Archive:
Xmas has been and gone, along with my plans to have a productive couple of weeks, away from the day job. The minute I stopped working, my partner and I both came down with a stinking cold, which put paid to most of the month. I should have predicted that would happen. 2025 was easily one of the busiest years I’ve had, all in, and I’m glad to see the back of it.
So, 2026, then…
The full-time gig that I started back in July has been going really well. I’m genuinely enjoying smashing my way through some old-school 2D stuff, but it means that my projects have been shuffled into the evenings and weekends. And, honestly, I’m fine about that. It’s a relief to have steady cash coming in, and even nicer not needing to worry about finishing anything to a timeline, or whether it’ll sell. I’ve never really been a full-time “Indie”, but I’m even less so now.
I did manage to do some work on this over Xmas. The tutorial section – first pass – is done. It’s introducing the controls, and has a great Matrix-like vibe. I think it’ll fit in nicely. I’ve also done another pass on the first 10 levels, bringing in some new ones, and re-ordering what I had so there’s a better, more progressive difficulty balance, where each key pick-up item is introduced, one-by-one.
The job for the next few weeks is to make some traps, a couple of enemies, some switches, disappearing blocks, and stuff like that. Nothing too strenuous, just the core toys that I’ll need to make some more levels with.
I still can’t leave this alone. Probably because I can tinker with it while I’m sat on the sofa, trying to ignore Strictly and Traitors.
Over Xmas I added global sprites and tilesheets (as an addition to the per-level assets, that the engine was built around), and knocked up a custom texture packer tool, so I can work with Aseprite files, end to end. And last night, I integrated the Steam SDK, so now I have it working on the Deck natively.
Unsurprisingly, it runs as smooth as silk, so now I’m itching to do something with it, to kick the tyres. And I’ve had a great idea…!
But I need to stay on target.
Musings, random thoughts, work in progress screenshots, and occasional swears at Unreal Engine's lack of documentation -- this is a rare insight into what happens when a supposedly professional game developer plans very little up-front, and instead follows where the jokes lead them.
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