Hey. It's been about a month since I've updated this feed, and I wanted to fill you guys in. I don't really want to write a boring spiel, but I'd like to seem honest and transparent, even if that forces me to sound a little boring. Sorry!
Right now, the elephant in the room is probably Block Sandbox. Even though I said that I wouldn't, I have to call it off for now. It's not dead, but I'm putting it aside until I've finished other projects which are closer to my comfort zone. There were three main problems that influenced my decision:
The gameplay left a lot to be desired. The biggest problem with the game was that interactions between different elements didn't feel natural or satisfying. They all made sense, but none of the features opened up huge gameplay possibilities, which is bad enough in sandbox mode, let alone for designing puzzles. I didn't complete all the planned elements, but I felt that this was an inherent problem with how elements were being designed and not just a temporary issue.
Poor performance. At the default world size you could do whatever you wanted without any slowdown, but on larger sizes it would start to lag with certain setups. I made some big performance improvements during development, but I never truly solved the problem. This type of game isn't something I have much experience writing, which was a bad decision for my first game project. Which brings me to the third point...
It wasn't really the game I wanted to make. I originally set out to make "a game about a sandbox", but I think that I failed to reflect the game part of the equation. It's kind of fun to mess around and draw with the different elements at first, but that's the same kind of fun that you get from messing around in, say, MS Paint. And it didn't feel like my game, or even my simulation. I'm not sure how to put that into words. It just didn't have the spirit that I want to put into my work, if that makes sense.
I'll figure out how to fix those issues when I get back around to Block Sandbox. Which will happen eventually! That's my promise.
But with Block Sandbox now in the background, I have another project to take its place. I came up with the idea a few nights ago, and have been prototyping the engine. I'm planning to be less secretive about this game's development, but for now all I will say is that it inherently addresses all of these issues; It's unquestionably game-y (a player character, enemies, one unified objective, etc.), it’s closer to my comfort zone, and, if anything, it has too much of my personality and design philosophies in it! Not that I would consider that to be a bad thing.