I took today off. Between ongoing Real Life stuff and a busy, stressful week at my day job, I didn’t have the energy to work on Eldritch 2 today. I’m going to play Shadowhand Solitaire and then I’m going to go watch Wicked, and I’m not going to beat myself up for taking a needed break.
I made the original Eldritch in about 8 months, and I prided myself on my reputation for working fast; but splitting my time between my day job (which necessarily comes first!) and working on Eldritch 2 on the weekends is a new frontier.
I need to spend some time planning my next steps for this game. Progress this year has been slower than I’d hoped or expected; I tend to accomplish a lot in “game jam”-style bursts when I have time to focus, but those times are getting scarcer. My plan for Eldritch 2 was to spend every weekend in game jam mode, but it turns out that’s not healthy or sustainable. I wanted to have a vertical slice done this summer, for a possible launch in late 2025; and now it’s the end of 2024 and I still don’t have a vertical slice. It’s getting there in increments, and it’s already fun to play, but there is still a lot of unfinished or placeholder content, and I may need to rescope some things if I ever intend to finish this game.
The upside is, the game is already fun. There have been games I’ve made or worked on where it felt like the fun might happen when all the pieces aligned, and then they didn’t. (Cough Slayer Shock cough.) I don’t have to worry about that this time. It’s fun, it feels like Eldritch, and it’s the most immersive simmy thing I’ve made in ages. I just need time to finish it.