Dev Journal: Second Year of Development in Review

    I can't believe it's already been another year... It feels like just yesterday I was writing last year's review. This year we added six new characters, Cheshire, the four goblins, and Atlas-Agena, and one new skin for Covenant. Antares came on board as a 3D artist, and has already made one new tileset for the game. A main menu and gacha animation were added, which I hope to polish more in the future, and you can save and load your game now. The game has gone through a lot of changes behind the scenes, too, with the quick and sloppy code it started out with being replaced and reworked with much better systems going forward.

    Right now, the big push is to get the game into Alpha- basically to fill out all the basic features so that I can start building on them. It's slow going, but it's also been going well and I'm feeling good about future progress. The more content I have, the more difficult it will become to make changes to existing systems, so for a game with this many moving parts, having a good base to work off of is vital.

    That aside, this has definitely been a year of growing pains. I knew going into this that game dev was supposed to be tough, but I still had the idea that things would be different for me because my passion would carry me through or something. Yeah, that was dumb. I was prepared for the work, and to be fair I haven't had any issue with it, but what I wasn't prepared for was everything surrounding it.

    My burnout wasn't caused by stress or overwork so much as it was me simply feeling too anxious to work on the game any more. There wasn't a single culprit, it was the result of many issues piling up on top of each other. Worries about choosing this as a career path, feelings of imposter syndrome, other game ideas being left to rot, the several year development sprawling ahead of me, and my loss of motivation after my initial spark died out, to name a few. It got to the point where I couldn't do anything without second guessing myself, and development grinded to a halt.

    What sucks is... this seems to be fairly common? It's just something that happens in game dev, especially solo dev, and the place where many projects die. The massive boost of motivation and inspiration you have at the beginning fades, and you realize that you'll need to finish the next several years of development alone. That always happens in creative work, and I was expecting it, but I was still at a loss for how to proceed once it happened.

    I just felt a bit lost and confused. I knew I didn't feel like working on the game, but I didn't know how to get that feeling back and only felt more anxious the more I struggled to find an answer. Was I approaching things from the wrong angle? Was it because my fun hobby was becoming more like a job? Maybe I didn't want to do this, after all? I could force myself to work, but was I really putting in my best work then? And was it worth it to do this if I didn't enjoy it?

    Taking a break helped a lot. I was able to take a step back, look at things objectively, and realize what the actual issue was. I knew I had some anxiety at the time, but I had no idea how bad it was and I had to try on a lot of shoes to find the one that fit. And it really sucks that that's what the problem was! In a lot of ways, I just cared so much about the game I couldn't work on it. My anxiety made it so I couldn't trust myself to put in any work unless I was at my best, and like most people I'm rarely at my best. The end result was that everything I did suffered for it.

    It still took me a lot of work to get over my anxiety. I mean, I'm not over my anxiety, but it's a lot better. There was no easy solution for it, every single issue needed to be addressed individually and packed away neatly. I'm still packing them away, and I don't think I'll ever stop. I think, if you can take anything away from this post, it's that anxiety is a real fucker. It serves no purpose, and only exists to get in your way. So if you're struggling with self-doubt or motivation too, take it out back and beat it with a stick until it lets you do what you want.

    Last year, I was struggling with doubts and a loss of passion for the project. I didn't have a good idea of where I was going or how to get there. This year, I have a (mostly) clear plan for where I want to go and what I want to do, and I've gone back to genuinely having fun working on the game. Not to imply this game was ever in any danger of being abandoned, but it is in much better hands now and I can't wait to see what the next year brings.

    Anyway, thank you if you actually read all this way, sorry about the long post! Don't worry, I'm doing just fine and am working through things in a healthy way. I can't say enough how much I appreciate the continued support, and I just wish that it hadn't taken so long for me to get past my burnout. Thank you so much, everyone, and I can't wait to show you what I have cooking up for the next year!