TLDR: Jump Adventures was put on hold with the store release date marked as "Coming Soon". I'm taking a few months break to work on a new game.
Hello!
Two months have passed since the last devlog, and Q4 is steadily coming to an end. Along with that, the game's release date was marked as "Coming Soon". What's going on?
Well, in short: the game is delayed, once again. Only this time, without a vague "Q4 2023" or more concrete "August 31st 2023". The reason for that is, I barely made any progress since that last devlog. World 3 is still nowhere close to be finished, and all bigger features/reworks are to be implemented too.
The longer I work on the game, the harder it becomes for me to stay motivated. I keep reworking and revisiting other parts, while a huge chunk of content (World 3, etc.) is still missing. Ultimately, this leads to more work required to match the rest of the game to that new quality bar.
Additionally, working on World 3 proves to be challenging due to the game's overall philosophy. I don't want it to be boring or rushed, and coming up with new mechanics that could be combined with other ones introduced in previous worlds is extremely difficult. In the end, that led to many failed experiments and attempts without significant progress being made.
I don't want to force myself to work on the game, as it will only make matters worse. A better course of action would be to put it on hold for a few months, and instead work on a different, smaller project. After it will be done, I'll be back working on Jump Adventures with a fresher mind. I love working on games, but when this process becomes unbearable is when I have to take a lengthy creative break.
As it stands, I don't want to share any big plans regarding the new game. I've been working on the prototype for the past few days already, and it proves to be promising and achievable in the short time span that I set. In addition, my intent is to focus more on a story and an interesting fantasy or a game mechanic, so it will be nothing like Jump Adventures.
This is all I wanted to share in regards to Jump Adventures. I understand that the game should've been released a long time ago, but I would much rather release a game in a good shape that I enjoyed developing than force myself to release anything for the sake of releasing.
See you next time,
Daniel.