definite plan

Imbroglio: Mizzenmast is now unambiguously released and working. This was a stressful few days. Yesterday I completely crashed and spent the day in bed with sore throat, I guess my body recognised that it was time to take a break. Need to be more careful about keeping the immune system up. Difficult balance to get priorities right, some amount of productive creative work is good to have in there for overall well-being but I can overdo it.

I started making Imbroglio in late 2014, maybe earlier depending how much you count different prototypes that led in its direction, released in 2016 but kept working on it as a minor side project with expansions in 2016, 2018, 2020, so it's been a long ride to being complete. Feels good, I took the time and accomplished my vision for the game, especially with Draft Mode it really gets the chaotic combo-building feeling I was looking for. For personal satisfaction I'm glad I saw it through rather than just releasing an initial version and moving on. Probably I would have more money if I'd put that work towards more new games instead, but it's never clear.

But it's not quite done yet since it's still only on iOS! Of course I've always planned to release it on PC but I decided a while back to simplify things for myself by delaying that until I'd finished expanding it. Making the choices that simplify things is a critical part of managing to work as an independent artist. I also intended to release it on Android, I even developed it in a cross-platform framework to simplify that, but then when I tried it didn't work and didn't seem worth the effort for 31 sales. Maybe I'll try again sometime. No promises.

I wrote last year that for the moment with a wild baby I was finding it worked better to be building on old things rather than trying to muster the attention to make something new. Well I'd hoped that would have shifted by now but then this whole pandemic went down so we've all had a lot on our shoulders. It's hard to plan a new project that might take years at a time where the future is so blatantly uncertain. So I'll keep fixing up old things.

TOTALLY LIKELY PLAN OF THINGS TO HAPPEN
Imbroglio: ports
Cinco Paus: update/mini-expansion
(redacted): finish up and release
868-HACK: fix the few bugs that have come in over years
Zaga-33: get it working again on iOS haha
Smesport: it's not the time to release it now but I can fix the bug that was holding it up
Quinzena: it's still not a baby phase where I can work with it but this will come

If I can't work on anything new maybe I can at least get a clean slate and not have random crap I mean to get around to someday hanging over me since years. Or maybe inspiration will strike and I just make something new anyway, it tends to have a way of doing that when I make other plans.