Hey, I'm VEXED, you might know my from some of my asset packs I have shared here on itch.
I design more than just assets, but that has been my primary focus over the last few months. I originally wrote this andshared it on reddit, but decided to also share here, since I enjoy itch and almost everything I make is shared here.
So, after 4 months of pushing hard to pursue being an independent creator, I thought I would reflect a bit on the journey and share those reflections with the world.
A quick overview, in the last 4 months I have released 10 projects, 6 being pixel art asset packs, 3 being Love2d libraries, and the last being a game created during the LÖVE Jam 2020 game jam.
Oh, and all but one project are free -- CC0 and/or Open-source.
Origins
Parallel Universe:
Lets jump past my childhood of developing games with Gamemaker, and instead start with when I began learning Javascript. I started my Javascript journey with the intention of using it for building websites, but soon after learning about HTML5 Canvas priorities shifted. Like most canvas newbies I started by drawing simple lines and shapes, and soon began programming some logic for them to move around. Quite quickly this developed into making small games, paint programs, and animations.
After a few months I began feeling comfortable enough to create a platformer game, thus; I began work on "Parallel Universe". Technically this would be the 4th or 5th time I had made this game, all previous versions being created using Gamemaker -- it was a childhood dream project of sorts.
Like a fool, I decided I could probably finish this small game of only 30 levels in a month or two. This of course was not the at all the case, total development
time took closer to 4 months. I did everything from scratch, using no engines, making all the sounds, and so on. You might ask "Why do everything from scratch?", well; to learn, to have flexibility, and because I enjoy it. :)
The development process wasn't anything I would call stressful, but it did teach me that when you feel like you are 80% done, it is probably closer to 50%. I had never before spent time bringing a game to completion, at least when it came to things like menus, an intro, options, unlockables and so on. These things add up to vast amounts of time, that I simply didn't account for.
Nevertheless upon finishing the game, I knew I had finally brought a project to level of completion that would feel okay sharing with others. After some time for contemplation Parallel Universe was released on itch, essentially no one noticed it -- which I'm perfectly content with -- and thus began the start of my journey into developing games, tools, and assets.
First asset packs:
I'm not sure why I got the idea of releasing asset packs in my head, but one day out of the blue I began working on an asset pack that would soon to be titled Blocks, Lines, and Shapes. It was an abstract 16x16 pack, intended to work across multiple game genres, and styles. The original release for this tile pack was created in just a few days, using Aseprite -- my pixel editor of choice to this day.
Blocks, Lines, and Shapes was followed by the release of A64ish (now known as Deep Night). A64ish was a simple 8x8 platformer pack that had a more traditional platformer feel. Reflecting on this pack it quite frankly looked like crap and shouldn't have been released, hindsight is 20/20 after all.
Shortly after releasing this pack, I went ghost for a year and a half.
The Come Back
Around 4 months ago not much was providing me any fulfillment. Life was bland, days often bleak. I opened up Aseprite opened up the A64ish.aseprite file, and began to revamp everything. Over the following days the asset pack went from a small scoped, and frankly ugly tile pack, to a full fledged asset pack with multiple biomes, enemies, and a fully animated character sprite.
You can see the massive changes by looking at the update logs on itch. I find the contrast between the original assets, and the new ones to be shocking.
I felt like I had become vastly better at pixel art for no clear reason. Accompanying the newly renamed A64ish (now Deep Night), was also a massively expanded Blocks, Lines, and Shapes.
Just like that I had made myself comfortable with everything I had released on my itch page, I felt motivated, and ready to start new projects, so that is exactly what I did.
First New Release
A fondness of minimalist and abstract art is what I think originally enticed me to create Blocks, Lines, and Shapes. That same fondness brought me to wonder what else I could do with pixel art assets. How could I make them more minimal, more abstract, but still provide the ability for people to relate -- relatability is something I felt Blocks, lines and Shapes was lacking.
Out of these questions was born Retro Lines, a 16x16 asset pack that many said reminded them of the Paper Mario series, though I hadn't made the connection myself until others mentioned it. Retro Lines ended up being more or less a fully featured asset pack, bar a UI. It had a fully animated player and a plethora of enemies for developers to take advantage of.
This was also the first pack that gave me the motivation to advertise, I thought I was sitting on something rather interesting, so I began to share these assets, on subreddits, and other forums.
Growth, and Feedback
My advertising began mid February, and the details of those first days can be seen in the stat gallery linked here.
All totals were fetched as of writing this ( 2020/05/11 ).
Retro Lines totals:
- Views 3,459
- Downloads 704
- Collections 88
- Ratings 6
- Gross Revenue $9 (USD)
Paper Pixels is a 8x8 asset pack inspired my Retro Lines release. I took the comments about Retro Lines feeling like Paper Mario, and from that Paper Pixels was born.
Paper Pixels totals:
- Views 3,295
- Downloads 607
- Collections 87
- Ratings 7
- Gross Revenue $4 (USD)
Bountiful Bits is a recent release, inspired by 1-bit art done in a 10x10 tile size. This was something I made quite quickly but shockingly it attracted a fair amount of attention.
Bountiful Bits totals:
- Views 2,776
- Downloads 363
- Collections 41
- Ratings 3
- Gross Revenue $7 (USD)
Lets take a look at my net totals, again, everything can be found in image form linked above. For all you stat fiends, enjoy!
Overall totals:
- Views 14k
- Downloads 2,931
- Collections 346
- Ratings 29
- Gross Revenue $21.30 (USD)
Conclusions & Future Plans
Well, that has been my journey so far, and my stats accumulated during (without factoring in other platforms, such as: reddit, patreon, opengameart, etc).
I didn't get to touch much if at all on the game/tool side of my development. If you are curious, you can check my itch and gitlab to find all of my projects.
During these last 4 months I have seen what I consider solid growth, amassing close to 150 itch followers, getting my projects into lots of itch collections,
and even managing a few sales of my CC0 projects. All of this extremely exciting to me considering how quick it has felt.
Going forward I intend to keep up the CC0, and Open-source releases, with scattered premium asset. I have realized that to maintain and incentivize my free content I'll have to (at least temporarily) produce premium content. Hopefully one day this burden can be skirted, but for now it seems like a
necessary part of growth.
Anyway, to wrap this up, here are a few future teasers. I'll be launching a website intended to be a dedicated location to find all of my games, tools, as well as assets; the next part of my Zelda-like asset pack will be releasing shortly; and I have a small god sim game that is in the planning phase, as well as another 1-bit asset pack.
TLDR
To summarize, I have always been a developer at heart, but over time I lost my luster. After a year and a half of reflection I came to the realization that the
joy I find in creating is too great. So, I came back, revamped my previous releases have been releasing lots of fresh projects with unique designs, ideas, and passion put into them.
My growth has been shocking (and rewarding) to me. I'm excited to keep making games, tools, and assets, so that is just what I'll keep doing. As long as people continue to enjoy my projects I'll be around creating.
Thanks
Thanks for reading, catch 'ya in the future.
Special thanks to my followers, and supporters, you keep me motivated to keep creating.