No, this isn't any bad news, nor is it really news in general. I just wanted to take the time to talk about the experiences I'm having as a game dev currently, and what I learned through my adventure so far.

Being a game dev has probably changed my life in a way that I don't think anything else possibly could have. It's one of the things that taught me that I can create new worlds full of characters that some people have even gotten attached to, and that is truly a wonderful feeling. I started getting into game dev back when I was 9 - 10 (yeah, that's a long time ago, lol) and ever since then, I only wanted to create! Now after about a decade later, I've learned a lot about not only game development, but my self as well.

While I've been making games for almost 10 years now, I haven't really put many of them out as big as I have until I started creating Pinky Bash which started development when I started 10th grade (so like mid 2019 I think?) . Pinky Bash is still probably my biggest project, just because it's the one that lasted the longest through all of my projects, and now seeing it in a state where the game is finally out of the concept phase, and actually being put together is a magical feeling. While the game probably won't come out for some years now, it still is amazing to me that after all of these years it's finally coming together.

In 2022, I released my first fully finished game. It was a small game, but it was a fun project I made with some friends. That game was a FNaF fangame called "Yap and Yell". Yap and Yell is something that I didn't think I would ever make, due to me liking to focus more on original games rather than fangames. This is also where I feel like me as a game dev really took off, since now I have a fully finished game out for everyone to play. While I won't say Yap and Yell is my proudest project, It was a good starting point to show what I was capable of at the time and I feel it is just as important as my original games due to that.

After Yap and Yell released, I learned my first lesson as a game dev, which was don't give into the excitement too quickly. I was very excited when I released Yap and Yell, just because I had a FULL GAME finished, and that brought me a lot of joy! Because of this, I went ahead of myself and started a sequel (that has now been canned for about a year now). This was a bad move on my part, especially since I never intended to make a sequel to the game, and just had so many ideas on how to expand what I already made that were probably cut for a good reason in the first place. This led to the game becoming a small thing a few friends and I made, to a series that I wasn't having fun with anymore. This eventually led me to cancel the project until I was ready to pick it up again, and not force myself to work on.

Yap and Yell Deluxe was announced not too long ago, This was due to me finally finding out what to do with Yap and Yell. I decided that remaking the game from 2 years ago, using what I know now as a game developer, and being able to change what I didn't like from the original game. This opens up my mind for bigger ideas in the future if I ever do decide that I want to continue Yap and Yell as a series. Even though it is a fangame, I appreciate what it started for me, and am very open to doing more things with the characters, ideas, and story, even if it's not directly related to FNaF, or Yap and Yell as a game.

In mid 2023, I released a demo for a game called "Bub's Big Blowout", which started out as a concept game to show how Bubble Bobble could work in a 3D space. This game did many things for me as well such as meeting other game developers, making new friends, and many more things! Despite this also being a fangame, I wanted to use this game as a way to test out making a 3D platformer, and I decided to base it on my favorite game series.

Bub's Big Blowout is still what I feel to be one of my greatest achievements even if it is just a demo at the moment, because I was not only able to experience a game that I wanted to see since I was little, but I was the one who was able to make it happen. This is when I finally realized that I felt ready as a game developer after so many experiments and teaching myself many new things that I felt I would need to know for it.

Once I felt like I got the hang of making a 3D game, I decided to make a game that's similar to Pinky Bash called "Slay-Bells". This is a smaller 3D platformer that I decided to make to now use what I learned from Bub's Big Blowout to make my own original game that will get me ready for when I get back to developing Pinky Bash. Slay-Bells is probably one of my favorite projects so far, as it's the one I feel like I'm using the most of my creativity with (outside of Pinky Bash). However Slay-Bells started becoming a much bigger game than I originally intended, so that pretty much became my main project as of now.

There are a few other games that I've been working on the side, that I haven't brought up, or even announced yet. But these are much smaller scale projects that won't take a lot of time, but I feel like they would also help me learn, improve, and grow more! I really hope to share some of these as soon as I can! But that leads me into a less positive topic about game development.

While I do love creating, I'm always coming up with new ideas that eventually get in the way of other projects, and It's been really hard keeping up with everything as these new ideas are something I try to get down so I don't forget about them. While my current projects will remain my main projects for now, sometimes I feel bad when I start something new, knowing it just adds onto what I have to get done. But at the same time, I'm very happy about this as well, because it means I'll always have something to work on and develop, even once my current projects are done!

I'm not going to use this post to announce anything, or make any big reveal or anything, I just wanted to take the time to talk about my experiences as a game developer so far because it's something I'm really passionate about. I think anyone who has ever wanted to get into game development should, because trust me when I say it's something I never felt I regretted getting into, and has been fun the entire way through.

Thank you for reading! I'm not sure if most of this was just me rambling or not, but I really hope this could inspire some people to get into game dev or try it out if they ever thought of it. ^^