Posted September 30, 2025 by HappyTurtle
If someone had told me three years ago that I'd stop making games and music, I would have told them they were insane and out of line. And well... three years later, here I am with zero game dev projects or composed music to share. Somewhere along the road of getting funding for my first commercial project, I ended up with a license to maintain and repair airplanes. Get a day job is what I was told, but instead of doing the sane thing, I went out and searched for a lifelong career that has utterly consumed my life. Today, however, I am making a choice that I may regret in the future; despite that, I know that I will regret avoiding this road even more. This post will be a short one, and mostly so that I can reconnect with my passions before the fire in me burns out.
For the longest time, I felt stuck in limbo, which has led me to some of the happiest moments of my life. It has also led to some of my darkest. Through it all, my thoughts always returned to game dev and my desire to complete my metroidvania project. Each time I thought of it, I suppressed the idea as life continued to pose new problems for me to solve, many of them self-inflicted. Somehow, all of it has still led me back here. We all walk in a dark forest with far too many roads to take. We take for granted the boundless choices given to us until we realize that all paths still lead to one definitive ending. The startling realization that I am now 29 years old and have yet to accomplish even a fraction of my life goals has given me renewed hope. It is very counterintuitive, but the pressure and stress of needing to provide for my family while fulfilling my ambitions is, for lack of better words, kicking my ass into action. I feel like I am nearing the end of my dark forest, and it was important for me to write about it. Something about it gives me a reason to be accountable and take responsibility for depriving myself of the joy found in creating things.
I have learned over the last three years that I can have a successful and enjoyable career while pursuing my true passions outside of it. All I really needed to do was keep trying and failing to make anything. The act of trying alone is enough to escape those godforsaken woods because it eventually leads to the road that you should have been on to begin with. My road now leads to starting and completing tiny projects; things that I can do within a month or two. And that is how I plan to resume my game dev journey. The projects will not be pretty, and they certainly will not win any game awards. However, with enough time and effort, and some luck, all of those tiny games will form an amalgamation of what made me fall in love with game dev. I am extremely happy and excited to be back, and I hope that the indie game dev community has been as vibrant and amazing as it always was. Be on the lookout for some janky games or music made by me!