I'm not sure if I've tried to fully convey this notion that haunts me as I push forward on the fish game. You build up AI, you build up levels and items and tons of content and at its best, it feels like wack a mole. It's satisfying to get thing after thing done from a list, you feel tangible progress as you tear through your ToDo's. You open your list, you do some code, you make some prefabs, and slowly the game kinda takes physical shape. You can give a mathematical value to the distance you've traveled in a given day. How many things did you check off your list? Half.  You're 50% of the way to finishing your game!

There is no recipe for a game, no ToDo list that will take you to a finish line. This progress is meaningless to that magical secret sauce of fun. The only thing that will push your closer is never-ending struggles.

There's this dark corner of my brain, where I try not to wander where the ultimate question lies, "Is SeaCrit a game I want to play?" It is so painful to think about this question honestly year after year, and if I'm honest, it's been a no for a very long time, despite how much my brain has wanted it to be yes. I genuinely thought it was yes for a long time, but it never really was. I used to don my rosed colored glasses, drink my own kool aide and think to myself, damn this game is good, it's teh cat's meow! But holy crap I was wrong, the game used to be total ass. I've played the demo's it was a mess.

When I think about this question nowadays, after stewing on the reality of the project, my brain shuts off. Stop thinking about this question, go do your tasks, go be useful, this question will only bring you pain and prevent you from checking things off the list. I like to think I'm getting closer to answering yes to this question, but it's hard to tell, because my brain is so tired of thinking it over that it barely lets me hold it in my mind, after playing this damned game for so many years on end and testing endless cases, does my tired opinion of the game even matter any more?

Why can't I fit this question in my head? Why can't I simply answer this question. And if it's no, I don't want to play this terrible game. What can I do to make it better to fix it? THAT is the answer that I have desperately wanted the answer to, the reason why I subject myself to the question.

And honestly, the more I force myself to think this question over, I think the answer is starting to be "Yes", or at the very least, "You are very close to being able to answer the question". But after working for so many years just knowing there are a few things to do is a dreadful proposition. I think more than anything i'm tired of spinning wheels in mud. I'm tired of adding things over and over and over again that sometimes work and sometimes don't. I have rebuilt the environment of SeaCrit so many times, I have built up so many iterations of fish over and over again.

(This image is 8 friggin' years old, and part of me looking at this is like, I should find where those art assets went because they're not half bad!)

I'm so damned tired of making new zones, so damned tired of tweaking the same spawn lists over and over again. Is the start zone too small? Is it a fun combat area to partake in? Does the itemization add to the game? How do i polish bosses to make them less crappy? Should I tweak just a few things or totally start from scratch with fish spawners? What little thing needs tweaking on the melee fish to make them fun? How many items is enough? What motivatoin does the player have to explore? Why do certain areas feel so soulless? When should I start doing detail passes on the world? Are shops worth keeping? Should I migrate purely to dropped items? Why does everything feel so detatched and disconnected?

There comes a point where you iterate on abilities and fish so many years in a row, trying to think about how casual players will enjoy things, pro players, that everything starts to turn to jello in your brain and you're no longer able to tell what a video game is any more.

I've come so far in 5 years, part of me is like, "Holy shit, you've made all these little mechanical things that all sorta work in tandem to be fun" and another part of me thinks, "good god there are a lot of dials to tune in my lonesome."

I have this notion of this fantastical game I want to make, something that blows diablo out of the water, something that breaks new ground and forces its way into success, that perfection is the only way to make it in this crazy world, and when I compare my meager ends to this benchmark things feel hopeless.

But that's the stupid way.

SeaCrit won't be perfect and that's ok. It just has to be close to as good as other imperfect games that others have made before.

I'm going to break convention today and link to one of my favorite shows. In one of the episodes it touches on this notion maybe you've had cross your mind, that we lived our lives the wrong way, and that by any measure we are abject failures of what we could have been. That everything we did was a mistake and there was this wonderful life we were destined to have lived if we weren't such screw ups:

They wake up from a terrible nightmare to realize they were being poisoned with fear from an alien being, and that this despair almost ended them, it was all in their head. Point is there is no "perfect", there was no path to ultimate glory, you can lay around and fret about the imaginary perfect life you were owed in your mind, but what good is that? You have to hobble things as they are and try to make the most of the shitty hand you've been dealt, or maybe you hit too many times and fucked everything up on the river and it's all your fault anyhow. I don't know what my point is. I just need to work on the damned game, because fuck it, I've come this far, and I think the game is starting to not be dog shit.

Holy fuck, so many years gone. Hopefully won't have to blather too many more rambles before I kick out another demo that turns this thing around.

Woooooooooooaaaahhhhhhhhhhh we're half way there...