As I write this, it's been more than a year since Breathe was released. It's been a tough year, pandemic and all, so I figured I might try my hand at game development, a dream I've harbored since I first held a controller sometime in the very late 80's, so picking up Game Maker Studio and learning through a tutorial while making use of what I learnt about programming in college and proceeded to never use in my professional life I manage to put together Breathe, which is named after a much more ambitious design I once drew and never got around making, as a little inside joke of my own personal game dev journey: lots of ideas that never went anywhere.

I had no real dream of making Breathe a notable game by any means. It was just an experiment I made to understand the basics of Game Maker Studio and game design. I later shared my game on Resetera, from where I later got banned for four months in an unrelated incident and never went back and I was glad someone noticed I did what I set out to do: a progressive climb into the proverbial challenge hill and mechanics and what amounts to a 15 minutes full game. Not a demo, or a proof of concept, Breathe in all of its simple glory was a game with two stages with three levels each: you climb the tower, get the Elder Sign, and get the hell out running away from that thing.  Post mortems should have some sort of educational value, and here is my own message to the fledging game developer: finish your project. Please note I'm not saying "projects" I'm saying "project", in the singular. This is also a life pro tip for you, pick a project, and try to finish it. Don't let it rot because something else caught your sight. 

But I digress.

I know publishing your game is exciting, and if it's a commercial project it's probably something that needs to be published somehow, but as our pal Miyamoto said, and I paraphrase because I don't have the quote at hand, a delayed game might eventually be good, but a pushed game will likely always be bad. People love publishing demos and snippets of what they are working or even publishing unfinished work. Demos are good stuff, but demos should likely be representative of the finished product. And while Early Access is all the rage and a way to secure funding for developing, you don't want your game to burn in development hell.  Somebody once told me that your first game should be simple. A full game experience that would be 15 minutes to maybe an hour long. Considering my work on Breathe, wow an hour is a long time to keep the player engaged. So keep it simple. Work on that concept. Make it work. But finish it: it's really satisfying to finish a project with something that works and does not break.

I made Breathe in a month, in between free moments from working at home. If I had nothing important to do, I'd  work on it. I honestly just wanted to see that game published, and maybe kickstart a new hobby of mine. It didn't work. Doing things is hard. I never really stopped working and since I've been working from home I've probably worked harder than ever before, and I really didn't want to spend time being productive, so I finished a hundred games in 2020. I'm not proud of it. I really should have done something else. Working out or idk, practicing the guitar. Things just for the pleasure of it, but then again, gaming is a pleasure for me. And hey I did finish Bloodborne. I'm a hardcore gamer (tm) for the new generation, instead of still riding that credentials because I finished Ninja Gaiden in the NES.

Making a Post morten a year after release with no work on the game is weird, I know. But I have a reason: I decided to go back, and make Breathe 2, and probably choose a less pretentious name later. Take that basis, and make something that lasts an hour. Maybe two? Who knows.

I'll be seeing you all around. Take those projects and get to work!