Well, to be perfectly honest, I'm feeling pretty discouraged about this project. I know that's a bit of a personal disclosure, and that this is a gamedev blog and not a live journal but...I'm not sure what's more essential to amateur game dev than motivation.

I didn't think this project was explosively super-perfect or beyond reproach or anything, but I did release it with the total certainty (in my mind) that I had created something that A) was very polished and B) most importantly fun to play. Actually, I thought it was not just fun to play but addictive. I usually don't release something until I think it's just about done. Maybe if I released things I thought were sort of rough, half-finished crap then people's "feedback" would be easier to take (though I kind of doubt it) but as it is I don't release things until I think they're "pretty much good and done".

So many people seem to feel otherwise, though, about this one (I still haven't read the any of the comments from the nasty review, and I don't plan to; stress triggered medical condition and all; I don't seem to notice anywhere near as many people agreeing with Kumada's review) that the amount of work I'd have to do to make the game--which I already thought was really fun--fun for more people seems depressingly insurmountable. I was looking forward to working on the rest of the game's content and to promoting the game on other sites, but now that "make other people think the game is fun somehow" is added to that list, it just seems like a Sisyphean task, rather than merely a Herculean one.

This isn't canceled or anything, I hope to keep plugging away at it. But it just seems like an obligation now, whereas before it was joyous. Whenever I think about working on this I just feel kind of sad.

Maybe we could discuss. How do you guys keep working on games when the joy goes out of it? (I think for a lot of people, myself included in the past, the answer is far too often "I don't".)