New Projects and Horse Game plans

alright, so, I know I haven't had much content but updates, I also have 0 patrons so none of this matters, but for archival purposes, ye who should find these warnings be warned.

I have started working on a new game.

Or rather, I've been working on a new game. there's a ton already in it. Its pretty cool if I do say so myself, and you can play the free demo here:
https://covalentbonds.itch.io/robot-game-early-prototype 

But yeah, this has been taking up most of my free development time. I also worked on a game jam recently for GMTK 2023 with my friends, you can check that out here. we really knocked it out of the park:

https://thecoolcats.itch.io/ignition-point 

Lastly, what is going on with Horse Game 2? after all, that was the main reason for starting the patreon, and theres a whole tier dedicated to getting content out, and that hasn't been happening. so what gives?

Long story short, the project hit a pretty gnarly wall. There were problems that were too big to fix on my own, so I came to a crossroads. I needed to spend a lot of time mulling it over, but I think I'm getting close to pulling the trigger: We're going to start over in a new engine.

Well, a new version of the same engine. See, Horse Game 2 was built using Godot v3.2.3 which is really old at this point. A lot of the progress made on the engine fixes many of the bugs that rendered the game borderline unplayable. But thats not all. When I started working on horse game, I had always intended for it to be a learning experience. It was my way of diving into Godot with the intent of learning the engine inside and out, and mastering it. To that end, I really honestly do consider it a success. I feel like a godot master. But I had to learn a lot. the hard way. A lot of my early systems and designs for how the game would be structured were attempts to be more clever than I needed to be (or actually was) and resulted in a lot of really bad, clunky overhead that made managing the game and its components a nightmare.

But, we're not giving up. I came to far, and I still believe a lot in what that game can be. But now that I have a couple more years of experience under my belt, I feel like I could redesign the game to function much better, cleaner, faster, more reliably, and I bet I could get it put together quicker too. Because all the assets are there. I know now what it needs to be and look like, so doing it a second time should be a cakewalk now that I literally have a blueprint to follow.

I plan on doing proper game development logs, starting with a post-mortem (though I'm reluctant to use the phrase since i'm still planning on continuing the project) video essay. I've already started writing that, so things will be happening soon.

in the meantime, you can still continue to play the free demo on my itch page:
https://covalentbonds.itch.io/horse-game-2-demo 

see you soon!