First of all: The first alpha version of Chicken Island is going to release tomorrow at 3 p.m. CET / 2 p.m. GMT / 9 a.m. EST. It'll add 2 new and unique areas, 2 new abilities and has a total of 19 purple seeds and 49 purple seedlings. I don't know if I've already said that, but I do not plan on making any money from this game, so it'll be free. Game development is just a hobby for me, not my job.

So, it has been a while since I've made a Devlog, but with the release of Chicken Island's alpha tomorrow, I felt like it was a good idea to talk about one of the biggest hurdles when developing a game.

When starting a new project for the first time, it is really easy to be motivated, because you're able to add a lot of new, important gameplay features fast. because of the lack of complexity your project has at this stage. Over time, as the game gets more complex, the progress, that is made each day becomes less and at some point, there will be a day, that you'll look back on and think, that you've bascically made zero progress on the game. Staying motivated during these periods of time sucks and many projects end during such phases.

This game had such a phase too.

Right after i finished designing the first level, I suddenly had too make a proper menu for the game, and I hate making menus. This is also why the game's main menu is much more simple than I orginally wanted it to be, but I never bothered changing it, which was probably a mistake. Maybe in 0.4 I'll finally improve it.

The key to developing a full game is to set realistic goals. During the last 2 months, I had one goal: Work on the alpha release and release it in early/mid September and work on future content if I finish it earlier.

The development of the demo (which has about half the content of the alpha) was much faster, so I expected to not need the entirety of August for the alpha. This could not have been more wrong.

Everything I wanted to do for the alpha was the same as the demo, but bigger, better and more interesting and that was simply not possible in a short amount of time.

As y'all probably already know, the game is heavily inspired by Celeste. In that game, most screens have more than one solution. This kind of "creativity" was missing completely from the demo. The game was just a narrow path with no branching routes or non linear sections. However, most new levels in the alpha were designed with this in mind: They have muliple solutions, open areas instead of narrow paths, seeds and seedlings which are actually challenging and also skips, that can be made by more skilled players.

And this is exactly how to stay motivated while developing a game. You need to set goals, which need to be realistically achiveable, even if your expectations are much higher. By taking more time, and not rushing new content, you'll not only minimize the chances of getting burned out, but you'll also make the game better.

But even if take your time, and achive your goals, you might just not be able to stay motivated at all. Motivation is a blessing and a curse: In the right moment, it can make development seem so easy, but it can also make it so hard. The only option to get through these non-motivation phases is to power through them. I sadly had to do that way too often in the last month.

Anyways, there is so much other stuff regarding motivation that I wanna talk about here but this Devlog is already too long. Maybe there will be another one soon.

See you tomorrow in the new alpha.