Game Update
I’m two days late on releasing my blog entry this week, but at this point it has become such a habit that I need to do it. I guess that’s a good thing as every week it’s a check in for me as much as it is information for anyone that will read this. Today I feel tired, frustrated, and a bit on edge with all my personal stuff that I will talk about later, but I’m happy because I still showed up to “get my reps in” as the book “Atomic Habits” would say.
Primarily focused on getting with my artist to change out the capsule art, but if that falls through we have art in place and can release. I also spent time over break fixing my setup to allow me to record footage which I can edit together to make that holy grail of a trailer for the game which needs to be short and sweet while displaying the best parts of the game.
Speaking of the “best parts” of the game after soliciting another round of beta testers I actually got some amazing feedback from one of them. A lot of it came down to expectations and sensibilities that we were not explaining properly in the game. I didn’t even realize how many times I was taking “the road less traveled” until I looked through his feedback. That said we managed to glean some last minute upgrades that we can put in before the fateful Feb 22 date.
Speaking of that date, I need to swap my EIN on Steam, and talk to my bank to make sure that all my ducks are in a row on the business side of things after moving my licence from Texas to Florida. Kind of a lagging item that needs to be looked at.
Overall I feel confident that if I showed the game to someone right now it’s good enough to pass, and I can release it. I’m just putting as many last minute touches on it as I can before I get it to market while doing what I can to make sure all my ducks are in a row for release.
I’m not sure how much spreadsheet balancing I’ll be able to do before release. It was also noted that I need to take a look at the skill tool tips as they are to verbose and need to be reduced. Less is more.
Personal Update
Sometimes you come back from vacation and everything that was working when you left is suddenly broken. That was exactly the case this week and it has added a lot of stress to me. On the plus side I spent some time with a wonderful woman over some of my time off while working on the game of course. She gave me a lot of support this week which I am very appreciative of.
The things that are broken range from child sickness that’s keeping them from going to school, to car trouble, all the way down to my mouse malfunctioning. That mouse thing was pretty annoying to trouble shoot as it was super suspicious when I couldn’t move windows around my screen by clicking on the header bar. It turns out that it was double and triple clicking on a single click and is simply past its prime.
One of the biggest “game development” wins over the holiday is the fact that I now have a clean and clear office to work in. Often I say that there are a lot of things in “game development” and running a business that aren’t specifically related to the product that are important none the less. I figured that with all the paper I had in my office it hadn’t been important all year and so it wouldn’t be such a big deal to simply toss it into bins instead of going through it to spend the time to figure out what to keep, what to throw away and then to organize it all. It still need to be done eventually, but having a clean office is more important than getting that task done right now.
Things feel like they are in place, I just need to keep working hard and focusing. Over the holidays I picked up a new self development book “Awaken the Giant Within” by Tony Robbins. He makes some good points in the first chapter about how most of us “dabble” and never really focus. That said I couldn’t help but think about “Atomic Habits” which also presents the idea of creating small habits and working from there. I can see how the two concepts may seem to be at odds with each other, but I can also make sense of them in such a way to know that they can work hand in hand as well. I’m definitely in a place where it would be good to plan out the next 10 to 20 years of my life because it will be here before I know it.