Finished the first pass on threshold gameplay polish and now working on the real-world stages. While polishing, there are quite a few things where I wonder why I’m only noticing and fixing them now. Then again, what feels right to me now might not land with players at all — I probably won’t know until testing.
Beyond that, the code and blueprints have piled up over so long that I keep getting the urge to rebuild the things I made before I knew what I was doing. But finishing is the top priority right now, so I’m sticking to “don’t touch what’s working” and wrapping things up carefully. The itch is killing me.
I went to grab a fresh screenshot for the first time in a while and happened to compare it against an old one — it’s changed quite a bit. Hope it’s for the better. I’m running on nothing but the belief that for an indie game, finishing is the best marketing, but it isn’t easy. The checklist is shrinking faster than I expected. Which also means I’m getting more nervous.
I’m assembling the threshold gameplay. Placing and tuning enemies I built a while back and only tested briefly — that side turned out to be less rotten than expected. I’m also updating the demo, and while testing the existing environment updates a fair number of issues surfaced. Spent a full day fixing those.
Every now and then I get a comment that, by my judgment, seems low priority. I’m not talking about trolling — I mean comments where, taken at face value, there seems to be nothing to act on. For example, someone commented on the video I posted today that the cables would eat a lot of video memory and I should reconsider decorating that way. The cable mesh uses a single material, so it’s one section, and by vertex count the memory footprint is roughly equivalent to a single 4096 texture. In short, memory isn’t really an issue. And my machine is a 2060 6GB, which isn’t great by current standards — it’s lower-mid tier even as a play environment, let alone a dev environment. Even so, it runs perfectly fine in the editor. When video memory runs short, you can’t get any work done at all.
So on the surface it looked like an unfounded concern, and I almost let it go — but just in case, I went back and looked at those cables again. What the user actually meant wasn’t video memory specifically, but a worry about things slowing down, and instead of just concluding “memory’s fine,” I should have checked once more for anything that could cause a performance hit. So I did, and thanks to that user I found something. Those cables sit flush against the floor, so there’s no need for them to cast real-time shadows. And since the cable bundles are large and heavily self-overlapping, generating that much complex shadow in real time could have been a real cost. Thanks to that comment I was able to fix it. It was already running fine so turning off shadows didn’t produce a dramatic performance jump, but there’s no reason to burn performance on something that isn’t needed.
So now I find myself giving even the strangest comments a second thought. There are people who just show up to pick fights — usually people with no interest in the game, who haven’t played it and have no intention to — and I’m not sure their words warrant a second pass. But most comments, especially the ones that seem unnecessary or come across as rude or unpleasant, seem worth digging into and thinking through once more. I think I wrote something similar during the last project — it feels like finding gold in mud.
Environment work is wrapped up for now. On the threshold side, there’s more stuff I deferred to future-me than actual environment polish left. A lot of it has rotted from changes I made after building the threshold. There are so many games I want to make, but each one takes so long. I really want to cut that down further.
Now it’s assembling everything that’s scattered around, polishing, and rewriting the dialogue — at least a month and a half. Then voice recording and testing. The usual problem is that plans keep slipping bit by bit, but the gap has been converging at least.
Still working on environments. Maybe halfway through, or a little past halfway. The pace has picked up a bit compared to before, but it’s exhausting. Not being able to hike or even take walks because it’s so hot outside is probably a big part of it. As completion gets closer, I get a bit scared and unhelpful thoughts keep surfacing, though I’ve gotten better at not indulging them compared to before. Back when I was in QA getting hammered with criticism and completely disoriented, maybe being too busy to think was actually easier. Still, the environments do seem to be slowly getting better, which feels good.
I’m placing as little as possible by hand — most of it goes through tools I’ve written. Laying down masses of cables on the floor, covering walls with computers, generating rooms, corridors, stairs — all done programmatically. Baseboards, door frames, repeating objects and columns, mesh walls are handled by tools too, though at this point I’m nervous about digging any deeper, so a lot of it ends up semi-automated. It bothers me that some decals are still being placed by hand, but this late in the project I’m hesitant to touch certain things. If I get to make another 3D metroidvania, I’d want to automate much more of this — make space design faster and easier so I can focus purely on the logical design.
I’ve been setting rules for environment decals and rough lighting guidelines, then working through them. Placing things according to the rules leaves my head free, which means stray thoughts keep surfacing — not great. Looks like I’ll be doing nothing but environment polish for about another month and a half.
However I look at it, the world is full of malice and curses, like a manchineel forest, and I’ve come to think that finding meaning within that and giving what I can is the purpose of life. Meaning has always been abundant for me — making games, family. But giving is something that never even crossed my mind until now.
