Hi everyone!

It’s been a long year, hasn’t it? And yet, here it is, ending already. As 2020 comes to a close I wanted to talk a little bit about my "gamedev journey," if you will.  It's been a lot of firsts in the last two years. A lot has changed, and it feels like I'm always learning something new.

Games I've Made...

Night Shift - my first game, released one and a half years ago
A Walk With A Cloud - my first VN, released just over a year ago
Parcels and Pollen - my first translated, released about three months ago
Dressing To Impress A (Probably Not?) Magical Prince(-Like Transfer Student)! - my first game I came up with just for a jam, released about a month ago

It's strange to think about it - I feel a combination of "I never thought I could come this far" and "I wish I could have started sooner and gone farther." (I'll be getting into some of my gamedev struggles below, so if you're not up for that, please feel free to stop reading here!)

A Little Bit About Myself...

I’m littlerat, and I first wanted to make games (along with books, comics, other creative works) about ten years ago, but it’s been a real struggle making it happen. I've always had a lot of ideas, but they tended to get out of hand to the point where I could no longer figure out how to finish them. I felt like I had some writing ability, but I had no confidence in my artistic ability and I’d barely even attempted to code before. 

I did have an ADHD diagnosis, which gave me an idea of where some of my difficulties were coming from, but the knowledge wasn’t enough to make those difficulties go away (and, as I’m sure is the case for many closeted and neurodivergent youth, I had plenty of other issues to make my life and creative endeavours difficult).

Night Shift

When I was invited to Friendship Jam in 2019, I had already been working on Night Shift for months. I’d spent a long, long time trying to pare down my ideas to something as small as simple as possible so I wouldn’t get too overwhelmed trying to finish it. So, no graphics, no sound, no fancy UI, just a simple story with minimal dialogue about someone standing in the same spot every day, made using the most simple engine I could find, Twine. 

I loved the characters I was writing, but the writing itself still felt like a real marathon. I don't think I would have finished the game at all if I hadn't been invited to Friendship Jam that summer, and I am so grateful to the people I met and grew closer to through it. It really is life-changing to find people who support you.

A Walk With A Cloud

A Walk With A Cloud was a much larger project, and a more difficult one. I badly wanted it to have art, but, still feeling unconfident in my art skills, I ended up making it another plain-text Twine game, which I didn’t feel very satisfied with and not a lot of people played. 

With Yuri Jam 2019, I got a chance to try again, this time with the Twine game as my blueprint, and turned it into my first completed visual novel. So many firsts with that game – my first time making a Ren’Py, my first time trying out point-and-click, my first time customizing GUI, my first time using Clip Studio Paint...  

Honestly, I had  a real tough time with this one. I overworked myself badly just trying to get it to function, and the game still came out with a good number of wonky parts and weird bugs (and it would have been more without the help of my testers)! There are definitely things I would do differently if I made a new version, but the story is still precious to me, and I'm glad that I made it past my fear and released a game with my own art in it for the first time. 

2020 Games

My last two games came more easily, since I had the basics down. 

Parcels and Pollen was my first game where I managed to make something I was proud of on my own schedule, rather than relying on a jam deadline to get things done. 

DTIA(PN?)MP(-LTS) was my first game where I came up with an idea on a whim, started writing without extensive planning, and still managed to finish in a reasonable amount of time. 

It’s such a relief to be past my old cycles of fervent passion, and then overwhelm and burnout, and then abandoning yet another project, and then shame and guilt. Finally, when I start working on a game, I know there’s at least a good chance I’ll finish it. 

The Future

I'm a lot happier with where I am as a gamedev now than where I was at the beginning of the year, but there's still a lot I haven't figured out yet, particularly when it comes to style and scope. I like the games that I made this year, but sometimes I still want to make games that are a little... bigger.

In particular, I want to make games that touch a little more deeply on things close to my heart, like LGBTQ issues, disability, and mental health... but those things are a little scary and hard to write about. I often find myself floundering on how to write stories that aren’t so blithely optimistic they feel dishonest, and yet aren’t so cynical that I find them too upsetting to create; that express some of the anxieties and fears that come with being in this world without being drowned in them.

This may be a little surprising to anyone who’s only played my games from 2020, which are very fun and light in tone. I promise I’m not going to become someone who constantly churns out super upsetting games all about the terrible things that trauma can do to people. But I do want to be a little braver about the kind of games I make, and which things I make explicit about my work and my position as their creator.

For example, in Parcels and Pollen, Mr. Rabbit is a trans man, and Little Mouse isn’t yet decided on gender, but is probably not cis. These are things that may not come across in-game, but which are important to me personally as a trans person myself.

In Closing...

I’m not sure what else to say... I guess just that, at the end of 2019, I was still at the point where creating anything was a massive struggle and I wasn’t sure how long I could keep it up. After this year (and what a year it was), I think I can say with at least some confidence – making games really is important to me, and it’s something I want to keep doing, and keep improving at. 

I still feel stressed about gamedev a lot of the time – especially when I look to the people who inspire me, and see how they keep leaping over obstacles that seem like unscalable cliffs to me. But I am climbing, slowly. And knowing that people are playing, rating, commenting on and sharing my games reminds me that folks appreciate what I’m doing, which definitely helps. Thank you!

I hope this post wasn’t too difficult for anyone to read! My intent isn’t only to share my gamedev struggles, I promise (though that’s a good part of it). I also want people to know, that if you’ve been struggling through your own game-making endeavours, and it feels overwhelmingly difficult, and like everyone else is better than you – that’s okay. 

We all come from different places and we all figure things out at our own pace. And I want to let you know that even if you have some grand vision for your game and what you’ve actually created seems tiny and ugly and clunky in comparison, it’s still meaningful to finish it and share it for others for the first time. 

I am serious when I say that making my first game, sharing it, and meeting community through it has been life-changing for me. 

Thank you for reading, and, however your 2020 may have gone, I hope 2021 is (even?) better. (If you’d like to play Night Shift or any of my other games, you can find them here:  littlerat.itch.io.)

- littlerat