Back on track

I have achieved a lot more than I initially knew I was capable of with my struggle to make Solace Crafting the best crafting game on the market. It's still a long ways from completion, or what I consider completion in my head, though there are already some really fun and unique aspects to the game. A part of me considers it a crime to hoard these new ideas and not put them out in the hands of players, for better or for worse. Another part of me wants to wait until the game is AAA quality, fully staffed, and the best thing since tuna sandwiches, though I realize more and more that is not something I can realistically expect from a solo project.

I also started a new project with a friend several weeks ago we're tentatively calling Insulation. It is much more PvP related than Solace Crafting, and focuses on construction, gathering, and all around hoarding. We'll get a website up for that soon. What I've done with Insulation though is really starting from scratch pulling all of the best things I learned how to do from Solace Crafting and squeezing them into a new shape. The progress I made in very few hours spread out across several weeks was much greater than I had been making with Solace Crafting for quite some time. Precisely because I abandoned the desire to have everything be AAA, super smooth, and worth a million dollars. I hope to bring that mentality into Solace Crafting now as I come back to it and progress, rather than fuss, through the many things left to make it fun before it's pretty. Here in Japan there is a famous saying "Hana yori dango," which means food before flowers. Tweaking sunsets and generation algorithms is a lot of fun, but if the game doesn't have the basic hundred components needed for players to get in and start playing, it's little more than incomplete.

I am currently applying to a large game company I am very excited to hear back from and have been brushing up my skills on all fronts in hopes of securing myself as the best candidate for the position. Amidst that, our new house, and a stray kitten fiasco it's been hard to find time for Solace Crafting and Insulation. The ultimate goal was always to get funded through Kickstarter so that I could work on it full-time, though a job with this company could powerfully snuff that desire as I would love love love to be working for them. With that dream dominating my thoughts I've been able to put Solace Crafting back in its proper place as a side-project, and not something I should be trying to make AAA quality piece by piece. I'm certain this will speed up the development of the still necessary yet incomplete portions of the game, as again, I work towards getting it out to prospective players as soon as possible.

I'm sorry for the lack of updates, and appreciate all the follows and likes I've received on Twitter. Whether I get hired or not, development will continue, so stay tuned!