Hi everyone, long time no see...
I have been reflecting a lot these last few years. I want to make games again, I want to start by improving Sunset Mall. Sunset Mall was my first actual game that I released and I had no idea what I was really doing or what direction I wanted to move in, I also had no idea how to actually maintain a game, adding new content, DLC's that sort of thing. So I used Sunset Mall as a testing ground to see what worked and what didn't. I am proud that I was able to make DLC's and incorporate Multiplayer. I am happy I was able to make achievement systems and also create a sort of 'story' to the game but they were too big and too much for me to handle after I had actually made them. I made the mistake of just deleting them all or removing them so now the code is just a mess. This game really is hard to understand now looking back and there are so many things I see and think 'why did I do this?', so many poor decisions and really ugly code. I also had the amazing issue of losing the game and having to start again from scratch, then a few tunnel vision moments where I realised months later I was making something far too out of my scope...
Suffice to say I want to fix this game and put it to bed, permanently. I want to move on and make other games alongside my actual career. But I also want to start small and won't be putting them on Steam, at least for now... I have about 6 games on Steam that I have paid for licenses too and that will never see the light of day (that is about $600 in license fees), I want to think back to what made Sunset Mall good.
I used Itch.io to showcase my first builds of Sunset Mall and it was with the support of the people over there I was able to bring it to Steam. So I am going to do that again, after I finish Sunset Mall of course.
Thank you for dealing with the randomness over the years, and thank you for reading my rambles. I won't be doing the big media presence-y stuff anymore, that's in the past (Twitter, Discord Server etc.) I will just make some random games and post them for you to hopefully enjoy.
Thank you for sticking around :)