Since the release of Burning Knight I’ve been plagued by a curse, and the name of that curse is knowledge. Since I’ve crossed "the line" of knowing too much, I’ve been cursed by the need to have the perfect tools to make games, and that has resulted in 1.5 tiny jam games in over 4 years. For context, I’ve released 20 similar sized games in 2018. It’s not like more games means better, but I have not really been working on anything for 4 years now. I’m struggling to beat myself up enough to use the simpler solutions, that don’t require me to invent the wheel from scratch, but so far I’ve not found any success.
There is something about making games, that I tickles my inner feelings so much. It has been THE thing I enjoy doing the most, I would eat and sleep thinking about more content for Burning Knight.
I’m in love with the process of populating a world, adding more lore, characters, etc. I’ve been planning out how to integrate an actual story into my game for once. But no.
Some time ago I first admitted to myself, that I can’t find the inner inspiration in me to sit down and write another game. Be it tiny. Whatever. I just can’t. I’ve been jumping from engine to engine, from framework to framework, from language to language. Nothing clicks. I don’t feel it. I know, that in some places its a question of discipline, but when it is a hobby, I feel like the spark is very important. And to add insult to injury, I’ve really set my mind on the fact, that I REALLY need to make a 3D game.
I attempted a few engine write ups, on the screenshot above is the latest one, that has gotten somewhat far, but if you consider that it’s MonoGame that does all the heavy lifting of loading and rendering the vertex data, it’s not a big achievement. Yes, I’ve been learning some stuff about quaternions, etc, but it’s still not much. And then I get the urge to rewrite everything in C++ and Vulkan… You see, where this is going.
I’m insanely nostalgic for the times of the past game development. All the wonderful people, that I’ve met in the PICO-8 community, all the folks who I only know because of the Burning Knight devlogs (I’m so sad, that these are lost to time, I’m trying to teach myself not to delete old content). The folks from notsosolo, wonderful Failpostive who we worked on together on Curse of the Arrow, and still keep in touch…
In my head I know, that it will never be like that ever again. But I can’t accept it just yet.
I want to come back. I want to make games. I want to enjoy the process again. I want to create.
But I don’t know what to change.
Egor.
This post has been written much different from my usual process, but I’ve felt like I need to write this down. This has been brewing for years now, and the fact is, that it is very hard for me to sit down and actually write a post here. It has to clear some mark in my head. But I’m starting to realise, that this is not the point of this place. I hope, that you understand my frustration. If you have any words of advice, please, let me hear them.