An Update About the Development and Updates
Hey everyone,
Today I want to talk about the games I've been developing—and a few upcoming changes. And no, the plural wasn't a mistake.
I'm having trouble starting this post. I don't know which angle to take, how to explain what I want to do, and what led me to this conclusion. Don’t get me wrong—nothing crazy is happening. But I still struggle with how to express it. So, I’ll start by telling a little, mostly boring, tale.
What’s wrong with Mondays?
Last week, I got my wisdom teeth removed and thought to myself: the perfect opportunity to take the week off and get some rest. The operation went great, I had almost no pain, and I really got to unwind and relax during the week.
Then came Monday, and I realized—I wasn’t ready to work yet.
Luckily, I’m a self-employed game dev, so I decided to take the week easy and only do fun work. Work on a project I haven’t revealed to the public yet.
That’s when it began. All of a sudden, I was stressed out! Instantly, I began to feel a crazy amount of pressure, and the reason for it all... the Monday Update. I kid you not.
I realized that while I had done work, I had nothing to show for it in the Monday Update—and that really got to me. So I sat there, unsure what to do. Ruminating in this fear of having to tell everyone I had done nothing. And fearing—really fearing—that this would be my financial ruin.
And that’s when it dawned on me.
For a while now, a lot of my work has been focused on not losing money. On not upsetting the status quo. Like a big company past its prime that slashes production costs instead of improving its products—trying to appease investors. Always thinking short-term.
I wasn’t having fun with it. I wasn’t giving myself the space and time to have fun with it. I made decisions to save time, not to develop what I actually wanted to make—and it slowly but surely eroded my joy in developing games.
But the moment I realized that, I also realized something else: this was frighteningly easy to change. Easy—and frightening.
Developing for… fun?
This should be obvious, right? Of course developing a game should be fun. How else could the game be fun?
In the past, my development style was: play the game, feel out what’s missing, develop it, and repeat.
Nowadays my style is: plan it all out, develop it separately, combine it all—done.
I don’t play the game anymore. What’s wrong with me?
I’m not giving myself the time. I feel stressed to deliver content and, paradoxically, that stress is slowing me down. I’m not delivering more content than I did in the past. And when I play the game, I do notice the areas that could be improved or changed—but I never allow myself the time. Because then I’ll have nothing to report. Then the next update will take longer to come out. And I’ll lose money again.
I feel a bit silly.
I don’t want to develop for money anymore. I want to develop for fun. Every day, I want to sit down, play the game, and feel out what’s missing. Not follow some lifeless plan that looks good on paper but doesn’t work in reality.
All I need for that is to trust myself.
If I set one foot in front of the other, I’ll reach the goal. Doesn’t matter if I stare at the checkered flag the whole time, or marvel at the scenery—I’ll reach the goal.
I don’t even think it’ll slow me down.
It already changed.
Not much will change. It already did—inside of me.
I’ll keep developing Covenant of Morn and I’ll keep developing a secret side project that I’ve been working on for a while now. I’ll also keep working on a teensy tiny content patch for MIST that I have in the works.
But from now on, I’ll take off the pressure and communicate more openly with you about what I’m doing. When it’s fun to develop CoM, I’ll work on CoM. When it’s fun to work on the side project, I’ll work on the side project. And when it’s fun to work on MIST… well, you get it.
And I’m getting rid of Monday Updates.
I fucking hate Monday Updates.
Here’s the new plan:
There will be a post every two weeks, just like right now.
But once a month, I’ll give an update on what I’ve been doing—similar to the current Monday Updates. And once a month, I’ll write something more like my past dev logs: picking a topic—3D graphics, writing, sound design, or whatever else I find important—and sharing some behind-the-scenes insight into the development.
In the meantime, I’ll just be developing games for fun.
Starting with the side project has been a blessing. It’s really shown me where CoM is lacking and where I want to improve it—and vice versa. I’ll soon share more about the side project and do a proper reveal. The image up top is a work-in-progress visual from the game. Let me know if you like it.
Thanks to everyone who made it this far.
I always feel a bit silly writing emotional updates like these. I feel like I’m fickle for how often I need to readjust my mindset to stay on top of development—but I don’t want to hide that part from you.
It always feels incredibly liberating to share these thoughts.
Now I wish everyone a great rest of the week and a great weekend.
The next time you hear from me will be with a new dev log—or whatever I’ll call that new format.
Have a great evening!
You have a massive credit of trust, at least in my eyes, so if you do need to make some changes to your workflow that will probably affect the release schedule, I reckon most people would be okay with that knowing that it will result in better content down the line.
Just don't go starting to "redo" earlier chapter, or "rewrite" code for better "updates" in the """future""" or working on 3 different projects at once like some other devs and then there's no updates for 3 years and constant promises and lies and more promises... but I'm getting ahead of things.
Just like any profession, if you enjoy the process of making something, the final product ends up better. Assuming you don't go all perfectionism on this bish and we know how the saying goes.
For now you have the trust and support of most of the community and will keep it for a while. I'd say it's about half a year to a year with no updates when at least I start getting antsy and thinking things might not be going that great.
