When I started this project late last June, there were a few pretty basic assumptions regarding the timeline and general mental availability:

1. My spare time would be fairly consistent for those 6 months,
2. Work would not exceed its already stressful state, and
3. U.S. Politics wouldn’t devolve into a literal insurrection.

So, none of these held. As a result, it’s been a long 3 months, and I’m not quite where I want to be with this project — mentally or tangibly. January was initially floated as the next target, but that extra month was mostly spent playing games as an escape from how weird my life and the world at large have been lately.

Timeline Adjustment 🍀

To offset, the new target is late March with a barebones debug build by end of February. The last 3 months haven’t been entirely unproductive (and there have been some genuine bright spots 🐊), so an extra 2 months feels like enough to get this little project into a playable state for friends.

For the few folks at work and on discord that have volunteered to playtest or bring it up every time I join voice chat, I’m sorry about the pushback.

Expectations Management 🚓

Given that I haven’t really talked much about the project, I’m a little worried about letting expectations grow — a problem that is, annoyingly, proportional to the amount of time I spend on it. To counter, I want to clarify my target:

• A small area, similar length-wise to the Demon’s Souls tutorial area or collecting the first star of Mario 64.
• A boss to demonstrate the engine’s combat.
• A few familiar puzzles that have been painstakingly recreated to upset select people on discord.

This will not be some cool full-length game or something suitable for early access on Steam — it’s mostly an engine showcase. With that said, it’s forced me to implement aspects of a game or demo that I otherwise ignore and has been a pretty invaluable learning experience.

Previewing and Spoiler Reduction 📸❌

As an aside, I’m going to keep this place spoiler and relatively screenshot free — generic options menu notwithstanding.

To date, I’ve sent a few recordings to folks for feedback but haven’t actually posted anything here. This is intentional, but I also don’t have a problem sending my little Streamable clips to anyone who wants to get a general idea of what the engine even is.

Accumulating Lessons Learned 📚

There was a bit of drawing advice I heard awhile back that really stuck with me. It was something like:

You have 1000 bad drawings inside of you, and you need to just get them out.

Even for this weird little hobby, that advice still resonates. This is probably the most complicated little solo project I’ve attempted, with every other Trello card forcing me to learn systems and patterns that were very much foreign that morning. Looking back through the git log or seeing screenshots from October, it’s wild how clear and obvious those previously impossible problems seem now.

Looking forward to March, feeling bad about progress, but it’s been an enjoyable trip. ☕