[Introduction]

Alaris is a fantasy visual novel I thought of and started working on this past summer. I was able to successfully release a Sample of the first chapter back during the SuNoFes jam a couple months ago. When I was working on Alaris in the summer, I virtually had a full schedule where I could work on just the game since I was on summer break and had limited responsibilities. But, this semester, I had to balance full-time Ph.D. school with game development, which was an incredibly intimidating prospect to me since Ph.D. school was hard enough on its own. When I saw Devtober, I thought it would be a helpful jam to get me out of the mentality of putting in tons of hours every day to make progress for a game, which is why I joined! 

[The Process of Devtober]

Initially, when I started Devtober, I wanted to make some kind of goal for myself. Even if I didn’t make the so-called “deadline”, I wanted to have something to put up in honor of the work I did for Devtober. Because I had an already-published (albeit rudimentary version) game, I wanted to figure out a way to create something concrete that people could see as progress for game development. At first, I had wanted to release a full version of Chapter 1 with the Chapter 2 release, but with Devtober, I decided to shift gears a bit to focus instead on a polished and completed version of Chapter 1 for the end of the month.

I figured this would be more feasible, and it would also still be a lot of progress for Chapter 2 since I would’ve had to code many of the game features that would’ve been released in Chapter 2 anyways. Thus, after establishing my goal of the “Expanded Chapter 1 Release”, I began my journey of Devtober.

[What Went Right]

When I first started Devtober, I felt a bit overwhelmed with how to break down various goals - I almost didn’t know where to start! For some reason, even though I already had a foundational game to build off of and tweak, I felt like I was starting anew after my initial release. But after using a lot of organizational tools (Google Calendar, Notion, etc.), I felt like I really started to find my flow with game development. Each week ended up having a “theme” that I would focus on - 

First week was Script

Second week was GUI Art and Coding

Third week was Game Mechanic Art & Coding

Final week was Tweaking and Testing

I also felt like I was able to balance my schedules better. Put in full-time hours for Ph.D. school and responsibilities, and put in part-time hours for game development. Focus some days on school stuff, and other days on major game development. By having some days more focused on game development, I could focus on things that take up more time (i.e., coding or scripting), and by having some days only partly focused, I could focus on the small things that I would put off (i.e., small sprite edits, final draft revisions, etc.). There was definitely a lot of ~flow~ happening, I think! 

Something else unexpected from this was that I felt like I understood how to use different social media platforms more effectively. Tumblr and itch.io would be reserved for long posts and devlogs while Twitter could be daily updates and just general commentary! Before Devtober, I didn’t really know how to leverage Twitter and just posted whatever I posted on Tumblr. But after this experience, I think I have a bit more understanding on how to use the different platforms I have without being repetitive :) 

[What Went Wrong]

Absolutely the biggest thing that I struggled with was taking care of myself. Between Ph.D. school and game development, there was already a lot to handle. But with Devtober and the daily updates, I felt more pressure to work on more concrete things each day so I could have something “worthy to post.” It was a pretty big mental hurdle for me to start to be transparent and tell people that I only made a small amount of progress on the game on certain days. I would even notice these kinds of tweets typically got less engagement, which while understandable (because there’s not much to engage with in the first place with those kinds of tweets), did hurt a bit since it almost validated in my mind that people only cared about updates and game progress. In the future, while I know how to maximize my Twitter (more frequent updates), I definitely think requiring daily updates isn’t as much my thing. 

[Conclusion]

Devtober was a lot of help to me, not just in making game development progress, but also learning various things about being a game developer: building confidence in my skills (i.e., time management, transparency, even coding), learning how to use social media, and knowing my general “flow” as a game developer. I’m super proud of myself for making it through, honestly, while balancing the external responsibilities I had, and am grateful for what it taught me!!