welcome to dstnce

it's not my first solo game (that would be reach) and it certainly won't be my last. however, this was my first commercial game which is... kind of terrifying. terrifying because i'm asking people real money for a very real game that i would really be making, but also because i feel like that sets an immediate standard for  the kind of quality that is to be expected of a game. hell, i'm still not sure i'm super comfortable with the idea of my game being "worth" any amount of money (which is why on itch at least it's pay what you want) but this game has been an exercise in confidence among many, many other things.

let's rewind a bit

back to when dstnce was first conceived. it was some time in early october when i attended gcap 2020. it was the second day of the convention which was being hosted completely online due to covid-19 being a thing and all. during this time i was in melbourne, australia and we were incredibly deep in our restrictions. it was labelled as "stage 4 lockdown", and it felt like it. i won't go into the fine details, but the skinny is that you were basically not allowed to go outside unless you absolutely had to, and you weren't allowed to leave the 5km radius around your house. during this time i was working from home and spent basically all of my time at home, only occasionally walking up to the shops to get stuff for the week.

i've got depression and anxiety issues, so as you can imagine this all hit me pretty hard. i'm lucky enough to have an excellent network of friends that are supportive and very caring and they helped me immensely throughout the course of lockdown, but of course only so much can be done when they're all online and hundreds, thousands of kilometres away from you. it just so happens during gcap a series of events had occurred all at the wrong time and put me right in the middle of a really bad depressive episode.

so i was sitting through some talks at gcap, taking notes and mulling it all over. i forget which talk it was exactly (might have been grace bruxner's one on her adventure as a game dev with frog detective?) but right after it i got a strong desire to just actually make something, like actually make and release a game. so i opened the notes on my phone and started jotting down ideas for things i could make. all of them ended up coming back to the same idea: make a game about my experience during lockdown.

the beginning

so initially i wanted the story behind dstnce to be pretty explicit. this is my story and this is my experience, and i want the world to see what it is like to be where i am right now kinda thing. this started by creating a mockup of the bare essentials that my "all space" would have: a bed, a desk, a computer, and something to look after (in real life this is my dog, in the game this is the plant). i then started the prototyping stage where i just wanted to see if this was something to do. blah blah blah design stuff (i'll talk more about that in a future post) and hey presto i had a small prototype to showcase, one that i could test to see if my game had any actual feet to stand on. clearly, i felt it did cause here we are now with the game being a reality.

let's talk what went right

cause there were a few things that (surprisingly) went well. i think it's important to recognise these, since even though this is meant to be a holistic reflection on how this game came to be and what could be improved on in the future, you also need to be aware of what to continue on doing.

project scope

this is far from my first rodeo when it comes to managing projects (at least, on my own) but it is definitely easy to still scope things a bit too large for the time you estimate. in my case i approached scoping with two things in mind:

1. i wished to adopt a sort of "design by subtraction" philosophy
2. in an ideal world, this game would take only a month to complete

already, i was trying to explicitly limit how big the project could be because i already knew it would inevitably balloon into something much bigger, even if i didn't want it to. lo and behold, the game actually took two months (almost on the dot!) to develop which honestly, i see as a win in my eyes. even though it ultimately doubled the ideal development time, it was just that -- ideal. i was fully aware that at the same time i would have a full time job to work, and that sometimes i would just find myself too burnt out to get any meaningful work done. because of this, it was to be expected that development time would increase quite a bit and i think ultimately, it was handled in such a way that it helped contain things adequately.

unified vision

this project is wholly my own creation. everything from the art to the actual code was made by me, and i think this is important for a couple reasons.

first of all, since i'm the only one laying hands on the project it means that i have full control over the direction over everything. this does mean that certain aspects will be limited by my own ability, but in the case of dstnce i think it ended up working out alright, and maybe even working out for the better in some ways.

second of all, working on all the different parts that make up the game (and doing those same kinds of things outside of the game's development) gives me a broader understanding of the kinds of mindsets and work that goes into the different crafts that make up any game. this almost certainly affected the design of certain parts of the game's narrative, and again i think it's better off for it.

but of course, things had to go wrong

there's no avoiding, but much in the same way that you can learn what to continue doing from the things that went well you should also learn what not to do in future.

getting the game onto steam

this was the first ever time i have tried getting a game onto steam, and i did almost no research going in on how to actually do it. turns out it's a lot of work! but more importantly, and something i would like to do better in the future is get the timing for things down.

just as a quick primer, the process of getting a game onto steam requires two separate approval processes:

1. store page approval
2. build approval

store page approval was... a bit of a hassle since they wanted me to add more information on the game when i just didn't have heaps to say. so i ended up going back and forth a bunch with valve to get it in a state they liked (which took about a week) and after i had done that i started caring about the build approval which took far less time, but was a lot more effort and required me to figure out how to do things like use steampipe and create library assets. it was only after those two approvals went through that i could then get access to the "publish now" button... except that i then had to wait an additional 2 weeks because reasons i guess. they claim it's so you can build hype and get a following, but i don't buy into it.

anyway, this could have actually all been timed a lot better in the following ways:

• the store page can totally exist and get approved well before even a stable build of the game is available, so getting that out of the way early is a good idea
• the build can actually get approved before the final build of the game is even finished
• as soon as the two approval processes are completed, it will be two weeks from then till the game can be officially released

this is all to say that you can totally time this all way better than me to then release the game as soon as it is ready. don't be me, don't leave yourself needing to sit on your game's final build for two weeks. get that all done real early and save yourself a bit of pain.

looking after myself

honestly this entire project was doomed from the start in this respect. it was one spawned from many complex emotions of sadness, anger, and self loathing. when something starts off like that, it's certainly hard to see it being developed under the best of terms. but it got pretty bad, especially cause i was working on this right after i had finished work for the day and over the weekend. i was burning out fast. like, really fast. by the first month mark i was struggling to bring myself to even look at the project and by the end of development i just wanted it out of my sight. despite not wanting to i kept pushing myself further and further to work more and more on dstnce, and i feel like some of my experience during that time may have seeped into the design of the game in some aspects (though to be honest, i couldn't pin point where).

it got to a breaking point pretty late into development where i just couldn't work on it anymore and it felt distressing to actually do anything related to development. i had to take that weekend off and just decompress from the intense combination of full time work and working on my game at the same time. but even then, i beat myself up during this break because i wasn't working. i would tell myself that it would never get finished, that it would be another dead project, and that i'm just a "fake game developer" for not going 100% at it all the time. yeah, reading this back to myself now it's easy to see how toxic a mindset it is but in the moment it feels so real and difficult to cope with.

this whole experience then has really opened my eyes to just how poorly i treat myself, and that i should give myself a break more often. the mindset this game was made in is not a healthy one, and it most certainly doesn't help make the game better.

a final word

i've learned a lot from this experience developing and releasing a game onto steam and itch and it's been a wild ride. honestly, i never expected dstnce to get any traction. i posted it around in a few smaller discord communities i'm in and threw it onto my social media but then didn't say too much more past that. and yet, as of writing this post i have 45 units moved on steam and 233 downloads on itch. that is more attention than any game i've ever worked on has gotten, and i didn't even intend for it to get any of that. it's just nuts to me that so many people have played my silly little game, and that some have even gotten something from it. i've had loads of lovely messages from many different people, both whom i know and don't know, sharing with me their interpretations and experiences with the game and it's honestly just been such a heartwarming experience. i sincerely hope that if you have played dstnce that you've gotten something from it.

thank you all for playing, and thank you all for sharing this around. you've made this all into something truly special and for that, i am incredibly grateful.