I’m finishing up the background work and currently packaging the build. After another round of testing with friends, I plan to prepare the Steam page and promotional materials. As expected in the final stretch, I encountered a bug that caused crashes only at specific angles in certain areas, which made me stay up all night. It turned out to be an occlusion-related issue. While I couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause, I managed to reduce the frequency of the crashes. During this process, I discovered that, due to a mistake while splitting the levels, some identical actors were overlapping two or three times in the same position. I ended up finding and deleting around 100 duplicates. Without ChatGPT’s help, I would have been completely stuck. Honestly, going through so many odd situations like this feels a bit absurd at times. It’s physically exhausting, but these experiences feel like they’re adding up as valuable lessons, so it’s not all bad.
Over Lunar New Year, I plan to finish the translations. After that, I’ll wrap up the Steam page and prepare the promotional materials to pitch to publishers. I’m also considering reaching out on platforms like Reddit, where fans of Metroidvania games gather. I’d like to hear their ideas and feedback, not just bug reports. Unfortunately, there aren’t many people around me who enjoy games, let alone Metroidvania fans.
This past year has been a whirlwind of intense work and countless internal struggles. While I’m only halfway through the journey, it feels like I’ve learned more during this time than I have in my entire life. The growth has been more mental than purely about knowledge. My goal is to spend another year developing the game and expanding it to two or three times its current size. I hope everything works out as planned.