Hy everyone !
Every month, i'm sharing with you the advancement on my game Ellsydia, a small medieval City builder. I'm trying to show you what a solo gamedev can make during working days and describe you all creative steps before to have a finished and shipped game.
I detail every working week with the total amount of time I spent at work, a quick view of my workload, fatigue level, motivation, and adherence to deadlines. I represent it with this scale :
Good 🟢 🟡 🟠 🔴 Bad
🕙 Worktime: 39 h 00
Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡
📣 Communication / Socials
Read, awnsers, discuss
Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok
Develog updates
🎼 Music
Création/Polishing of screen title theme
Musical technics learning (Music Theory, Chord progression...)
💼 Other
Administrative Tasks 🥱
New week of work dedicated to music production of the screen title theme. Since I'm not a professionnal music composer. I need a lot of time to produce game's musics.
I've finally finished and integrated the title screen theme, but as with each artistic tasks, I didn't seen the time passing. I need to be more careful to not reach out the one-month delay I planned to produce the two Ellsydia's tracks.
During the last day of this week, I did several searches and consulted a lot of resources about music theory, chord progression, the circle of fifths... to finally have better basic skills to create the second track of the game.
🕙 Worktime: 33 h 15
Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡
📣 Communication / Socials
Read, awnsers, discuss
Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok
Develog updates
🎼 Music
Gameplay music creation
💼 Other
Update of game production schedule
I finally began the production on the second track of the game.
Sometimes, when you working on artistic tasks you can experience the famous "blank page syndrome". But sometimes It's the total opposite! And unfortunately (or not, I don't really know 😅) I finally had one billions melody ideas popping into my mind, but I couldn't choose. After a short break, I've succeeded in focusing and finally made a choice for this new music.
🕙 Worktime: 33 h 15
Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡
📣 Communication / Socials
Read, awnsers, discuss
Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok
Develog updates
🎼 Music
Gameplay music creation
Gameplay music varations creation
🚧 Development : Demo
Integration of gameplay musics in Godot engine
💼 Other
Administrative Tasks 🥱
Last week was dedicated to music production. I've finished producing the music that will be used during day and night phases. I created 3 variations of the theme : one attenuated version to be used when players are in building and village management phase, one "normal" version for the activity phase, and a last version for when mission objectives are nearing completion.
I'm really satisfied to have succeeded in not exceeding the deadline I planned for the game's music creation. Now, I can stay focused on fixing the remaining bugs and prepare the first playtest of the game!
🕙 Worktime: 36 h 15
Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟢 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡
📣 Communication / Socials
Read, awnsers, discuss
Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok
Develog updates
🚧 Development : Demo
Bug fixing and features polishing before playtest
💼 Other
Administrative Tasks 🥱
This last week of August was exclusively dedicated to fixing the game in preparation for the first playtest. Yes, you've heard (or read 😁) right: I'll finally be able to proceed to the first playtest of Ellsydia! It's the reason why I dont really have anything interesting to share, except that I'm very excited to get the first players' feedback, but I'm also very anxious about sharing my work!
Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡
It's been one year since I started developping Ellsydia. I originally planned to create the game in 6 months, but this August month has shown me that my initial predictions weren't accurate and that time is passing so fast!
As I knew I wasn't taking summer vacation this year, I planned to produce game's music during this month. This allowed me to take enough time to learn new things in this domain that isn't my area of expertise, but wich I love so much (like all artistic things in general).
I'm very proud to have found a good pace of development that is more pleasant and didn't excedeed my goal of 40 hours per week that I set at the beginning of this production.
The game reached 147 wishlist additions for 11 deletions, a gain of 10 additions and 1 deletion since last month.
I really want to thank you for your support in my development journey and believing in me ! ❤️
Before I leave you, here is a quick monthly reminder to add Ellsydia to your Steam Wishlist, if you haven't already done so. Thank you sincerely for your help and support! 🥰
Thank you for reading,
David ✨