Hello everyone!

It has been brought to my attention that a lot of misinformation is circulated on account of the current delay. To address some of the issues, I have decided to make a brief statement:

1.  The game is NOT on hiatus, NOR is it being cancelled, as some people suggest. In a much larger scope than ever before, the work continues, with major investments being made on all fronts. My personal issues aside, there's a lot of development happening behind the scenes that does not always translate into immediate build progression. Some of this work is done for updates MONTHS in the future, as they must be carefully planned.

2.  I am NOT undergoing mental health issues. I have personal struggles, as every other human being has, and at times they can be overwhelming when combined with other factors. As stated before, I'm adjusting to living on my own in a post-Covid reality, meaning that my human contact has been reduced to absolute zero. Some people might be fine with that, however as a social creature myself missing all in-person interactions is taking a toll on me. I do not have to justify or explain this any further, and I find it out of line when people question whether I have a right to feel a certain way. Some even took it as far as putting my relationship with Elath under scrutiny, and it's where I must put my foot down. I'd appreciate that all discussions regarding my personal life or my way of dealing with the emotional side of it cease in its entirety. I have been as open and as transparent about this part of myself, however, some people clearly take advantage of it.

3.  The current build IS in the final stage of its development cycle, and it WILL release to the Patreons at a certain point, followed by a Public release TWO WEEKS later. However, constant onslaught of DMs, pings and bickering are not only distracting, but also quite disheartening considering the nature of some of the comments being addressed in my name. To that end, I'm afraid I'll have to suspend all direct communication channels to allow myself some breathing space to focus on the development uninterrupted.

4.  There has been growing interest in the Patreon side of things by completely uninvolved parties in that platform. I wish that people who are not members of our support team did not inflict themselves into the discussion they are not a part of. Patreons have received a notification regarding the delay on the 28th of July, which is scant two weeks ago, as well as most of the upper tier benefits have been distributed for that month. It is entirely untrue that I have been ghosting the supporters for the past two months, as many people have claimed, and I ask that this misinformation would stop. The Patreons themselves have direct access to me, and I would much prefer to discuss any issues they might have with them, rather than with outsiders.

5. Finally, some of you have raised issues of communication and transparency. I would like to point out that I treat itch.io only as a delivery platform for the FREE version of the game. It is not my community website, nor it was ever meant as such. If you wish to be up to date with FBtW I strongly recommend joining our growing community over at the official Discord server, where I am most active and which I have mentioned multiple times already. I post all relevant updates and announcements there and it is a great source of information as to what's currently happening. I am unable to keep up with additional platforms and considering the amount of traffic taking place here, often in excess of 100 notifications a day, it's just not physically feasible for me to even try. As for posting dev blogs, it is my experience that very few people read them, let alone knowledge them, so that is that.

For those interested in the server link, I'll post it here:

https://discord.gg/syy77QN

With all that in mind, once again, I do apologise for the delay. Thank you for your patience and for taking the time to read this.

Regards, 

~Kael 💕