February: Near misses

Terry Feb 21, 2023 9 Comments

What I’ve been working on recently

Aghhh. It really, really sucks when something promising just doesn’t work out.

So, I decided to shelve the 3D game I’ve been working on recently. At first, this game seemed to have a lot of potential: I love how it looks, and I love how it feels to be in. I love the dreamlike feeling of exploring a 3D space with a lot of verticality.

But I’ve learned to trust my gut about these things by now, and this one just wasn’t coming together like it should.

I thought about sharing a playable build; but I think it’s a bit too wonky for that. So I just made a quick video instead:

Designing good levels for this was surprisingly hard. I was aiming for a particular kind of feeling here, and therefore had lots of rules about what I wanted to do (slow floaty movement; no enemies; a weird DOS energy mechanic that I was very attached to) and maybe too many constraints on what I didn’t want to do. So progress was really slow, and lots of ideas didn’t pan out.

Well, it was a fantastic learning project at least – I’ve learnt a ton of new stuff thanks to this! Maybe I’ll come back to eventually, who knows.

And is this process in the room with us right now?

When I rebooted this whole monthly devlog thing, I knew at some point I was gonna have a post like this. Fact is, most of what I work on doesn’t work out, which sucks! I’ve learnt to just accept it as “the process”, because honestly I don’t feel like I really have a say in it anyway. It’s just how it works. Pfffftttttttt

Ok, well, back to the empty project file. I’ve got a clean slate now, which is exciting, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet. See you next month!