Things have been a little bit hectic lately. I started a 4 week-contract the morning after submitting the IGF demo, and it has kept me quite busy, hence the lack of updates. Which I will rectify right now. We’ll start with a recap, and dev diaries should follow in the days to come. Hopefully.
The last few weeks of October were tough, with lots of ups and downs.
We had a hard finish for the demo. There was a lot to do and many unresolved issues. Certain elements of the demo really didn’t come together until the last minute, and that caused us a lot of problems. It even led to increased tension and frustration at times. Looking back, the stress shouldn’t have been unexpected. We worked long hours for an extended period of time, and the tiredness gets to you. After a while, all you see are bugs and broken feature, and it’s challenging to stay positive.
Still, we persevered, urging each other on, and doing our best to help each other reach the finish line. We worked hard and we got the demo done. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t bad either. The deadline was at 9am (local), Monday November 2nd, and we had our final build submitted by 6am. We didn’t even cut it close. 
My sense of relief was short-lived however. I expected to feel ebullient, but instead I felt dissatisfied. Off I went to start a new contract, relieved to have had the build submitted, and hoping it would all sync in later on. And yet I still felt down by the time I returned home. When I spoke to Mikael later that evening, he felt the same way. There was a shared lack of satisfaction with our demo. We had each shown it to a couple people, and all we could pay attention to were the glaring bugs and issues.
This focus soured our sense of achievement. We spent a while analyzing all the actual issues. While we concluded that they could all easily be fixed and that the fundamentals of the game were sound, we still didn’t feel much better. It certainly wasn’t for a lack of hard work. We simply ran out of time. Too many things came together too late, and we just couldn’t play test them and balance them enough. What we could have accomplished with another week…
We tried to cheer ourselves up. It was just a demo. It was normal to be in such a state. We would continue to improve the game. Anyways, the week progressed as I started my contract work and Mikael worked on setting up some interviews and previews to unveil our game. We prepared the material, some screen shots, a video. We answered the interview questions. On Thursday night, we got a sneak peek at the preview from the journalist, and we started to get excited.
Friday morning, and the article blew my mind. I just didn’t expect a piece like that. It was just so…flattering. I didn’t feel like he was talking about us out there. It felt like somebody else, another team, another game. I feel so disassociated with the words on those pages. It’s just so utterly strange to me. Orioto is used to this of course, with all the success his art pieces have received, but to me, it’s just plain weird.
It definitely makes you feel good though. After those disappointing few days, it was great to have such a positive reaction to our game. And not just the article, but some of the comments and feedback we received. When we got picked up by GameSetWatch and mentioned on Indiegames.com’s weekly roundup, I was on cloud 9. It’s great to get an different perspective from other people. It made us both realize that we were way too focused on the shortcomings of the game, and not enough on what we have accomplished so far.
Hopefully all this is just the start. We’re going to work our asses off to make this game as awesome as possible.
