Terminating Unholy Arts

Hello, everyone. I have news today, and they aren't great. You may have noticed that across the last few months (and perhaps over more than a year) my productivity in this project hasn't been what it used to be. This situation has been bothering me for a long time, and even though the health issues at play should make me see things differently, I cannot help but feel guilty over it. I have been trying to apply bandages when things were looking especially bad, usually by temporarily suspending payments or by asking Chili Cherry to put in more hours in exchange for my income share of the month, but when I reach the point where me not being capable to get done as much as I should isn't exceptional, but the routine, and it's gotten intertangled in a vicious cycle with my health, I have to admit to myself that it's time to stop. So I'm terminating the development of Unholy Arts.

Why

When I started this project, it was meant to be a first step towards other creative ambitions of mine, so it was designed (in my view) to have a small scope and not last for very long. After one year of development, it was obvious to me that my ability to estimate how much everything was going to take was pretty terrible, but I liked where things were going, so I re-scoped and decided that dedicating 5 years of my life into Unholy Arts would be time well spent. It will soon be 5 years since I wrote down the first draft, and the game is nowhere near done. As time went on, I estimated how fast things were going once and again, I calculated that the game would take 8 years to make, then 10, then 12, then 20. I had been growing into the idea of re-scoping again, but when you see yourself forced to do it because you see your capabilities deteriorating years after year, it becomes emotionally devastating.

These almost 5 years of my life have been defined by a constant struggle against misophonia, as those of you who have been here for long probably know. In retrospect, I had a more tolerable form of this disease about a decade ago, but it was due to a traumatic event some time before starting Unholy Arts that it became unbearable, and my life began taking shape around it. I lost friendships, turned away from the possibility of having a partner, I've had to switch home 5 times, spent thousands of euros in accomodations that far too often haven't worked too well and less outrageous amounts in therapies that have often been detrimental. But I could still continue on because I had a project I had passion for. But passion is very difficult to keep when you're doing the same thing for years with multiple elements sabotaging you, and of those elements is yourself.

ADHD?

About two years ago I had been coming across a lot of information on ADHD, mostly by looking information about practical problems I faced, but also by hearing about people with similar conditions and problems as mine whose lives became much better after getting treated for it. "Fine, I'll get checked for it, then". And the results were normal. Very average, even. So I put that idea into the drawer, not without a lot of frustration, because my problems were still there.

One year later, I come across a divulgator talking about profiles of people with ADHD who had been getting missed by traditional evaluations because of faulty assumptions, and that modern tests should compare marks of (what's been traditionally labeled as) intelligence against other cognitive capabilities. And I happen to know about someone who had been diagnosed that way, so I get the contact info of his therapist, begin the process of getting tested again, this time checking for more ample indicators (not just processing speed, inattention and impulsivity, but also IQ and so on). And she determines that the newly found large discrepancies between my marks can be explained by a profile with high intellectual capacity (or what anglophones call giftedness), anxiety, and ADHD, where the former would have been masking the untreated ADHD symptoms during a lot of periods of my life. Which is a burning nail to which I cling with my hurt, raw skin, because by this point I'm already desperate about how much effort I have to put my work to achieve so little, but I have a solution in sight. But she's a psychologist, so she cannot officially diagnose me with ADHD nor prescribe medication (in Spain), so I have to take her report to a psychiatrist, who will evaluate me again. After a month and a half, because it's the start of the summer vacations here and I'm not going to find anyone available until September.

