I'm amazed at how you manage to pull out your characters on Blender. That's definitely skills and dedication.
HanatakeYurii
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I know that indie devs managed to get out of this problem either by moving resources out of the APK (old workaround, but a bit annoying to install), or by allowing bigger APK (I don't remember if that became possible by an update of Ren'Py, Pygame, Python or Android itself, but I know there is way as proven by numerous games).
At this position I can only say whatever road you choose Good Luck! It will be hard to transition but you seem to have clear ideas on how to proceed, so I hope it'll go the way you want.
It's been years since I started following this game and it's honestly one of the best of its kind. You made something great and its now time to push it on higher heights.
I'm in no position to provide financial support but I'll be sure to keep on eye on progress and share the word where I can. You're far from alone.
I'm kinda curious (and a bit anxious) about the new art style and how we'll link back to known characters, but I'm in the boat and I'll stay until it either sinks or hopefully moors at destination. At least, you're not the first to take that road of parting with KK and it have been successful given enough tenacity.
(I refrained to post on Discord as it's quite stormy there now. I'll come back when the waters go back quiet. Don't let the gale of comments blow you away 😊)
(For safety, all links are on Itch.io)
So first there was Lucky Paradox. The author, Stawer, got the solution from one of his Discord's user in response to Joiplay not working very good, before getting simplified without file manager:
New Android Build for Lucky Paradox | Android Master Guide for Lucky Paradox
Then Zimon, author of Champion of Realms, heard about this, and found the complete method by himself (but didn't explained it publicly), then also simplified it:
Android Version Apk + Addons | Android Simplifications
That is almost all info I have as of now. It might need a bit of online search, or trying to contact one or another.
Hi! I almost forgot to say, so I'm doing it before forgetting for good:
You're not the first to hit Android limits: I've seen at least 2 Itch.io games having the same issue, and I'm pleased to say they found a way to get around it.
The first solution involved using Joiplay, which I wouldn't recommend because it is a bit harder to run and since it is emulated it can present incompatibility or performance problems.
The second is far better, they managed to split the game in 2 files: an apk with the game code and a file that contains all the resources of the game. They even managed to require the resource file to be put in a Documents' sub-folder, thus avoiding file managers and permission issues.
As for how exactly it works, I cannot say much since I'm not developing on either RenPy or Andoid. I'm just reporting other's discoveries, I hope it will help a bit (feel free to ask which games I'm talking about, I don't want to make unwanted advertising).