Please do read this if you live in the UK.
The NHS says you should not take Folic Acid if you have cancer or some kinds of Anemia (Including vitamin b12 deficiency). Also, taking folic acid can disguise symptoms of a b12 deficiency. It is, however, good to take folic acid if you're pregnant or trying for a baby.
From the NHS Website:
Folic acid is not suitable for everyone. For example, it may not be suitable if:
The government is planning to mandate the addition of folic acid to white flour later this year. Some producers of white flour have chosen to start adding folic acid now rather than later. If you fall into any of the groups who should not take folic acid, please read labels: white flour is in everything.
I get it. They want pregnant people to take supplements and be healthy. But. Cancer patients. People with b12 deficiencies. I have relatives with both! Absolutely insane that I have to start reading labels to avoid white flour. Absolutely insane that I'm writing a blog post to say hey if you have cancer you should start avoiding foods made with white flour.
So that's how I'm doing.
If you haven't already played it, I released my short VN, Honey Bread, on itch a couple of days ago.
This is the game I made for one of my resolutions for this year; that is, finish a game by June with the optimistic hope that this would be the start of June and the more realistic intention of a release at the end of June. Originally my intention was to complete this goal by making a demo for a dating sim I've had in the works that was massively over scoped - but then I realised how unfeasible completing the demo would be. Honey Bread was designed to be short in order to hit the deadline, with only 2 named characters and 4 locations.
I generally only have a few hours of free time per day for both working on personal projects and socialising. So it had to be a tiny game to me finished in June. The kind if game I think I would be able to complete in a week if I worked on it like a full time job.
And I still had to cut things for time.
The main cut content was one of the two minigames I intended to add to the game. Also, the background art was never completed. It takes a lot longer to draw environment art than I had anticipated, and I felt my thumbnail placeholders were okay. Not great, but at least they would be functional.
I love the story, and I'm satisfied with the game. The completed art is decent and the placeholder art is passable.
What's clear to me is that managing my free time is still something I struggle with. The game released a week into July in part due to the heatwave at the end of June delaying progress which was out of my control, but also in part because I keep spending my free time calling friends.
As of 1pm on the 11th July, we're looking at 11 downloads, 9 browser plays, and 48 page views, with a click through rate of 1.04%. That's 48 whole people who thought my game was worth looking at, and ~20 people who thought it was worth playing.
Which is... Kind of huge. 48 people is 48 whole entire individual real people who thought my game looked interesting enough in itch.io search results to open the page for a game that, if we're being honest, had a target audience of one (me), and was not marketed at all.
Honey Bread dropped at quarter to midnight with little fanfare on the 8th of July. I made a social media post after release that I shared a bit but that's the extent of it. This game was destined to have small reach. Would I have been ecstatic if it had somehow gotten hundreds of players? Yes, of course. But I'm content with the numbers I've reached so far.
I do wonder if putting Ayit (the main character) on the main image would have gotten me a few more clicks. I hear that people like faces. But it's been long enough that I don't think it would make much difference if I changed it now.
I planned a game to be made in a limited time, I made it in about the amount of time I set myself, and it seems like real human beings who aren't just my closest friends have played it. This was, overall, a wild success. I'm happy.