About a week after LD32 I decided to step back from the engine/gamedev for a week or so. It had really been something I’d been vacillating over and with the extra elbow room the early #1GAM entry had given me time-wise it seemed like a good idea, and I realized I was way more burned out than I’d originally thought. I was able to sort of “recoup” and get ready for May.
And the month of May. Now that I’ve managed to pull myself back into gear, I think something has become clear this month of May: stop over-engineering.
Its become clearer why people say to focus on making games as opposed to engines. True, I’ve used #1GAM as a way to keep myself on track, but ultimately a major focus has been the engine. I keep wanting to tweak and find that right balance between ease and usefulness. Its easy to say its about the game, but its another to actually put that into practice. Good night, engine-itis can really be a pain.
It might be nice if everything fit nicely into the gamedev box… if all my square pegs only had to go through square holes, that would make things easier. But its just not so. Innovation isn’t a bad thing, but trying to reinvent the wheel every month just gets tiresome. Take what you have and add to it or change it in small chunks. So far this month, it appears to be working rather fluidly.
Alas, its the beauty of doing #1GAM; being able to sort of find your game dev self emergently. I recommend it to any who are still on the fence about it!
Photon Game Development 
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