October 5 Update

These are busy times, friends, and this will be a busy post. Please don't be distracted by the fanart, as there are some things like release dates and the demographic survey that you might want to provide input on.

EDIT: I've put together the maybe-final draft of the survey! See the bottom of the post for the new link.

First, we have a lovely bit of fanart of Campfire Qum! This was commissioned by a fan on Discord and can be found on the artist's profile here. Please enjoy. ^-^

Now, with TLS 0.81.2 out publicly and nothing having gone horribly wrong, what needs to happen for the big launch? These are the different elements of the situation:

• I have no items on my list to fix/change. Annikath might finish another set of illustrations, depending on how long it takes me to get to the release date, but this won't change much.

• One issue blocking us is that I want to have another DLC live. While this isn't strictly necessary, I need to be careful about monetization when I'm releasing a game for free. I started this process over three weeks ago, but Valve is stalling me. =/

• After that, there is no release process for leaving Early Access; you push a button and it happens instantly. I need to pick a good time, meaning one where I can fully support the release and not too close to a holiday or other major event.

• Ideally I'd like to have completed gathering survey data before then, so that we get data from before any new players, but that's not strictly necessary.

What's this about survey data? Glad you asked, rhetorical device! Some of you may remember that back in 2017, I did a big demographics survey of TLS players. I've always wanted to do so again, but since the first one took so much time, I promised myself I wouldn't spend time on it until I had more work done and found a good window.

Well, this is that window. Unfortunately I'm not being very productive, between all the release work and some unpleasant and stressful things on the writing/editing side of my work, the past couple weeks. The only upside is that since my attention is fractured anyway, handling the survey won't really damage my creative work.

So here's a draft survey, please look and don't touch yet:

(removed)

This is modeled after the survey I did last time, with a few changes based on that experience. Anyone have any thoughts about changes, or questions that could be added? This will be a fun opportunity to gather data about what kinds of people play TLS, and I'm eager to compare to the previous results given how far the game has come over the years.. ^-^

Okay, that's all for now. This month is going to be a crazy one.

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This is what I have for the modified survey, if anyone wants to look before I make the survey public in a couple days:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1GhXqqFHhtIFPobftC3WgpAm3dx2EAvb8PND4kNavY7E/preview

Nothing should be temporary at this point, so call out any typos or mistakes if you see them.