Hey there everyone, Dustin here. It's been a while, hasn't it? 

I'll be upfront with you all - there's going to be a lot to cover with what's next for ViViD Relapse, so this is probably going to be a long read. I would encourage anyone interested in the state of the project to go ahead and give this a proper go-through, but I understand not everyone might be up for that or have the time to, even if they are. So, to put it very plainly: The news is good. Things are picking up, and you can expect regular updates to resume. Finally. But, I'd still like to elaborate a bit regardless, for those of you who do have a moment to spare.

So, why has it taken so long? Well, there's a lot of reasons, many of which I'm happy to explain here - but first, if you weren't aware, I've put out a few videos over the course of this year on the YouTube Channel, the most recent actually just a few days ago. If you're curious about where ViViD Relapse is going to go from here, story-wise, I'd recommend you go give them a watch if you haven't already, because as cryptic as they are, they are very relevant. Here's that most recent one I just mentioned: 

I've been making these videos for a few different reasons. First, as a fun way to provide some insight into where the game is going to go in Phase 2 and beyond. Phase 1 is a very small and intimate story, by design, but Phase 2 was always intended to expand the scope of things significantly. You're going to see a lot more of the world that Burt inhabits, learn a lot more about him as a character, and interact with a lot more characters more directly and more frequently than was ever the case in Phase 1. Everything in these videos is related to that world beyond Burt's narrow frame of view, and the bigger picture of the game as a whole.

Secondly, the other reason I've worked on these videos is for some editing practice, as I intend to start releasing videos on the channel at a somewhat more frequent pace. And, lastly, it's been something to do to exercise my desire to work more on the game when I have been otherwise unable to. Now, what do I mean by that, exactly? Well, there's a lot to answering that question. Almost too much, but I'll try my best to explain.

I think it's safe to say that ViViD is a very difficult game to talk about. It goes to some very dark places, and things are only going to get even darker from here. The material in Phase 2 and beyond is very difficult, very uncomfortable to engage with in a lot of ways, and it needs to be handled with a delicate hand and the right approach. More importantly, it needs to also be approached and worked on while in the right frame of mind, and it's a frame of mind I simply have not been in for a very long time.

I'm going to be very candid here: Since 2019, a lot of things have not gone very well for me in my personal life. I've spent the better part of that time, between then and now, seeking help for a lot of long-standing mental health issues. Those of you who struggle with your own mental health can probably relate to how draining and debilitating the process can be, even when things are going well, and I simply was not equipped to work on ViViD in the capacity that both it and I needed me to be in order for the development process to be a healthy one. In truth, I didn't have the motivation to work on almost any creative pursuits, games or otherwise, and it's been a struggle to grapple with the dichotomy of wanting desperately to work and wanting to have an outlet but not being healthy enough to do so. I've had to take some time to fall in love with working on games again, something I have been able to do slowly, and am feeling very good about these days, but it's taken more time from me than I ever would have wanted it to.

That shift to focusing on my mental health in 2019 coincided with a lot of other big life changes. Due to various circumstances, I needed to make significant moves across the country, twice, within a relatively short span of time. Then the pandemic happened between moves. Then, more recently, I've been dealing with new physical health complications in addition to my mental health journey. I've developed an issue with my back after a lifting injury in 2021 that's lead to infrequent but intense bouts of pain, and I am also wrestling with a few other things I am not entirely comfortable getting into at the moment, but needless to say, it's been a lot. 2019 also coincided with something even more devastating, however, and as much as it pains me to even get into this, it needs to be said. 

Over the course of 2019 and 2020, Wretchworks as a team, had a falling out. With respect to everyone's privacy, I am not going to get into the details of how or why, as that is far from the point of this update, but I need to at least mention it because it's important to the current state of development. I would also ask that you do not blame anyone or bother any former members of WretchWorks for details about what happened. I still think very highly of everyone that was involved, but it was simply a messy situation involving a group of people who were themselves being very messy in how they were trying to handle it and each other. There's no helping what happened, and rather than dwell on the past I would like to try my best to move forward as the sole member of WretchWorks.

