Topical 🌄

October’s been a wild month. Apparently the timeline itself wasn’t fun enough, as I also started weekly therapy for work-related reasons and dove into the 2020 pandemic dating scene. 😷🤞💕

Development and Pacing 🛠

From an engineering perspective, things are somehow both behind and ahead of schedule, with both dread and anxiety taking root. As of last week, nearly every major system is integrated and the October timeline itself was only a few days over budget, but the scheduling concessions have been pretty real.

To think of the project as a Lego kit, the blocks and instructions are all done. Mechanics, core systems, event architecture, most of the UI, and the general scene design are there, but it’s been a surprisingly heavy lift to actually go in and… just follow my own instructions. 😓

Also, I wouldn’t call it burnout, but pacing has definitely slowed. Despite (or maybe because of) the October workload, I’ve honestly worked on the game very little each day since — averaging an hour or two each night for November. Things do feel alright at the moment, but it’s starting to share a logical apartment with how I view cooking dinner for myself: I don’t deserve this much time.

November & Realism ☕

The game’s overall scale of the game has been cut down a fair bit to accommodate the life changes, but it’s become a question of quality versus quantity. Frankly, I don’t have the time or skillset to produce a larger game in this amount of time, so I’ve had to reconsider the approach overall.

Time has been its own issue (with work and personal adventures each receiving more time than originally budgeted), but that’s honestly been part of the fun? I am not a professional with Unity and have my own full-time job and hobbies in addition to this, so this project’s asterisk has always been “in addition to everything else” — naturally the project would require a few pivots to accommodate that constraint.

For that reason, I’m pivoting from a finished game to more of a demo / slice of the game I wanted to make — similar to a Deltarune. There are a few reasons here:

• Life has become unexpectedly busier than it was in June
• Continuing with original scope wouldn’t provide any polish time
• No point in a full game if people don’t see value

So it’s a bit disappointing, but I can’t think of another way to hit the timeline. As a silver lining, if people do end up enjoying it and want to contribute ideas, then they can do so and the engine already exists. 🤝

Thinking About Next Time 📚

Earlier posts have gone into some of the technical learning experiences, but the pacing and management aspects have probably been worth the paired anxiety. Aside from the ambitiousness and time concerns listed above, it’s highlighted the risk of naivety with respect to a timeline and the need to rethink things mid-development.

As an example, some mechanics just should have been simplified. Back in July, I began building a mechanic that had wracked my brain for literal weeks and whose development took an entire month. Was it worth it, worth a sixth of my total time? Probably not — although it’s the first thing someone asks about whenever I submit a clip for review, without fail. 🤔

By the time December 1st rolls around, I hope to have an MVP for initial playtesting with the few folks who signed up. Hopefully there will be enough corners cut to make that. 😅