Looking back on 2022, I never quite realised how taxing it is to work 3 jobs. I'd done my time as a full time student as well as part time working retail, I spent half of my uni life running a niche society as well as working, making stupid investments, playing in esports leagues, and obviously being a student. I'd stupidly assumed that as I was living in a house share at that point as well, that I was largely self sufficient as well as not a totally inept adult. Now, as an adult who's allegedly functioning, I realise that life is not as straight forward as that and I have no idea how I survived university other than serious bouts of self neglect and an amount of caffeine that, on reflection, was probably life threatening.

Of course now, I'm a full time software developer, a partner as well as parent to a 4 pawed fluffy nightmare, and part time game developer. Except if I was being a game developer for anyone other than myself, I'd have been fired a long time ago. I took an extended break due to my own burnout, as well as the fact I got stuck on a problem I couldn't solve, at least not in an elegant or simple way. Christmas and New Years celebrations really show the contrast between my obsession with simplicity and minimalism in games, and the amount I like stuff.

Quick game update

This is what it looks like now!

Pretty mediocre, right? Well, there's some wonderful art assets in development by the brilliant Sasha Rae (who also happens to be my partner but I'm lucky and chose someone talented, please pay your artists in their preferred method. In my case, that's usually food.). Scroll down far enough on their page and you'll see a few buildings and a cafe that are in progress and are intended for the game. In terms of audio design, I happen to have a few good friends who have a few different talents, and will be enlisting, contracting, and paying them in the not-too-distant-future.

In terms of major gameplay changes, I've dropped the residential type entirely. Your score is your number of residents. You start gaining residents as your city grows. There's still some maths to work out for the scoring system, but the premise is every block has it's own type of happiness, that's affected by the blocks surrounding it. You don't really want a place of entertainment like a theatre or a park next to an industrial quarry, right? Would make birdwatching a bit shit. I also added the little colours next to the blocks to indicate the neighbour happiness. That took me far too long to come up with, but as a quick and dirty solution, it works for now. Later on is the intention to add something that looks prettier, but as always with anything I make, I'm focusing on appearence and prettiness towards the end. Functionality is far more important to me at this stage. No point in me investing time in gorgeous art and lighting if the gameplay has all the engagement of watching a magnolia paint drying competition.

The scoring system and happiness are well under way, as well as a lot of code optimization and data structure choices. While I know Unity isn't the most lightweight engine, I'd like this game to at least be able to run on average Android devices if possible. In a cost of living crisis, not everyone has the latest phone or graphics card, so there's no point trying to make a game that targets a 4090, and makes a phone start going thermonuclear when played. I also did a lot to make my development life easier. Invested some money into owning a licence for Rider, so that development doesn't suck. Bought a laptop that has been a godsend in more ways than one. Learned a lot about development practices from natural exposure during work, migrated my website to a cloud host, migrated the repo from local to Github, and just tried making life easier. In the last month or so of the year, I really started pushing to make this move faster. The why is explained in the personal ramblings below, but for now, if you were just looking for game updates, I wish you a merry 2023, and may it suck less than 2022 did.

Products of a mis-spent year

So, 2022 was the year depression felt like it could be a problem, and I burned out at a new-ish job but haven't got the tenure or seniority to pull cards of "I need burnout recovery time". But when something like that happens, you have to take stock of priorities. In my case I spoke to my manager about it so that they were aware that I'm not gonna be at 100%, and then prioritize. First on the agenda is making sure you can continue to function, so making sure you can still work and get paid, and making sure that your life isn't going to get worse. Keeping your surroundings clean enough that you don't feel grimy, making sure you don't lose out on relationships and you keep putting in the effort. Number 2 on the list is figuring out the problem. In my case, I came down with a bad case of impostor syndrome that made working on anything tech related hard. As I said at the beginning, I had 3 jobs. Being a full time partner is work, and you cannot ignore that. I'm lucky enough to be blessed with a talented self-starter of a person who just so happens to love me, but it's still work. You have a flat together, a cat, and families that you want to see. You help each other when you're down. I'm sure it's been written by just about anyone who's done it, but starting a business and making a product is a lot of work. When all you want to do is talk to friends, be with loved ones, and yet you have to sacrifice things to make it start (unless you happen to come from a family of emerald mine owners, then you just buy things and say you're a founder). When you don't have the resources to invest in your regular life due to other factors, there's nothing to invest in making more. So many people don't recognise that it's ok to prioritise your mental strength in things that keep the status quo and keep you going, rather than "the grind", which incidentally is a term I generally fucking despise and if you honestly partake in this grindset culture thinking "pain now, success later" except you never stop to enjoy the successes, then you've missed the point of working that hard.

Come Mid November, I was finally starting to feel like myself again. I picked up my laptop, kicked my git repo open and screamed "Hello bugs, I'm back!". My github contributions for the year looks a little anaemic so I won't bother sharing that, but I slowly started to ramp up bit by bit and push myself to do something. But over my time off around Christmas, I got that itch. Not the one you need a Doctor's visit for, but the one that says "You need to make something". I hadn't felt that since before the summer, and it was good to be back. I grabbed a download for Rider, updated the necessary things for Unity and started making. Mostly code cleanup but it was a start. Then I worked on more data, scoring systems, and finally got something playable and stable. And holy fuck am I glad I did. The satisfaction from making something for me, I finally understood how my partner spends hours working on Blender and 3D assets without going insane. Hopefully that feeling doesn't go away. It happens at work too, I was giddy as a schoolboy when I finally cracked a bug after 3 days, hours before I went on leave for Christmas.

So for 2023, what do I want? Well, to keep the drive I have now, and make something. It's really that simple for me. I'll never consider any learning a failure, but I really won't be happy if by this time next year, you aren't reading about a possible alpha or beta release at the minimum. The measure of success for me would be seeing my game somewhere. Whether it's on the train, in the office, on a stream where I didn't give the streamer a key or a promotional email. That's what I'm after from the game. As for me? Well, still going to look to buy a flat or a house, I'd like a promotion at work if I keep up this level of momentum, and I'd love a holiday abroad. Haven't left the country since pre-covid, and my god I wanna be somewhere where it's hot but not so humid that the air feels like you're breathing soup.

2022 was a mixed bag of a year, with far lower lows than there were higher highs, and so much of it is beyond our control. The UK cost of living crisis is starting to really take effect, as we enter our third "Once in a lifetime" level recession in my lifetime. 2023 is the year where I start making sure that I progress as a person, a developer, and an independent developer. Wishing those who read this a better year than the last, and hopefully in a year's time, we will be talking beta keys, patch data, or maybe even a release. Who knows.