So almost two months later, I take my exhausted ass to the psychiatrist she refers me to, who evaluates me again, and decides she's going to treat me for anxiety, which is partly fair, because I do indeed suffer from a lot of anxiety, but also unfair, because I had to go through the tests with the previous physician in an environment without accomodations for misophonia, so I was far more anxious than at home. But at least I leave with the understanding that, if the two SSRI medications she has prescribed me don't do what they should, we will try treatment for ADHD. I start taking the pills, slowly increasing the dosage as told, some of the initial side effects (tremors, muscle pains, exhaustion, to name a few) do fall off, but others do not just not stop, but they keep getting worse. I try contacting the psychiatrist before our next appointment to change or reduce the dosage, she promptly ignores my mails, and I reach a point where I have to take the choice to reduce the dose on my own because it's provoking me physical pain on a daily basis. She bothers to answer me after calling her receptionist by phone two weeks later, and it's only to tell me: "deal with it", with more socially accepted words. I go to the next appointment after two months of treatment, explain to her that the side effects that haven't gone away just keep getting worse despite the reduced dosage, that the positive effects, if any, have been minimal are much better explained by changes in my environment (we had just finished another house reform to reduce structural noise), and that overall there's no improvement at all with the executive dysfunction. And she refuses to prescribe to me anything else than the two pills which side effects had already gotten too bad, nothing for ADHD, nothing else for the anxiety, just the two same ******* pills. So I cut all communication with her for wasting months of my time and making me go through several horrible adaptation periods for nothing, and I get ready to look for another one, and carry on with my work until then, and...

And I can't. It's too much. It's just too much of fighting against myself every day to get the bare minimum done, and leave dissapointed and frustrated and with less money half the times I seek help, and still reach nowhere close enough half the other times, and it's still never enough. And there's never a solution. And there's never a solution. And I can't handle it anymore. It's taken me a month of deluding myself to finally accept it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Last updates, suspended payments, refunds

I still have to wrap things up here to some degree. Chili Cherry has finished the scissor animations, I've finished tying them up with the code. I want them to be in the final (unfinished) state of the game, so I will soon update a provisional update for whoever wants to test them a bit. Chili Cherry's contract finishes by the end of next week, so she won't be able to fix anything afterwards, so that has priority. I'm still going to do some other minor fixes, mostly by coding an abrupt end to the second adventure for whoever who wants to keep playing the sandbox, so that the game isn't left in an unplayable state. That has less priority.

In a few months (perhaps less time), I'll shut down this Patreon account. I will keep suspending payments until then, so that everyone who is already subscribed still gets the last paid version. Please keep an eye here so that you don't miss it. Any further communications will be on itch.io. I spent yesterday's morning going user by user manually making refunds, because I have barely gotten anything done during November, and whatever little is done is going to be discarded. I've refunded anyone who had been subscribed for at least two consecutive months during October-November or November-December, the rationale being that if you were here during one individual month you were getting access to the last October update, but two consecutive months means paying for a November update that I haven't gotten done. Because this was a manual process, it's more than likely that people did or did not get a refund in accordance with my intentions. I will likely put the last Supporter version available on itch.io at some point, so don't pay yet if you aren't currently subscribed.

Thanks and apologies

While it was annoying having to individually check every single user for refund (as far as I'm aware, Patreon doesn't have an utility for mass refunds), it has put me back in touch with the gigantic generosity many of you have shown. I've seen a lot of nicknames of which I have memories from past years, and I'm amazed at the good will of continuing to support the project for that long despite prefering to wait for it to be further finished before touching it again. Despite how difficult these years have been, I'll fondly remember a few things from them, and one of those is the great people who I have had supporting my back. I can't find enough words to thank you, and neither can I find enough words to express how sorry I am to finish things like this. Once again, I'm sorry.

Update: Chili Cherry also wanted to say goodbye, so I'm editing this post to add this message from her.

"Hello, players!

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to write this message... and even though I’ve managed to put it together, I honestly feel like I don’t have enough words to truly express what I’m feeling. This is a very difficult moment.

This chapter began as a small dream. I won’t lie to you: it’s been a journey full of ups and downs. There were days filled with excitement and others when I felt weak and exhausted, nights of laughter and others of tears in front of the screen. But in every one of those moments, we kept going because we believed in what we were building.

And you know what? It was all worth it.

Unholy Arts is not just a game; it’s a part of us. Every idea, every pixel, and every line of code reflects all our love and effort. For me, the chance to be part of this team and this game has helped me grow as a person and as an artist.

I know that Unholy Arts will always have a place in your hearts, just as it does in mine.

Thank you, truly, for believing in us, for joining us on this adventure, and for bringing to life this world we dreamed of with so much love (and coffee!). This wouldn’t have been possible without you!

From the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING 😊

Unholy Arts is all of us ❤️"