Afterthoughts

There was a lot that went into this game, so let me start at the beginning.

Eons ago (the mid-1990s), there was a series called Pac-Guy. Pac-Guy was more of a parody of pop culture using a Pac-Man-type game and character as a  vehicle. Later on, the game was rebranded as Pea Guy to avoid legal action from Namco. Anyway, an early release in the Pac-Guy series was a Christmas-themed game, and after replaying the series, I was inspired to follow in kind. 

Initially, I wanted to do something other than Christmas, as there are plenty of games already about that holiday. My first thought was to do a Diwali-themed game for Chomperman, but considering that this was mid-October when the idea came to me, and I'd have to first put forth a lot of research into the holiday to make it accurate, I passed on that notion (also, I had forgotten that I decided to previously nix Chomperman being considered Hindu years ago despite the character being born in India, since he eats cheeseburgers).

So, I went with a Christmas game anyway. If I had a little more time to do research, I could potentially put forth a game themed around a less commercial holiday. Maybe some year.

I'd always wanted to do something more with the character and world of Ping!, and I do have a lot of ideas for what I could do with a Ping! 2, but those were not part of the scope of this game.

So, to start, since this was October, I didn't think there was much of a challenge to get this done by Christmas. However, I did not foresee several factors:

1. Health: This was one I sort of planned for, but still wasn't able to completely foresee. I've had health issues literally since birth, and some are more pressing than others. One is that I get sick really, really easily and get hit hard when I do. One of the health problems was a I spent a week with a really bad cold which basically knocked the f*** out of me , and I somehow got despite not even leaving my apartment to check the mail downstairs without masking up every time. I'm grateful that it wasn't something as bad as COVID, but it absolutely wrecked not only my workflow but a lot of else in my life at the time. I also have an undiagnosed sleep issue that makes it hard to spend any non-work time doing anything but sleeping.
2. Other obligations: The main of which was fielding voice casting work for Mattrified Games' MerFight. I don't remember how long ago I agreed to chip in on that, but I was reasonably certain I could juggle both projects without any problem. However, neither I nor Matt predicted the sheer volume of auditions we'd receive  - almost 200, and nearly everybody auditioned for two or more characters. As a matter of fact, I still have a little under half of those to go over as of this writing.
3. Computer issues:  My laptop that I'd had for only a few years started having massive problems, and even resetting it to factory settings several times didn't fix anything. I have no idea even today what keeps causing it; it doesn't seem to be a hardware issue, but it very much was a problem that should have been mitigated by a reset. Even worse, though, is the brand new laptop I just got this month (which you can help me recoup the damage for with my big sale), is now having a hardware issue and I've got to return it to the manufacturer. The monitor/screen is completely kaput without any known damage to it, and as it is, I'm writing this right now on the new computer, with the screen mirrored to the old laptop.
4. Family: I love my family dearly, and this was literally just an endgame stumbling block, but their impromptu invite to spend Christmas Eve with them as well as Christmas Day meant that I was going to have to haul butt if I wanted to get this out by Christmas. So, the final parts of the game were hastily written and sprited in the wee morning hours of Christmas Eve and probably could use some tweaking once I have functioning tech again to work on it.

Overall though, I'm glad I got it out the door in time, even if I'm not 100% satisfied with the end of the end product as of right now. I absolutely intend to revisit the game and tweak the end portions as well as squash any and all bugs I can that I wasn't able to figure out. The game was one heck of an undertaking, but it was worth it.