What they don't tell you about game dev, is that its art. That's something I've learned in the last couple years. And what a programmer like myself doesn't know about art, is that art is never finished, you just stop messing with it.
We aimed to have Somnipathy out by Sept 2023, but that was delay 3 or so total. We had to cut a lot of ideas, but we put out a 'complete' game at that time. Except no we didn't. The game had bugs of course, but narratively we knew we cut too much. The themes weren't explored enough, the story wasn't over, it was just done.. which artistically is okay, some stories should just end.
Regardless we decided to continue working to finish what we started, by the end of the year! Wrap it up for 2023 and call it done for real.
But our scope kept expanding... if we're gonna do more, we should DO MORE. Or at least not skimp on the final chapter (which we had called an epilogue, but we knew better).
That brings us to Feb of 2024. The story is done. The game is re-tested. Final polish is being applied. Its big and real and messy and hard, but its also ours and complete and the story is satisfying (depending on the ending you get). It's not the path we expected, but its the path that happened.
Would we do it again? Yes and we are going to. But if we could do it all over, we'd definitely do it differently.
