I've been on autopilot for so many days now. Dev has been going really well, and every day like a mindless drone I open my task list and I add things. But sometimes your game screams at you, "This isn't what I am!" and I have learned the hard way time and again, that you can't force your plan on your project and expect the best results, you have to trust your gut. If something just doesn't end up being what you envisioned in your head, you have to recalibrate, something is off. Either figure out that thing that's going to make it work, or reevaluate what you want to do. I've been pretty cocky so far, I want my game to have infinite replayability, to be the sum total of dota, super Mario, and diablo. All of their strengths, none of their weaknesses. And that's not possible, because you can't just smash every key on a piano and expect it to play a better sound than a sequence of chords that have been masterly developed over a lifetime by someone with tactful restraint.

SeaCrit is not Diablo, it has deeper positioning, more complex charge mechanics and twitch play that doesn't allow you a moment to rest and look over your items. I don't have a town to TP to, I don't have a big inventory that invites the player to look over their items and strategize. I have piñata's that the player ravages for loot and instantly wants to equip for a quick bonus.

Playing the game over and over is key though, that will still be the goal, I want to create a loop of progression that is inviting but challenging and as open ended as possible as I can generate as a solo developer. I feel as though I am making solid progress, but I feel as though I'm at a crossroads where the game is telling me what it wants to be. I have these notions that it should be repayable, but I'm also filling the game with lots of things that don't necessarily facilitate playing over and over again like quests and NPC's you have to talk to. I have this notion of these complex items with complex itemization, but even when I test the game, I really don't like thinking over the #'s on the screen too much, I may simplify damage to a single number, things feel overcomplicated as it is, in fact, that's going to be my step one todo, figure out wtf my damage systems do and simplify it. I think I'm going to ditch the eviscerate stat, or at least rename it to "charge Damage" so at least the player (and me) know wtf it does at a glance. That's not to say i can't still allow the player to grow their damage and eviscerate stats in interesting ways... I already have drops from enemies that give these stats, by removing them from items, I can double down on making this aspect of the game important.

There are so many elements of design that work together and fight against each other to form the game.  If I had a team to work with, this wouldn't be such a big deal, if you have dedicated designers you can do your code thing and one day you turn around and there's these swathes of content that are awesome you can throw your content into. But all of my endeavors drain finite time and enthusiasm. If I could clone myself, I'd have this incredible underwater network of caves  and sprawling zones with ingrained spawn systems and camps with tools to tie them into an overarching scaling difficulty system. I don't have a cloning machine, and as such I need to come up with a game plan that is more cohesive and doesn't squander time.

Lots to think about! I'm going to allow myself a bit of time to not stress working on the game, and to clear my head and ponder the overarching plan moving forward. Often times we can sacrifice months or even years of our time, because we do not properly plan our long term strategy, and this is further complicated because often times we cannot form a proper strategy until we have failed for years on end. It's kind of a catch 22, but not really. Be cocky, push hard, try to make your awesome game, and fail miserably. Then pick up the pieces and try again, better, a little jaded, but a little more wise this time.

Got the dev session from yesterday uploaded. Lately I've lost a lot of sessions because my recording software likes to cut out randomly without any alert, and also YouTube has been like "WHY YOU UPLOAD SO MUCH!" and has slowly the upload rate, but this was a solid day of dev and I was happy with the variety of things I got done. Some days you start work and at the end of the day your todo list is 2x longer, but in this instance it all got slammed out and after just 6 hours of work I was like "What do I work on now?". There are tasks that need doing that I can't do after 6 hours of tedious work like difficulty and item tuning, so I can only do those on days that I have lots of creative energy. Menial tasks I've been getting a lot better at doing.

Anyhow, each of these blog posts is a race against time to try to throw up all the stupid crap bouncing around in my brain before I forget it all. Gamedev when its going well really taxes you on so many levels mentally, there are so many things to manage, your time, your strategy, your art, your design, your code, your assets, your order of operations, your sanity. Blah blah blah I've said it a million times, but it doesn't change the Rubik's cube from reshuffling itself every day to give you another pain in the arse puzzle to solve, whether that be unlocking the fun from your game, or unlocking your own damned thoughts from writers block.

The title of this blogpost is a throwback to the early days of this project, "Some time to think" is the title of one of the musical tracks made by a cool dude in a random art forum from way back in the day. He made a post to the effect of "here's some free music, anyone who wants feel free to put it in your game". Better days then... Not that this project has a snowball's chance, but if it ever does well I think he'd be excited to see his work for so long ago showing up randomly in a game, and then he'll think to himself,  "Hey that *&(#$& arsehole never paid me" and then I will move to Mexico never to be seen again. Even though I develop the game solo these days, it's a nice thought that the hard work of others are still supporting this project still to this day: the music, the animations, the art, the sounds, the engine and feedback all help me every day to make this game not suck as much as it did yesterday.