#frozen development

Hello, lovelies!

I’m Charmmy, the main developer and director of Love Me.

This is going to be a very difficult post to make, because I’ll not speak as the team as usual. This post will be only from me, as an individual person. It was mean to be posted last Sunday, but I was bedridden for a few days and couldn’t do it.

And that’s actually what I want to adress. You see: I’m disabled, both physically and mentally. I’m always ill, I always need at least a day in bed every week. The last two years, a couple of new disorders joined the big family of mental problems that I already had and my health have been worse than ever, mostly struggling to find energy to keep going somehow when everything is simply too weak both on my body and my mind. I don’t wish to throw myself a pity party, I’m very aware there's tons of disabled people out there making amazing things and being amazing. But I’m not one of these people. I'm not amazing. And I can’t keep going anymore.

I was so determined to save Love Me, so in love with the project, that when no one could take lead on it anymore, I offered myself. I’m actually good organizing things, so things were good for a while, progress was being made and people seemed to like the new vision I had created in order to make the game’s scope more clear and feasible. And I thought I could do it! I had put so many hours on this, you can’t imagine how hard I tried. Writing,  leading, searching, designing and doing tons of research about game development, because I don’t have any experience with that. I never wanted to be the director, that belonged to someone that knew what the proper steps were. But I thought I could do it, and I was wrong.

Life is hard and all the team was having problems to keep going. Eventually, progress -although it never fully stopped- was so slow it wasn’t sustainable. A good director probably would have been able to redirect the team to a good path once more, but again: I’m, not a good director. I’m a 2D artist. I was ill all the time. I barely had time anymore to do my part. I work part-time (since I don’t have any social help) and that already leaves me too exhausted to do anything more the rest of the day; my energy is very, very limited. When I realized that the project was going bad, I tried to talk to more people inside and outside the team, looking for a new director or at least, a co-director to help me. But no one came forwards. Eventually my husband forced me to set a end date to it, because it was destroying my nerves and sucking it all my energy for virtually nothing. Not even being able to record a video I was promising for months because I couldn’t reach the very barebones level of polishment for it, was incredibly frustrating and started a lot of anxiety attacks. And it was not the only thing to give me anxiety...

So as much as it makes my heart sinks, I quit.

I promise I did my best. But my best was simply not enough.

So what does this mean for Love Me?

I’m honestly not sure. Me quitting doesn’t mean the team have to close down, obviously. But I was the one single-handing all the leading aspects and everyone was reporting to me, so unless someone else takes the role, I don’t think it's feasible to expect the project to advance. The team is full of very talented people that have created amazing material, but no one is currently able to take the lead. 

I am not just disappearing either. I will organize and make sure every folder and asset is correctly labeled and accessible on our Drive. i will also hang around the group waiting to help the new director, if there's one. And if everything reactivates, I will try again for the place of 2D artist, because that a thing I CAN do and I will love to do for the game. With all the management part, I was barely able to drawn anything! I have a comic and some unfinished sketches that I probably try to finish and post here, even if it just for the record. I still love the project after all.

And for the development...until further notice, I would consider Love Me to be FROZEN. Not on hiatus because that implies a return date, and I don’t know if there will be a return. But not cancelled either, because that would mean all the team is closing the project definitely, and this is not the case either. The team will announce their status once their feel confident on it.

I'm really sorry. I truly am.