I’m preparing the Steam page and the official website. After creating image shots, I felt a bit frustrated that I had no place to ask for feedback. But ChatGPT has been quite useful for that. While it has never given me anything groundbreaking, it does help guide me in staying within reasonable boundaries—though, of course, that should be a given.
I’ve also updated the build and am waiting for the final round of friend testing. At the same time, I’m working on materials and continuously polishing the build. Preparing materials and the page is enjoyable, but in the end, nothing makes me happier than making the game itself.
I’ve been thinking about why I love making games this much. At the core, it’s about storytelling. But when I think about it, unless player interaction is deliberately restricted, games are not always the best medium for conveying a specific narrative. With Axiom of Maria, if the world I wanted to create was a hundred, I’ve only managed to present about one or maybe one and a half so far. And even that became a chaotic mess because I let too much out all at once. I should have controlled the flow like a dam, releasing it gradually, but I got carried away—intoxicated by the sheer joy of finally creating what I wanted after such a long time.
I used to imagine making solo films using a game engine. If AI advances a bit further, I might be able to generate animatics in the engine and have AI refine the details on top of that. Or perhaps, AI could handle everything from the animatics to full-fledged 3D cinematics, allowing me to turn a story into a film every month—or even every week. That way, maybe I could bring all the stories in my head to life before I die.
But that’s for the future. Right now, there are too many games I want to make, so I need to focus on those first.