Hello all, hard to believe its already the end of March. This is probably going to be a shorter devlog which seems to have been the trend recently. I feel like these have ended up being more about my life than the game itself, which is something I would like to stop. Since current circumstances and work on the game are sort of closely linked though it’s a bit tough to do that.

As a quick aside for those that just want to hear about progress. This month has basically been a lot of sprite work and some stuff with combat. I definitely wasn’t at full capacity this month. What I’m sort of doing at this point is gearing up for world design which means importing tons of sprites so I have things to build the world with. So its been a lot of sprite importing and trimming…so much importing and trimming. But I’m making good progress on that front. Aside from that it isn’t super relevant yet, but basically all NPCs in the game are getting something of a visual overhaul. The idea is to make them look more unique so that will be something to look forward to. The rest of this is going to be more about the circumstances that have been discussed in the last few months. Feel free to skip if that sort of thing doesn’t interest you.

If you are still here, I’ll try to keep this short and sweet. Bar some very minor thoughts here and there I am mentally back on track, which is good. The dosage I’m on isn’t supposed to fully kick in till the end of this month though so that will probably rectify the last few bits of this.

Which brings us to the situation of development. I should start by saying that I still want to develop the game. I don’t predict that I’m going to give up on it. However, the last few months have caused quite a bit of thinking (anxiety does that, go figure). A lot of it was anxiety ridden bs, but there were some kernels of truth in there that I’ve been able to grasp as things have gotten better.

I won’t bore you all with the details, as I said these devlogs have already gone off the rails into non-game dev stuff in the last few months. The bit that’s relevant to anyone reading this would be related to time. As in the amount of time I work on Verdant Village.

I can’t really remember the timeline anymore but for the past few years. It might be 5 at this point. I’ve basically spent my weeknights working on this game. By which I mean if I can help it, I’d work all night. From after dinner to basically when I go to sleep. To be fair, I can’t deny that even I burn out and might break for bits of time during the evenings or on a rare occasion simply not work. But for the most part it was work my job all day, work on the game all night.

As you might imagine, that sort of takes up a lot of time. Also, I think I’ve been doing this long enough to say that its degraded the pace at which I work because its just a non-stop grind. I bring all this up to say that I think I might need to take a step back. Like I said I am still interested in finishing the game. I’m also not talking about just taking 6 months off or something. I think if I did that my motivation to return would probably be gone.

Instead, as I’ve been feeling better I’ve started working again, just, not all night. Rather than 4 or 5 hours its more like 2. This is all new to me so I’m not sure if that pace will stick. By which I mean it might go back up. At the moment I’m finding myself tired at the end of the day and just wanting to do something mindless. But there’s a descent chance that I’ll eventually get bored of just doing aimless stuff in the evenings.

I’m of course bringing all this up because obviously how much I work dictates how long this will all take. And as you’ve probably noticed, its been a long time already. As I’ve probably said before, if I could have seen the future I never would have done EA when I did.

In the interest of transparency, I should also say that I’m not sure exactly how things are going to go. My priorities have been shifting a bit. In the long term that might mean nothing, but it also means that this game might be put aside. As I said earlier, I don’t have any intention of doing that at the moment. But a year ago I never thought I’d be thinking the way I am right now, so, you know, transparency.

Which brings me to these devlogs. I’ve been doing one per month for, uh, a while? I decided on that because I figured that I’d probably always have something to discuss with month long intervals. With things currently being a bit more volatile I’m thinking I’m going to change that to making a devlog when I have something to report. For instance, when combat is fully operational I’d make a post about that. Or really any time I add a system or NPC or area etc. That way I can ensure that each time I post there will be something of substance. And it will hopefully keep those who want to follow progress in the know.

The caveat to that is that when the new version of the game goes live I’d probably be a bit more active, which was always the plan, but it feels like that needs to be said. Its just that right now I’m still basically in dev mode and there’s only so much to report.

I feel like this entire thing has been like a death knell for this game. I’m not sure that anyone will believe me, but that isn’t my intention at this point. If I were to end development personally, I don’t think there would be any reason to hide that. I’m pretty sure if that were my intention I’d likely just make a short post saying so and that would be it. I hope that gives you some faith that I still want to make this happen. I just feel the need to be up front with things. If you’ve already bought the game, you deserve that much at least. Not to mention, you know, a finished game that was promised.

So that is the current plan at the moment. Things are very much up in the air. I’m not sure how all this will shake out, but for my part I’ll keep you all informed on the dev related stuff. I think from here on out I’m going to limit the personal stuff far more. I don’t mind telling people these things, but this was never intended to be like a tumblr blog or something. I elaborated basically because I didn’t want to just disappear for a few months and then reappear like nothing happened. But at this point I think things are in a good place. The only uncertainty is how my time is going to be spent moving forward.

With any luck I’ll have another update in the near future. I’ll still be watching the forums and such so you can always make a post there to ask something if you are wondering how things are going. Thank you all again for your kind words and patience during all of this it really did mean a lot. Hopefully you’ll be hearing from me sooner rather than later.