New Year, New Update

Where do I start...

To be honest, I'm not to sure. Last year was just a mess and I'd been stuck in a rut in what I wanted to do, battling my own mind and where I want to go with everything.

It was massive thought exercise, for most of the year it was to mainly work out fundamentally if I still wanted to do game development. At some points I'd honestly thought about completely jacking it in and just focusing on software development, which, while I enjoy programming on that side of things, it just doesn't give me the creative fulfillment that I get and find myself craving most of the time.

It's probably the second or third time and I'd seriously thought to myself, is this all worth it? For me I feel it is worth it.

More recently, it had turned towards what I want to make.

For the most part my game development had revolved around making fun games, ones that had a bit of comedy to them, Best Garden I feel has that. Now, I want to shift more into making games that have more personal experiences entroched in them.

It's those kinds of games that have left a significant impact on me and I want to do the same for others in what I create. I'd learnt through writing the first three volumes of Timelines, that I really enjoy creating stories, telling tales of someone's inner struggles, how they overcome them and even just creating a world that someone, somewhere can escape to.

That's what I want to work towards, making the kind of games that will leave the player really feeling something from what they'd played.

How am I going to make that happen you ask?

Well, with a lot of blood, sweat and probably tears.

Seriously, it's going to take a huge amount of work to get to that point. I do have a list of things I'm doing for this year.

1. Do a full release of Dungeons of Loot.

   If you didn't know, Dungeons of Loot was my Ludum Dare 42 project (See here: Dungeons of Loot) which I'm now making into a full project.

2. Do a demo release of a currently un-announced project.

   This is currently in the process of being designed and the mechanics ironed out ready for a demo and vertical slice to be made.

3. Monthly Prototypes for patreon subscribers.

   Currently, I'd made my patreon private because I didn't really release much to it. More will be detailed about how it will work in a post in the next few weeks.

In conclusion, I have a fair bit lined up for this year. I'm getting a bit more organised with structuring how I do everything and splitting my time between both of the main projects, the monthly patreon prototype and life in general.