stuff

I've gone on record to say it before, but Hilly Hills is a project that I'm fairly dissatisfied with. It took way too long to make, it was a BASTARD to get working properly, and at the end of the day I don't think the time spent justified the overall quality.
Especially when compared to its predecessor, which took significantly less time to make, had a very similar length and amount of content, and generally just felt more competent.

BUT I still think it's a net positive! In general the reception has been more positive than not (Thank you everyone for the support and generous reviews, as well as for respectably providing feedback!!) and I learned quite a bit about RPGMMV from the experience. Hilly Hills was never really meant to be anything more than a way for me to experiment with the program and general game design, and even though I lost patience with this game quite a while ago I don't regret making it. I'm still a novice when it comes to game design, so I can't reasonably expect every project to be a zinger, but I'm still quite passionate about making things so this hasn't really discouraged me.

(I ALSO MISSED OUT ON THIS YEAR'S PREGGO GAME JAM, AND I'M STILL KINDA MAD AT MYSELF FOR THAT)

To summarize, this project was just really poorly planned out, I overestimated my understanding of RPGMMV, and the combination of burnout and frustration resulted in me kind of dragging my feet with it. It stopped being fulfilling a LONG time ago, especially when I've got projects I'd like to make that are far more interesting to me. But after fixing all the bugs and taking like a month off, I'm tanned rested and ready to move on to the next!

One of the more discouraging experiences with Hilly Hills was releasing an absolute BUGGY MESS to the whole world. To combat that with future projects, I'm going to be releasing earlier versions and demos to get more feedback sooner. This way I don't have to comb through HOURS of events and variables and switches just to fix something that I thought was done months prior. I was going to be doing that with my NEXT PROJECT anyway, but now it'll probably be the strategy for most of my games moving forward.

And
speaking
of
future
projects....

I'm currently laying out the groundwork for my next big title!! Hope you're excited to watch me flail around with and inevitably fumble a flimsy combat system, because this next game's gonna be VERY action focused! I'll be releasing some promo images once I've got them finished, but for the time being I'm just gonna tease ya a bit. 

I did happen to secretly name drop it in Hilly Hills, just in case anyone happened to maybe find it...

Anyway! Hope y'all have a good Turkey Day, I'll likely be posting updates on the new game in the next few weeks.
Thanks for sticking around!!