LokiCastle here,
Today this post is less about giving updates but rather a more personal dive. If you're looking for updates on my projects. I will be posting my regular update on Sunday as per usual.
The Start
When I first got into the concept of even considering game development. It was a few months before, a radical change in my life. During this stressful time, I spent the majority of my time getting thrown around in my daily life. The feelings of not accomplishing anything worthwhile crept up. It kept creeping until I finally decided. I would make a game! My greatest fear was that I would become 21 before I made a game and published it. (Spoiler that didn't happen) It had a been few months into 2024 when I realized I needed to double down and push myself to finally write a script for my Visual Novel "A Tale of Two Flowers." I loved the process of writing the script. While I've never been very social. I do enjoy talking. In a way, writing is a great way to talk without talking. The ability to convey ideas and stories is great. I love reading what others write and, I love writing. With that thought process a visual novel made sense. I don't play/read VN very often still I am still very fond of them. It was better that my first game was a visual novel instead of the game I truly wanted to make. which was an RPG. Yes, I am referring to the horror RPG I make updates about often. I had wanted to make a dark RPG for a very long time but felt like my skills weren't where I wanted them to be. Your first game is never your magnum opus. If you were to ask me how I felt about my first game “A Tale of Two Flowers.” I would say "Like May it's a deeply flawed and confusing story that screams first project." Simply put it was my first major undertaking and I knew it would have major flaws. I am proud that it was the first game I published.
I still laugh at myself today when the realization dawned on me. I needed an online presence to even promote the game. Knowing I needed that. I proceeded to make a post on itch.io starting the journey of posting development updates. On the amazing interconnected web or as we call it the internet.
June 19 2024 was the first ever post I made.
On the subject of my first game
"I am almost done writing the script for my first visual novel. The actual reveal of the novel will be in about a month or so depending on a few development factors. Its word range is 25 - 30K and has three different endings."
(https://lokicastle.itch.io/a-tale-of-two-flowers/devlog/751842/on-the-subject-on-my-first-game)
For the first few months of the development. It was not a solo project. It had been a team of three. Due to conflicts I took full control and finished it. It had been a crazy journey from a single sketch to the full-fledged game it is today.
Friday Dec 15 2023 (May Gremlin sketch)
Reflecting on the progress
How often do you hear of people giving up when the going gets tough? Maybe very often or rarely depending on perspective. You hear about stories of people making it big but then reality hits. More often than not success doesn't come. Here I am writing about my thoughts of being a game developer in a multi-billion dollar industry. I don't have a team. I'm just one person who spends some of their free time developing games for fun. Compare me to the thousands of full-time employees with years of coding experience. There is no winning. I'm not looking to compare myself to people. Rather I want to understand where I sit so I can strive to be the best developer I can be. This is a hobby. I want to tell stories and know it's gonna be tough. The reward is the effort I put in. I could list all the negatives about A Tale of Two Flowers. Talking about how it wasn't able to sell or get on steam, no one's playing it, etc. This mentality does raise one question? Would that be a useful way to spend my time? My answer is no. Instead of worrying about why my first game didn't succeed the way I wanted it to. I look back at the game as a great way to start my game dev journey. How often do people give up on their first project and let it collect dust forever? I took the chance and learned about myself and how to make a better game next time. I learned more about an industry I've loved for years. (A game developer who plays games. Who would have guessed?) Here I am in 2025 looking to publish my next game to Steam, connected to the same world as the previous game. This time I go in with better insight, experience, and proper knowledge to make sure this game gets the traction it deserves.
Final Remarks
I started this journey at the beginning of 2024. It's 2025 now and I'm not going to let life stop me from achieving my goals. Who knows what my journey will look like in five or ten years?
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