Dev Journal: Slumps May Be Good Sometimes? (Patreon)

Hey it's me again, back with some more game dev psychoanalysis as I know that's the hard-hitting content you want. Feel free to skip this one if that's not interesting to you, but if it is I think the issue I'm talking about today isn't unique to me and may even be somewhat common in creative work? (I also don't have much else to talk about this week.)

I've been working on peeling back the layers on my slump- trying to figure out what the cause behind it is. With all the options I've tried out, none of them really fit. It's not perfectionism, that may slow things down but it doesn't stop them. It's not burnout, I haven't worked nearly hard enough to be burnt out yet. It's not anxiety or a lack of interest or anything like that. It is strange that this would happen after my art has gone through a huge improvement and right when I'm about to be finished with a build, and I can't help but think it's not a coincidence.

What I've realized is, there is an issue with my development mindset that has been bogging down the game from the very beginning and VT will never be able to live up to its full potential unless I solve it. On the one hand, I have this driving force that pushes me to create and improve without any concern for anything else, and that is both my core source of motivation and enjoyment in development. But on the opposite side of the spectrum I also have this analytical voice that tells me to pace myself and to not spend too much time or energy on any one thing. And that's a good voice to have, the problem is it doesn't work. When I do things the reasonable way, not only do I lose that driving force, I actually feel myself take damage from spurning it. The result is it feels like it takes more time and energy for me work by half-measures than to go all the way. Even on Corn's art, that I've been talking about so much and still haven't shown off, I was holding back because I didn't want to make her too complicated and that probably contributed to me hitting a brick wall of motivation.

Maybe I've been pigeonholing myself too much, but I can't help but feel that if I were to stop thinking so much and just go stupid with the development, I'd get a lot more done. The downside of that would be that the game may run into quality creep that slows down development, but it uh... can't get much slower than it is right now anyway. It also may make things unreliable and mean that I'd just be working on whatever seems most interesting to me on any given day, but to be fair it's... pretty unreliable anyway. It's easier said than done and of course it may not work at all, but hey, at least I'll have tried.

All that is to say, sorry about the delay again! I don't know how this will affect the build's release date, but whenever it releases it will at least be higher quality than it would be otherwise. Thank you so much for your support, and I hope to see you again soon!