Lately I’ve been having no motivation to continue working on the game. It just seems like there’s too much complexity in the current project to work around, so I’ve decided to start over with a new game.

I thought uploading it to this page, but there’s a lot I want to do differently. So to stress that it’s not the same game, I’ve made a new game page where I’ll be posting updates (here).

I’ve also unlisted this game so that people won’t find it thinking it’s a real game. I didn’t do that with previous projects because a lot of people told me they enjoyed them despite their flaws.

Usually I’m pretty critical of myself when this happens, so I came up with a few reasons why I think this project failed. Hopefully I can learn from them and not make the same mistakes again.

Back when I stopped working on Spheres, I said it was because I didn’t have a plan. I don’t think this is the case anymore. It’s almost as if I have too much of a plan. I get stuck because I’m constantly looking ahead at the large quantity of work I’ll have to do. It seems out of character for me to say this, but I think I have to focus less on planing and just learn as I go. I can focus on what people like and dislike about the game once I have something in a playable state.

Secondly, I think I have to learn not to avoid failure. I always feel like there’s a lot of pressure to get things right the first time. Somewhat ironically, this increases the odds of me actually failing. In the future, I plan to see each project as more of a learning experience from the start as opposed to my master work. I expect this will be the most difficult part, but also the most rewarding if done right.

I’ve always loved games that achieve a lot of depth with minimal complexity, so that’s the type of game I plan to make going forward. This game was far too complex from the start, and only getting worse as I added more features onto the list.

I hear it said that success is getting back up after your failures, but that makes it sound like failure is a bad thing. To be honest, I feel like I haven’t failed enough. The important thing is I can see myself getting better with each mistake.

This will be a pretty radical shift for me, so I don’t expect it to come easily. It’s one of those cliches that you hear all the time, but I think you have to have experienced it to really internalize the meaning. I’m realizing more and more that making games is not just a test of skill.

The next game isn’t going to be a masterpiece. It might not even be fun. It might just fall flat on its face. But I think that’s alright. Don’t get your hopes up.