11-10-2021, 03:53 AM
I sometimes get that feeling -- the feeling where you feel like your game is going nowhere and cancelling it seems like the best move. The best move, in reality however, is to take a break. Do something that isn't related to your game, whether it's getting a good night's sleep, taking a nice walk, doing a jigsaw puzzle, or spending time with friends. Your break could last from a few hours to months to even years! Eventually, that game-making itch will come back, and when you come back to it, you should find yourself feeling better and finding new solutions to problems that had once stumped you. Perhaps you'll finally fix that darn glitch or figure out how to implement the complicated boss you had planned.
There may be some aspects of the game you aren't proud of. Perhaps you want to redo the one level that is just not fun to play, or replace a sprite that doesn't look right. It's nice to refine, but do be careful with how far you go, especially if it's something major like the art direction or general gameplay. If you just keep on refining your game as your skills improve, the game may never be finished. Sometimes, you just have to accept what's in there and just get it finished. At least in your next game you can implement what you think will be a better art direction or a better story!
That's how it sometimes goes for me! In Battle in the Future for example, there was a pause function that wouldn't work in the way I wanted to. I took a little break from it, and then when I came back to it, I decided that the pause function wasn't really necessary and so I removed it. Perhaps it's not the best move I could've made, but it's better than scrapping the game because I couldn't figure out how to get that one part right! (I actually considered cancelling the game just because of that, believe it or not.)
Even if your game does get cancelled, don't view it as a total waste of effort! Maybe when you're making your next game, you'll find out that there's some ideas in your scrapped game that would work perfectly in your current project! I sometimes recycle ideas from games of mine that are either unfinished or really old. The Moleys and Sqeeks seen in the Revenge of Mortimer trilogy, for example, were actually carried over from a scrapped Keen mod!
There may be some aspects of the game you aren't proud of. Perhaps you want to redo the one level that is just not fun to play, or replace a sprite that doesn't look right. It's nice to refine, but do be careful with how far you go, especially if it's something major like the art direction or general gameplay. If you just keep on refining your game as your skills improve, the game may never be finished. Sometimes, you just have to accept what's in there and just get it finished. At least in your next game you can implement what you think will be a better art direction or a better story!
That's how it sometimes goes for me! In Battle in the Future for example, there was a pause function that wouldn't work in the way I wanted to. I took a little break from it, and then when I came back to it, I decided that the pause function wasn't really necessary and so I removed it. Perhaps it's not the best move I could've made, but it's better than scrapping the game because I couldn't figure out how to get that one part right! (I actually considered cancelling the game just because of that, believe it or not.)
Even if your game does get cancelled, don't view it as a total waste of effort! Maybe when you're making your next game, you'll find out that there's some ideas in your scrapped game that would work perfectly in your current project! I sometimes recycle ideas from games of mine that are either unfinished or really old. The Moleys and Sqeeks seen in the Revenge of Mortimer trilogy, for example, were actually carried over from a scrapped Keen mod!
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