A (very cool) friend of mine made a video, of which I’ve linked here, that within the first couple seconds got me thinking about a certain project.

Sporestory.

Where is it?

I’ll be honest, I haven’t worked on it, probably in months.

Sporestory is a project I really love. I wanted to put so much into it, and I already have put so much into it, but I ended up putting too much pressure on myself to do too much at once.

This is not to say there will never be a Sporestory, but there will not be soon. I still love the art and the music I already made for it, but if/when I get back into it I want to do it right. To clarify, the video didn’t inspire me to kill it, but it made me realize I should probably let it rest for now. I’ve put off working on so much because of one game I haven’t been working on, and that isn’t helpful to anyone.

I also feel I put a lot of pressure onto myself to work on it, very quickly creating brand assets, leaks, a webpage (that still looks really nice IMO), but I did it all too early without even taking the time to consider what a game design document was, to consider writing a timeline out, to consider planning it properly, too startstruck by the idea of what it could be, of specific scenes, without filling the gaps in between.

I definitely announced it WAY too early, the idea of being some sort of Toby Fox, silent chaotic character always really interests me but I find that difficult to do when I suck at keeping my mouth shut haha, but it probably would be for the better if I thought stuff out better before I announced anything.

I really want to work on Sporestory, and to make some sort of quirky RPG for Playdate, but the way I have it Sporestory can’t be it.

For this I think it’s time to let the game rest. But I don’t want all of this to have been for completely nothing, this project has been an amazing learning experience in music, art, and programming, so here’s some of the stuff I did do.

Music

Here’s some of the songs I made for the game, in no particular order. I’m very proud of some of these, so hopefully they’ll come up again someday.

Gameplay

Here’s some gameplay of the second version, I ended up completely rewriting it from scratch at one point and this was of the second version which was far better coded and a really nice base for an RPG.

…

I still feel bad leaving this project here, I put a lot into it and even made things like a custom editor in Godot for making maps, but this is for the better for now. It may return, maybe I’ll start writing a proper outline, but for now I need to do something else. If I do rewrite it, it will be very different. I originally wanted to make it as a short, Pikuniku-like RPG, but it very quickly grew out of control with no real plan to hold it back.

Sorry to say this, I feel like I’ve failed this project, but there has been almost no fire to work on it for a very long time.

I’m going to work on some smaller stuff, take better care of my mental health cause that’s really been lacking as of late, and work up from there.

Maybe I’ll do smaller devlogs, like a series, something to keep me on track, maybe I’ll try some other things, but I need to learn and really solidify a process I can be sure of in making my games.

-Ax 🩷

Update

It’s been a day or so since I wrote this, and I have thought a bit. While most of this stays true, I do still really want this game to work out. I think I need to really rethink my plan, and work on some other stuff first, but I will try eventually. As I said it’ll probably be a short pikuniku-type experience, but that’s what I want to make. First I need to make a proper game design doc and work out from there though, fill in all the holes I left in the initial process and such.