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Weekly Update - Waiting for Alpha Feedback, Anxiously Procrastinating

2 years ago2,093 words

I've spent this week waiting for feedback for the Atonal Dreams Alpha... or rather, that feels like an excuse to shirk work more than anything, as I find the mere thought of the next big steps - or the alternative severe life changes if this won't work out - so distressing. I should try to play a game for the first time in ages to destress and reinspire myself, but I've been struggling to decide which one!

I've given keys and such to 10 people from Patreon, which isn't a huge amount - especially considering I have 79 patrons (hmm, that's gone down by 3 since last week; I wonder if I did something wrong) - and 6 have given feedback so far. Collectively, they've given a LOT of very useful feedback, which I greatly appreciate! But acting on some of it would require a ton of hard work, so I thought I'd wait and see what a larger sample thought so I could gauge whether or not I had to do that work.

There are other, more minor things I could have been doing, and I could certainly have been doing something to promote the game, or researching how best to do that... but bleh. I can't say it's been a remotely productive week.

I suppose I at least looked at a couple of solo indie game dev subreddits, intending to play others' games or to post about mine, but felt put off and discouraged because of how... low the number of posts and quality of content was? I got the impression most posters were young and just starting; at the stage I was before I made MARDEK, maybe (so not yet beaten down by the brutal reality of this ridiculous path). It's great such people have a place to congregate and (hopefully) inspire one another! Though I couldn't help feeling like an old man in a playground or something. (Though that's how I often feel on Reddit generally.)

Mostly it's just excuses to procrastinate and avoid the distress of doing all the marketing stuff I dread, though, combined with general fears about the game possibly - probably? - flopping like Memody: Sindrel Song did... though I know more now and will be sure to try things I didn't with that.

The whole point of Atonal Dreams was to make a short prequel to Divine Dreams so then I didn't get stuck in some years-long project that might not even work out, but since everything takes much longer than I predicted, that's exactly where I've ended up! And I'm very aware I'm 34 and I've never had a Real Job but might have to somehow find one sooner rather than later, but I don't know what or how or if I even can, and... well, it's a lot.

I've been feeling like I did when I originally gave up games dev and shifted my life around several years ago - a 'career crisis' or something - when I ended up going to uni (once for a year then dropping out because I felt I wouldn't fit into the professional games dev world, then again to study psychology, which was thwarted by discovering I had literal brain cancer, pfft!).

I've been looking into seeing a doctor about seeing a therapist to help work through it all, but it's annoyingly difficult to even get an appointment with the GP because you have to ring during some specific window, and if you don't, all the slots are filled and you have to wait until tomorrow... Then my parents went away on YET ANOTHER holiday so I've been saddled with the fussy, needy dog, WHICH ATE MY WORK and and and-

Excuses, excuses!

Next week, I should at least try to fix some of the smaller issues testers have found, and at some point soon I should look into doing a more open test with more people, though I'm not sure of the best way to do that, so I'll need to look into it. I don't know if asking in this blog would reach any more people than my Patreon. And should I just do a completely-open-to-anyone demo at some point? I think that's what a lot of indie games do?? I'll need to research that.



I've also been thinking that I should at least play a game or something. It's been a while since I last did. I usually try to spend my 'free' time doing personal creative projects, but recently I've not been able to work on those either because of the stress. So something to relieve that stress - and inspire me in the way games once did - might help in a lot of ways.

I've had a bunch of games on my To Play list for ages, but they're mostly for the PC; I'd prefer something that was for the Switch, for now at least, so I can get away from my PC for a bit. But I'm having difficulty deciding on which one to start!



I've been interested for ages in replaying the old Final Fantasies that inspired me so much when I was younger; maybe they'd rekindle some of that spark? The Switch store only has the ones from VII onwards- none of the pixel remakes of I - VI that are on Steam - but I feel I'd HAVE to start with VII, which is a huge time commitment in itself, then I'd HAVE to do VIII, IX, X, X-2, XII... And I'm concerned they'd either be TOO familiar - I played them again and again when I was younger - and therefore dull, or maybe they'd not live up to my memories and the fondness I have for them would be spoiled (this happened when I replayed Pokemon HeartGold a year or two ago)...




There's a similar case with Xenoblade Chronicles. I loved that when I first played it years ago, but I don't think I ever replayed it, so I want to play the remaster, then the sequel, then the third which is coming out soon... But they feel like huge time commitments too (I remember spending 100+ hours on my original playthrough).