Working hard on environment polish. Filling things in mainly with decals rather than adding more meshes. I built something that lets me type text directly onto walls without creating new decal images each time, keeping memory, performance, and decal resolution in check. But actually placing them — making them visible enough without overdoing it, keeping them relevant to the game — turned out to be much harder than I expected. Once the workflow becomes more of a pattern, I should be able to move faster. At the same time, I’m reinforcing the lighting with bounce light and adding fog to the outdoor areas.
I came across the news that Director Itagaki Tomonobu passed away last year. I loved Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2. That spicy, addictive flavor that keeps you coming back. There was something vicariously satisfying about the way he dressed like a rocker and gave interviews with that unapologetic arrogance. I think I might have seen him once at E3 or an MS party, I’m not sure. It felt very different from hearing about a famous celebrity or politician passing. He wasn’t even that old. A lot of thoughts.
Building the boss was so draining, but after about a day of rest, getting into assembly and working through feedback put me back into my usual pace. Two players have been incredibly helpful — sending gameplay footage and filing a ton of bug reports. The direct fixes help a lot, but what’s even more valuable is the inspiration. Watching gameplay footage especially — seeing how a player reacts at a certain point makes me think, “ah, that’s what they’re feeling here, so I should change it like this.” Those moments usually share two traits: I already knew something was off but couldn’t figure out how to fix it, and the solution ends up being simple, not complex. Still need to see how the changes play out, but thanks to these players, the game got meaningfully better. Truly grateful.
Alongside that, I’m replacing placeholders and working through overall polish. I reworked the 350 Archetype server room as shown above. Beyond that, I’m going through the earlier sections — fixing lighting, filling in empty spots, tightening up loose areas. Once the environment polish is in a good place, I’ll move into story revisions.
Somehow managed to finish the first pass. The list of things to fix, refactor, and add is enormous, but I think everything that needed to be designed from scratch is done.
To reward myself for finishing, I visited a place called Museum SAN(山, Mountain). Since so much of what I build has to be indoors, I’ve become very interested in physical spaces wherever I go. The artworks on display were impressive, but the exhibition spaces themselves were remarkable. Of the three things that stuck with me the most, one was a spiral staircase whose horizontal cross-section is a Reuleaux triangle — a triangle made of circular arcs. A normal spiral staircase would feel claustrophobic, and a perfectly round one might feel dizzying or unsettling, but this triangular spiral felt genuinely smooth and impressive. Another was a second-floor gallery that doubled back almost to where you came from, forming a sharp point — and I realized you’d never see a shape like that outside of a mountain trail. More than just “a master architect built this,” it felt like the building itself was speaking. The last was a dome-shaped ceiling with an opening, like the roof of the Pantheon. What made it special was how sound reflected inside — my own voice came back from above my head sounding like someone else’s. Mathematically it might be nothing remarkable, but experiencing it in person, with light pouring through the opening, was something else. The reason I’m writing about this here is because I want to try recreating spaces like these in the game. One thing I’ve been thinking while making this game is that if I’d known about architecture, I might have gone in that direction. I enjoyed the work of conveying feeling through spaces and the flow between them, and I enjoyed experiencing it too. Of course, coming from a completely different field, this is all at a beginner’s level of appreciation.
Anyway, assembly finally begins. The story has been coming together in my head and I’ve been wanting to get it properly in place, along with cleaning up all the placeholders. But I know once I start, it’ll be the usual — this is hard, my brain won’t cooperate, I can’t think — crawling through the work. Still, the end is genuinely in sight.
Polishing the boss model and wrapping up the FX for the last phase. I thought I could finish this week, but the task list keeps growing. The good news is it’s growing slower. It’s all presentation debt. For example: the boss goes berserk and flings its armor plates, which embed in the walls and become platforms. Things I hadn’t put on the list — like the FX for armor bursting off the body, or the FX for it slamming into the wall. Sometimes I wonder if pouring two months into this is even worth it. How many people are actually going to see this? But when you’re making something alone, looking for value outside yourself means you can’t do anything at all. It’s exactly like alchemy — the goal is finishing the game, but what you actually gain is an investigation and understanding of your inner reality.
Finished the boss modeling and textures for now. Decided to polish later and move on to combining everything with the boss mechanics I’ve built so far to wrap it up. It’s taken so long and been so draining that I don’t even feel excited about finishing. Just tired. I figure the feeling will come back once I start polishing from the beginning and eventually reach the end and play through it.
