Exoloper launched in Febuary to… basically zero sales. Not zero, and thank you to anyone who paid for the DLC in the game, but nowhere near enough sales to have made it worth my time. I’ve covered this before, so I won’t go into too much detail.
A month after that my youngest was born. So goodbye any level of creativity or sleep for what has now been eight months. Also goodbye home office. Goodbye reasonable thinking and pretty much any decent cognitive load.
All up, I spent about five weeks of this year working on prototyping up a new game, in the Godot engine as a switch away from Unity, but unfortunately it didn’t really work out. Partially due to strange design decisions (thanks sleep deprivation) and also due to it being a little too ambitious. I learned a ton, and have a good framework to build on for future Godot games, but yeah this game itself wasn’t it.
I really wish this year had panned out differently, but it just wasn’t so. Its been lovely to spend the time around my kids and be available as I can be for my family, but I live for my work, and I identify myself by how much cool stuff I can make.
2026 isn’t looking much better?
It’s unlikely I’ll be getting my office space back anytime soon, and with income from my games tapering off, I’m turning to contract work to fill in the gaps. Now to be clear, I’m super lucky I can even do that, and that the pay is more than good enough to keep me going, but that’s more or less what next year is looking like for me.
My goal is to try to get something super small out the door. Keep it simple, keep it easy, keep it doable. Something the scale of say Hoplite. 2D, limited verbiage, paid up front game, single aspect ratio, phone only. Limit all my expectations of sales, and just put another game out there. Maybe even avoid the appstore and go for Steam / Itch.
Burnout sucks
Thats where I’m at. I’m tired beyond belief, creatively empty, struggling to even look at my games anymore. Classic burnout. I was here in 2020 - 2023 after my first kid arrived and more or less as predicted, I’m here again with my second. I know this time though that I just need to take it easy, do whatever I need to, to get through this period and slowly get my mojo back.