Plus games are so damn EXPENSIVE! The first one's 50 pounds, and the second + DLC is almost 80... Not cheap!



Someone recently suggested the indie RPG Bug Fables - which I think had been suggested to me before? - so I looked that up, thinking it might be more valuable to play something new and recent than things that aren't exactly in line with modern game design sensibilities...

But honestly, just based on the screenshots and trailer(s), it doesn't exactly appeal to me! It's obviously inspired by the Paper Mario games (which I've never played), but the visual execution is very amateurish. Reminds me of my old Flash work. I wonder if the devs (presumably plural?) were around the age I was when I made MARDEK etc?

It's inspiring in a way knowing games don't have to look great to succeed (though Undertale and Minecraft already made that point strongly), as it does seem to have succeeded? The gameplay and writing might be amazing! But its look doesn't exactly draw me in.

Or maybe that's another excuse, and the actual underlying reason is that I'm intimidated by 'the competition' and afraid of playing something that'll just make me think 'this is different to my stuff, it did well, therefore my stuff won't do well', or whatever. Probably!! So probably not a good option to destress! Something I should investigate when I'm in a better state of mind though.



As much as it annoys me when people resist my new projects and ideas because they're different from the MARDEK from their childhood, much of the time when I have the urge to play games I retreat into things I grew up with. PS1 games, a lot of the time, or sometimes SNES or MegaDrive (Genesis) ones.

The experience of games was so different back then... Each one felt like some vast adventure or insurmountable challenge! For example, the other day I randomly remembered an odd PS1 game my brother and I played a lot called Wild 9:



I remember us playing and replaying the first level over and over for hours, days maybe... It certainly felt like a huge chunk of time. But I never remembered finishing the game. While finding a playable version felt like too much of a chore, I looked up this longplay to at least see how much of the game I'd ever even seen. Not much, from what I vaguely recall! The first level feels VERY familiar and nostalgic, but subsequent ones make me think "MAYBE I've seen this before??", so it's likely that we just never got very far at all.

I looked it up on Wikipedia afterwards, which led me down a weird path. I learned it was by a lot of the same people responsible for Earthworm Jim, which I didn't know before but fits. Then I learned about a sequel to Earthworm Jim meant for ∞ some bizarre ostensibly-upcoming console I'd never heard of ∞ which is owned or something by ∞ some prolific games composer called Tommy Tallarico ∞, whose name rings faint memory bells and I don't know why?? His discography is long, but so much of it is what I'd consider 'artless junk' - projects probably designed by committees to leech money and nothing more, usually film tie-ins - which is usually the case when you look at what creative people have had to do to pay the bills, and that agitated further the already alerted anxieties I have about my own future...

So that was fun.

I also saw from that discography that he composed the music for another odd game from my childhood, Cool Spot:



Which was a glorified advert for 7-up, though I don't think I realised that at the time. It all feels so very nineties!

The comments by people on both of those longplay videos hint at experiences much like my own, of families sitting around and attempting these games over and over but never really getting very far... It seems sad that my perception of games is so different these days.

It also makes me curious though about how I'll perceive games like the Final Fantasies that I haven't played since I was around 20 or so. Would they seem so much briefer, way more poorly-written or clunky to play? Or would I be pleasantly impressed, and lost in their worlds as I once was?

I suppose the Switch port of FFVII is as good a place as any to start - and I've already bought it now, after getting distracted by the dog pestering me to sit in another room half way through writing this - though there's still some reluctance to start. I miss how I'd be actually EXCITED to start playing games! Sigh!!



(Looking up ports of games from my childhood like that makes me wonder about a Clarence's Big Chance Steam port, or makes me think I should work more on the collection(s) of my old unfinished games I talked about not too long ago... I would maybe have done something on that this week if I could actually concentrate on anything!)





Actually, an edit after posting because I just remembered: I saw a recent Reddit post about a retro gaming handheld - basically something Switch/PSP-like that runs emulators - which I'd never heard of before, but which seemed appealing to me, especially if cheap (as in 100 pounds or less).

∞ This sort of thing ∞. Does anyone have any experience with or knowledge about those??



I'll keep waiting for the remaining testers' feedback, though I'll also look into what to do next over the course of next week. A big part of the paralysis is just uncertainty. I should break it down into small tasks rather than seeing the path ahead as a mountain I have to scale in one leap.

I'll also try to work on Atonal Dreams, to address at least some minor things testers have already reported, and I should look into how best to promote, and seeing a doctor, and... bleh.