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By all rights, the recent re-release of Laser Sky being so successful should have filled me with joy. Instead, it had the opposite effect.
As my 15 minutes of fame are already passing, the question of what to do next weighs heavily. Not in the sense of what project to tackle; got enough of those lined up for many more years. Not even in the sense of setting priorities: with only one of my games getting any attention, it's obvious what to focus on.
What all is worth doing, though?
Some people seem happy to create for themselves alone. Not me. Some people seem happy to make pointless little toys for the fun of it. I look around me and count too many of those. Some people flood the world with positive messages, but to me they sound increasingly hollow.
Sure enough, a lot more people ask, "how do you stay motivated?"
It's because the alternative would be to lie down and never get up again. A terrible reason to do anything, but it's the only one I have left. Hey, it works better than having to prepare yet another batch of rewards for one's Patreon supporters...
After three days of dreaming up a new game, when I sat down to start coding again what came out was entirely different: foundations for a desktop port of the same Laser Sky. Except not the complete, accurate Love2D edition I was considering, but an even more minimal recreation in sdlBasic. Simple enough, in fact, to amply explain in comments while still keeping it accessible. But not so simple as to leave readers wondering how you get from there to a complete, publishable game.
You wouldn't believe the amount of interest I got from that tiny, dying community. I asked first, you see. Not that it's always a good indicator.
But damn if it doesn't feel right for a change. It feels like art. Not in the sense of a Deep Philosophical Game(TM), but simply one that is small and well-crafted. One that creatively reinterprets a theme, and does so in a transparent way others can learn from.
No idea where to publish such a thing once it's done. Maybe spread it around the old-fashioned way instead. Might even work better than trying to look all fancy and self-important in some online marketplace.
I'm a punk developer. Time to act like it.