"An Ode To Pixel Days" Devlog Entry #3

I’m afraid this entry is just another collection of random thoughts, sorry about this. Read only if you enjoy it.

I decided to do a trailer to see if people get excited about my game as I do. I wanted to hear people’s thoughts because at this stage in development, I’m not sure if my game’s good or bad. It might be a wonderful game, but maybe not, maybe it’s a horrible game! I got a lot of positive feedback from people around me. For example, my brother said that it’s “surprisingly” good. Thanks, if you don’t mean that you expected it to be absolute sh*t. People around me give me confidence to continue. That’s like when you have a drunk dad and you say “Go daddy, you’re number-one, I know you can quit drinking, you can do it! I love you!” This example doesn’t make any sense at all.

I am, also at a stage of development that is near finished. I’m done designing levels. Maybe I’ll design a few more levels if I think I can get a better flow somewhere in the game. But it’s definitely “almost done”! I’m working on the soundtrack now. I’m going to polish my game and narration for a while (that may took more than a month) before I give a shot to find a sponsor.

 It’s been a long while since I wrote a devlog entry. As you can see from the trailer, there are some crucial updates on graphics. 4 days ago, I just sat in the morning and started drawing and animating some sky scenes that are seen through missing bricks of wall. Because I thought, “well all my walls are just collections of bricks, maybe I should try to build a castle, slowly missing more bricks until the end“. It’s a metaphor for Hans’ utopia “collapsing”. I tried to make the game more than a teenager’s unhealthy love life. When I say it that way, the game sounds like a waste of time anyway. At the very beginning, what I was going for was my psychology as I was just getting into puberty stuff like feeling out of context all the time and feeling ugly. And I think at least some people will get that “feeling” out of it. To be honest, at this point, I am happy with the game I was able or lucky to make. I may even be “proud” of it if a lot of people enjoy it.

I don’t know if this happens because I’m not experienced enough in game development, but the good parts of my games feel like “pure coincidence” when I finish making them. It’s as if the game finds a way to be good by using me with its own decisions, as if the game is not my tool but I am its tool. Too much of a nonsense, I know.

I’m composing the soundtrack these days, not yet recorded anything though. I just recorded a track for the trailer. The soundtrack will be full of classical guitar passages. Maybe at the end of the game I’ll use some singing. When I try to sing nicely, I feel like I’m the ugly one out of five members of a boy band. And I’m afraid if I don’t try to sing nicely, it’s not listenable by people. It’s not listenable by me even if it nice anyway. The bottom line is, in my dreams, I always get fired from boy bands L

If I get some money out of this game, I’ll use it to build a home-studio for recording my own albums. So if this game gets me some serious money, not only I’ll introduce myself as an indie game developer but also probably six months later, as an independent musician, too! Like I don’t have enough titles that don’t make any money! I’m joking though, I won’t introduce myself as an indie game developer. I’ll just say that I made this little game called “An Ode To Pixel Days”, a game that no one on earth is able to memorize its name. Cheers!