So it's been a while.

I'm gonna be honest, I've been kind of losing steam with my game projects recently. It's been nearly 7 years since I began designing Memory's Abyss, and having game development as my main (and mostly solo) hobby for so long has made me a bit tired of sitting at my desk. That being said, I knew I couldn't let the past half-year of development on this project go to waste so I pushed through and got at least *something* released - I pray that it's in working condition.

You may ask how it took me 6 months to release a single map and a mod for my parkour engine that enabled guns, to which I'd answer that this is actually the result of 2 separate projects, one being cancelled about 3 months in. I initially intended for this game to be a TF2-inspired hero shooter, experimenting in some new territories that I thought might be interesting to see in the genre. However, the movement system proved to be too confusing and too unresponsive for a competitive game, and ultimately I decided to reuse the code for a project people seemed much more interested in: an homage to classic COD:Zombies.

Let me be clear, I never actually played Call of Duty games as a kid. Never was allowed to. And yet, I can almost feel for myself the nostalgia everyone else had for it. To give some credit, I also played a bunch of xbox games as a kid, including shooters, which I'd play with my stepbrother back when he was still living with us. But in particular, I have fond memories of a particular ROBLOX game, titled "Dead House" or something if I remember correctly. Me, not knowing at the time what COD:Zombies even was, had apparently stumbled upon a recreation of cod zombies, and as testament to the formula it was one of my favorite games at the time - the curiosity of what was behind the big doors, the constant and apparent threat of losing the entire run in seconds of inattention, there's a particular feeling to trapping yourself between the walls of an arena that appealed to me and so many kids of my generation.

So, despite the ridiculous time and energy it was taking out of me, I knew that this jankfest would be worth the trouble. Now that I've had the opportunity to play this game long after its prime days, I've found that early COD:Zombies is a game worth paying homage to. It's a surprisingly indie-style game, compared to the game it branched from, and considering the story of its creation I have huge respect for Treyarch and its developers for taking the leap on their once little side project, as I strive to do so many years later.

Moving forward, I'm likely going to be taking a hiatus from developing video games. I have one more project ahead, a small world for VRChat that I plan to release in the coming months, but for the most part I want to start taking my creativity to the real world - carpentry, mechanic stuff, physical art - it's what I need most, as you'll find if you look deeper into the games I've already released. I'm almost certain I'll come back to game development eventually, and when I do I'll likely be fixing up the base movement system and beginning work on Memory's Abyss Chapter One.

For the few that end up reading this, thank you for your time. I know I'm supposed to be just making these games for the fun of it and not worrying what other people think, but I can't deny that seeing even just a couple people take interest in my work every so often is the necessary piece to me pushing forward in silence all these years later. If any of you are interested, I'll likely be posting my real-world work in the coming months on my youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@motif_neko6679, so feel free to follow me there.

Goodbye for now, and I hope you all enjoy what I've left for you.