Okay, okay, so maybe the title isn't accurate, but I couldn't think of anything wittier. ><

This isn't so much a game-development blog as a personal one, so please bear with me. I hope it is of some use to anyone who reads it, especially the ones who are struggling to finish their projects.

As I'm sitting here at my desk, as sick as a dog, trying to muster up the ability to type another blog after a month-long hiatus, I realised that something incredible had happened to me last night. And it drove me write this particular post.

It was something I hadn't felt since developing Enelysion late in 2014. It was as though a fire had been lit in my belly, and it was burning with that unmistakable feeling of euphoria that you can't explain. Even as I am sitting here at work, trying to get through another Friday, the burning passion that I had thought I had lost had come back to fuel my dormant creativity. In fact, I was ( or am so passionate ) that I found myself waking up at 5:30am, after having breakfast, to work on LoTL before leaving for work at 6:45. For the last month, I found myself doing this.

An unmistakable enthusiasm to work on, and create, my greatest work yet, and at this point in time, I didn't care how long it would take, nor did I care how many times it would take to refine LoTL. I wanted it to shine. No, I want it to shine. Every single day, without fail, do I picture the game's success. But only after many failures and adversity ( this includes toxic people ) will you succeed.

Thomas Edison once told a young boy after being questioned about his failures ( he tried close to TEN THOUSAND times to get the light bulb right): "Young man, I didn't fail 9,999 times, I discovered 9,999 ways not to invent the light bulb."

We could use the same analogy for our game development. Not that I'm saying to need to re-design and refine your game 9,999 times. Instead of trying to push our failures to one side, we should see them as opportunities to create an even better product. And this includes everything. You need to embrace the ugly and the beautiful on your journey as an indie-game developer. Take critique to the chin, be thankful for the people who have subscribed to your games ( I most definitely am, and the only way I can reward them is to give them a great game and good blogs ) and try to keep your head down and just work on your game. For me, this means staying away from the forums ( the actual forums, not the site itself ).

Think of your player-base as consumers, and you are providing them with a product. And we all want to deliver good customer service, right?

I discovered this myself when LoTL was in private testing ( it still is ), and not being one to dismiss criticism, I simply accepted it and went straight back to the drawing board. The mark of a true developer is the one who turns their failures into their strength, not the one who shies away from it and tries to brush it under the rug.

I most certainly wouldn't have become the dev I am today had I not listened to the feedback of others as early as mid-2012 ( I started RM'ing in 2009 ). While at the moment my pixel art is average at the moment, I know I can still refine it into something better over time. Writing? The same thing, even if it means throwing all the game's dialogue into a Word document and editing it over time. And Dyhalto is a genius, if I say so myself. Gameplay? I'm happy to have Craze and Zeig on board to help me.

To the ones who ignore criticism, I am sorry to say this, but if your work remains a turd, don't bother to polish it. Move on and create something better. We all create balls-ups once in a while. I most certainly did.

There was another saying I came across while doing research ( and my research is not limited to reading articles about reverse-designing FF6 or reading up on Chrono Trigger and what made it great ) but rather, self-improvement articles that I found rather relevant to making our games.

"Fall in love with boredom."

This sound odd, but it reinforces the habit of repetition, kind of like picking up a graphics pen and drawing on a tablet. You'll only get better with constant practice. If you can't sit down every day day and work on your project, chances are you'll never complete it, or rather, you'll never improve upon it. Sitting down in front of your PC/laptop and opening up RPGMaker needs to become a habit if you ever wish to get better. Even if you can spend just 5 minutes on it. 5 minutes every day for 7 days a week give you half an hour of gam-mak. Progress! Well done! You've achieved something. Reward yourself for it.

And that's exactly how I will manage to pull off a forty-hour game by December 2017. I don't look at the 40 hour-long project and go, "Omg, I can't finish this, it will take too long! It's too big! And the pixel art will take forever!!" That in itself is probably a blog/article on itself that I will cover later on. Of course, I will spending far more than just five minutes every day on LoTL.

Expect a demo release around late June. =) Six hours of political intrigue, false identities and yuri. Of course there must be yuri. xD