Happy Holidays, Fallers! Somehow it’s been seven months since the last PQ2D development update, and even more unfortunately I don’t really have a good reason for that which is able to be summed up as anything other than “Life happens.” Therefore I wanted to make sure I got one more update posted before the new year, and since it has been so long we’ve got a lot to discuss!

If you’ve been following this game for quite a while, you’ll notice its development has slowed down significantly during the past year and a half, going on two years now. I started what I now think of as the prototype for PinesQuest 2D in late 2015, however, I don’t feel I truly began developing the game as we know it now until spring 2016, when the Gravity Falls TV series concluded. When the official Journal 3 book released later that summer, the game’s story was heavily revised. That same summer I released the game’s first official demo, containing its first 3 levels, and proceeded to receive AMAZING feedback from players which helped to improve the game and my hilariously amateur skills as a game developer enormously.

A year later, I extended this demo to include the 4th and 5th levels, and estimated the full game would be finished sometime in 2017. This was INCREDIBLY stupid of me since how on Earth did I think I could finish the remaining roughly 60% of the game, when the previous ~40% had taken me more than a year, in less than 6 months? Because I thought as I went, the easier developing the game would be. The truth was it only got more difficult.

So I thought, “Okay, 2018 will be the year I finish it.” By the end of the year I only managed to give the demo its final update, addressing its various bugs, balance issues and making it better reflect my vision for the finished game. As you know by now, 2019 fared even worse, and I’m fully willing to admit this was the year I worked on the game the least since starting development.

Earlier this year I also shut down the PinesQuest 2D Discord server due to inactivity. Unlike a lot of other indie and/or fan games in development, there was no real “community” for PQ2D, meaning there wasn’t much of a reason to keep the server around. I decided I’d shut it down and simply make a new one once the full game was done, when there might be more of a use for it.

Now that you’re caught up with the game’s development history, you might be thinking “So now what?” because in all honesty that’s what I was asking myself too. I’d been rather unsure how to proceed because as I discovered, since around the start of 2018, I’ve been in an increasingly less of a good position to be developing a game on my own. I’ve found merely lending a hand as a member of a larger team, such how I’ve been assisting with programming on A Date in Time, far more viable.

As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve also been losing confidence in the game’s story and my own ability to write it in a way that measures up to the Gravity Falls standard of quality. Despite having a very clear idea of what happens in PQ2D for a long time now, actually writing it out in a way I feel properly conveys those concepts has proven to be unbelievably challenging when it comes to a few particular key scenes. Not to mention there’s programming issues which have arisen and are in need of solving, something that’d be simpler to do if the game’s engine wasn’t so limited without extensive knowledge of the otherwise rather useless Ruby scripting language.

After giving it a lot of thought, here’s my current plan for continuing development of the game in 2020: The next year is going to be a litmus test to see if completing the game is currently possible given the challenges facing it.

I’m looking into recruiting some additional help from members of the ADIT team, if they are willing and able to lend a hand with the things that can actually be helped with, which sadly isn’t everything. A lot of this stuff I still don’t have much choice but to tackle on my own. Regardless, we’re gonna do the best we can in the next 12 months and see what comes of it. The goal is going to be to try and make significant, steady progress to the point where we feel like we can see the finish line. If that can’t happen, well…

I wanna be optimistic. I’ve put a lot of work into this game over the course of nearly 4 years now. No matter what, it won’t go to waste as it’s been invaluable experience, but only time will tell if my full vision for PinesQuest 2D can come to fruition.

Thank you so much for all of your phenomenal support and for following the development of PinesQuest 2D! Have a wonderful new year and see you in the next decade!!