the benefits of surprise (and the artwork)

[nullzero]

Interesting. Do you know if the same delays happen in the other western visual novel devs? Is it something like a common trait part of the "artists trade", as in a lack of adequate project/time management skill, like one could say about the IT/engineering people lack of social skills?

I love roguelikes and so on, but having an art intensive hybrid would be much more interesting. I still dream of a ren'Py procedural generated visual dungeon crawl roguelite. Its been on my todo list for ages, even if not just as an open source prototype with creative commons assets (openclipart).

I've seen a few other Visual novels / dating sims / etc. trying to go that route as a mini game (Magical Diary?) but the only ones fully venturing steadily down the RPG path have been yours starting with Planet Stronghold, Loren and now SOTW.

[jack1974]

Interesting. Do you know if the same delays happen in the other western visual novel devs? Is it something like a common trait part of the "artists trade", as in a lack of adequate project/time management skill, like one could say about the IT/engineering people lack of social skills?

Yes absolutely. I won't make names because is not polite, but many other indies had delays of even ONE YEAR because of issues with artists. And I know other who make x10 times more than me, paying A LOT of money to artists having the same issues (of course, in a smaller scale since when you start paying such amount you expect a more professional behavior, but still). So really seems based on the artist's personality more than how much you pay him/her.

And a dungeon-crawler is in my to-do list. I tried to do that already back in 2009 but was too early, now I think I could do a decent job

[nullzero]

No need to give names. I just wanted the general idea, which you just gave

And for the dungeon crawler, i'll just say... Yay!