One year

According to the list of devlogs, I've been working on Xana for a full year now. Technically, it's been longer than that though, since I only started the devlogs when I started working towards a "release" version, which was a month or two after I finished the jam version. 

I started Xana when I got fired from my previous job, so for the duration of the jam, I was working on it full time plus I had a little help from my wife on some of the music arrangement and rendering. I'm pretty happy with the results of that month. The jam version of Xana is a complete game in its own right, and if it hadn't been made for a game jam, I might have put a price tag on it. Once I released it for free though, I wasn't going to go back and change that. 

There were still a number of additional features I wanted to add and 60 levels seemed a little too few for a full release, so the plan was to fill out the levels, implement those features, then make a 1.0 release for around $5 or $10. I also planned to port it to Android since it seems like littler games like this do better on mobile, and I feel like the controls are simple enough I could make them work on a touch screen.

So, how far along are things after a year? Not very:

• I added the ability to dynamically change the palette. This was mostly a fun thing to get me started, and the same tech also enabled nicer room transitions.
• I added the ability to enter and exit rooms from any direction. This was an important part of the plan for the additional levels. I wanted some side rooms and alternate paths.
• I added a few small quality-of-life features. If I remember correctly, this included having the ropes shake for a second before being cut so you can tell what's about to happen, and some accessibility options like whether the actions are hold or toggle.
• I cleaned up a few of the levels to make them work with the new transitions, but didn't manage to add any new levels.
• I started work on the level editor, but didn't get very far with it. You can paint tiles and objects onto the room, but you can't save or load, and there are a bunch of missing features.

So what happened? The short answer is a got a new job. Like I said, when I was able to work full time on this, I got a lot done, unsurprisingly. When I'm trying to work on this in my free time on the weekends, I rarely manage to get anything done at all. A large part of the problem is that working on games is very similar to my day job, so it's really hard for me to essentially do the same thing all week with no breaks, and I already have trouble finding motivation to do some of the more tedious things like cleaning up existing levels.

Besides that, I've been running into the limitations of GameMaker more and more. I really like GameMaker and would still highly recommend it to anyone making a 2D game, with the caveat that it can't (easily) handle certain things, like procedural generation or level editors. It also isn't great for grid-based puzzle games with complicated interactions. Xana's interactions between the objects aren't that complex, but it's right on the edge of being a huge pain. I think there's still a bug where you can squish yourself with a falling block mid-air because of this.

So what are my options? Theoretically, I could quit my day job and work full time on games, but I actually like my job and I don't think I could actually support myself on game dev. The biggest problem is that I'm terrible at marketing and not great at any of the other non-programming tasks that you need to be successful as an indie developer. I could keep pecking at this. Eventually it'll get done. It'd probably take 5 more years at this rate. Or I could put it down and accept that this version of Xana isn't going anywhere.

As you might have guessed, I'm going with the latter. That doesn't mean I won't come back to this. I think Xana is a good enough game that it deserves a proper release. My current plan is to go play around with other engines, make a few small test games here and there, and then remake this from scratch in a new engine. Well, rewrite the code from scratch. While a rewrite like that sounds like a terrible plan, I think it'd give me a chance to fix a lot of little quirks and make everything a lot smoother. I could also build in the editor and the like from the beginning, which is a whole lot easier than trying to bolt it on later. Over all, I think both the game and I would be better off for a rewrite.

So with that, this is the last devlog for this version of Xana. I can see from my analytics that there are at least a couple of people reading these. If you're interested in what I do next, my itch page is probably the best place to follow along. Any new games I make will be added there, as will Xana 2 or whatever I end up calling it. Until then, thanks for reading. Leave a comment if you've played Xana and let me know what you'd want to see in a sequel or remake.