Losing all of my development partners required a great deal of thinking on my part about how exactly to progress forward on ViViD, and what my available options were. The nature of the game's development has fundamentally changed, there's no way that it couldn't, and I've been trying my best to be realistic about that fact. A one-man show is a far cry from the 3+ person team that put together Relapse, and I am much more of a designer/writer than I am a programmer. I work much better in a team than I do on my own when it comes to coding from scratch, it's always been a weak point of mine. ViViD would not be what it is without Nate, I want to make that very clear. The amazing work that Nate put into both the original game and all the work that they did on the transfer to Relapse and the tools they built for us to develop visual distortions with are the beating heart of the game. Without them, the game simply would never have happened. Now, those tools do already exist, but to say the loss of Nate was a major blow to the project at the time would be an understatement. But I digress; my point is that my solo-development creates new obstacles and a new circumstance for development. 

There are ways around these new obstacles, and they are issues that I have been spending a lot of time thinking about. This thinking has led me to some solutions I feel decently confident in, but it's a lot of thinking that I have not been able to tangibly act upon until more recently on account of my time and energy being eaten up by so many other things. None of these solutions are going to be simple or easy. I don't know how relatable this is for a lot of you, personally, but for me it's very difficult to course correct when I've made plans about my future with key people in my life, and suddenly those people are either no longer in my life or not in my life in the capacity to which those plans make sense anymore. I don't bounce back easily from these sorts of life-altering shakeups, and for whatever reason, these past few years I've lacked a certain confidence when it came to making decisions by myself. It's also made it very difficult for me to communicate a lot of these issues publicly as they were happening, it can be hard for me to know where to begin or what to say.

I don't mean for this to come across as a mountain of excuses, or for me to simply whine about my problems. I mentioned the pandemic earlier, which has absolutely been a horrific struggle for damn-near everyone. I'm not unique in that regard, and in a lot of respects, I haven't been as impacted by that in particular as I easily could have been, so I am lucky in some ways. No, I'm laying all of this out on the table not to vent, but to both provide context and make a distinction. A distinction between the situation as it had been for 3 years, and where things are now. As a developer, it's important to me to operate as transparently as I reasonably can, especially in a situation where I am going to be working on a game in early-access. Having a project in early-access, one I do intend to eventually begin charging for portions of, is already a big ask. It's a big expectation of trust to be willing to pay for and engage with a developer's work while it is still in-progress. And, at least in my opinion, creating and contextualizing this distinction is important to me as far as that trust is concerned. That's why I am deliberating on the circumstances of the last 3 years.

The situation has changed. Things have been improving, however slowly. My mental health is in a better place than it has been for a long time, I'm doing what I can at the moment with respect to my physical health, I've been working on a handful of smaller game projects to get myself back into the groove of things, and Nate and I are on good terms again (though there's been no talk of them helping out with ViViD, and I am working under the expectation that it will not be happening). I'm feeling very good about a lot of this. Things are better, but there are still obstacles. Without the team that helped the project get to where it was at the moment, it's been hard to know what the right next step forward is, so much of the work I've been able to do in that time has been focused on story development and game design. All of this new material is work I am very proud of, and very eager to share with all of you, and I am once again on the path to that destination. Most of the tools to build new content and continue the game are already in place, like I said, and I now have both a workable process and the state of mind necessary to continue on my own. Me putting together the 'Hijackings' video was actually a big test for me, in that regard, and I'm extremely happy with how it turned out.

As revealed at the end of that video, Phase 2 of ViViD Relapse will be continuing in early 2023. It will be a handful of updates before I begin charging for the back-portions of Phase 2, as there are a good number of things that I think need to be done to the game before it's ready for that big of a step. This will come with new content, of course, but also a number of important changes to what is currently there in both Phase 1 and Phase 2. I'll be making another update here in a few days breaking down plans for the next few months, and what those changes entail. For now though, I think that more-or-less covers the state of things over the last 3 years, and where we are with things as of now.

I want to thank you all for reading, and to thank you all for your tremendous patience during the last few years, and am hopeful for your understanding for why that patience has been tested. Technically, with the next update still a few months out, I am asking for both a little more of that patience and your trust in my ability to deliver, but I hope that in the coming weeks as I share more information and paint a picture of what I intend for the near future, that trust and patience will be easier to maintain. Being able to work on this game is very important to me, and I am happy at least that I have been able to come here and tell you that fact and my intentions to finally continue.

Thank you all again for your time, and I hope that you all are doing well. Please take care.

-Dustin