So, we're coming to the end of the year, which means it's as good a time as any to talk about the progress made in Pouchie The Cat, and what's to come in the future. Pouchie The Cat has come a long way from the original one-level demo that it was back in 2022. The game started off not as a full game, but from me picking game development as an independent study in my Digital Media college program. In the end, I was so happy with what I was able to make in that semester that I wanted to make it a full game. Now cut to nearly three years later, I've managed to make it to the halfway point of the game.

While I'm happy to have gotten this far, I can say that I wish it didn't take this long to get to that milestone. While yes, solo developing a game can mean taking a while to complete it, the truth is that I hit burnout multiple times throughout development of the game, and it often slowed development to a crawl. I did have a couple of friends helping me out with creating concepts, but I still did all of the sprite art myself, as well as coding new parts of the game, the level design, the story writing, finding and/or making music, trying to market the game, etc. 

Long story short: I don't want to spend another three years on this game. Especially considering that it's all volunteer work with no pay. So I've decided over the past few weeks to look for other people willing to volunteer to help me finish the game. I'm not promising any updates for the moment, especially with Christmas around the corner. A lot of us will be out spending time with family and the like. But I've planned essentially a milestone wishlist for 2025 that hopefully we can hit, or at least achieve most of each milestone by the end of each season of the year. 

If we somehow miraculously keep the schedule, we might actually have a full release of the game by 2026. But I'm not going to hold my breath, because I thought that I would've been able to finish the game by myself a lot earlier, and got humbled real quick. But it's still my hope that having a team will mean being able to divide the work and get it done quicker. There's still some stuff to plan for the rest of the game, but we do have at least some planning in motion. Which hopefully means that updates shouldn't take as long anymore.

On the subject of planning things: I'm hoping to raise money to eventually get Pouchie The Cat a Steam page. Partially to raise visibility, but also with the recent Itchio takedown caused by Funko, I don't want to be left in the lurch with nowhere to host my game. If you want to support a Steam release, we're accepting donations on Ko-Fi. We have a goal of 150$, which should hopefully cover the cost of the page, as well as any possible taxes. If we somehow reach double our goal, we could also make a page on the Epic Games Store. Please only donate if you have the money to spare, because we can't afford refunds. And any extra donations, I'd like to use to pay volunteers for their service.

That's it for now. Hope to see you all in 2025!