Whew, last month was a tough one. I'm starting to realize that going from managing an intense music making challenge with the Two Hour Track Challenge and jumping right into a game jam with the OST Jam is just too tough for me; at least it was this time around. But finding your limits is important.
I started this year with some lofty goals. One of them was to start four game ideas with the OST Jam. These games wouldn't be polished and ready for Steam, but just have an outlet to create a lot of different small ideas so I could work on the best ones in the future.
Right now, I'm working on cleaning up and finishing Pawndamonium. I've been learning a lot about more esoteric Unity things like using camera renders as game sprites and creating a level editor. I am going to work on getting this done and up on Steam for $3 or so.
Similar to Death Drives a Bus, I might release some additional content later down the line, but I like releasing "feature complete" games that won't need much more hand holding once they get off the ground.
I feel like I missed the kind of wave of popularity that Chess had in early 2021 with this game, but I'm still pleased with how it came together.
After that I do want to polish up Hyperthread as well. I think it's a great idea that got SUPER bogged down in scope creep. Might rip the game down to the base ideas and rebuild, depending on how long that would take. I have a story in mind for it too, just gotta get it all together.
Doing these smaller games is kind of like the Two Hour Track Challenge, honestly. It's a bit of a playground to try things in a low pressure environment. I have some "bigger" game ideas that I want to do at some point, but these small projects REALLY recontextualize how I'm going to approach bigger ones.
I'm happy to be doing gamedev again though. I got pretty burnt out on it after Hyperthread. Even if the OST Jam this time around didn't yield a game, it gave me the itch to work on games again. It's nice to have momentum.
Thanks as always for your support! I'm going to go donate to some kitties now :)
-ben