A retrospective on releasing the Juggle Star DX video game

This month marks the release of my first commercial game Juggle Star DX. While this is something that should be thoroughly enjoyed and celebrated, I can’t help but have mixed feelings about the whole process.

Nothing could have prepared me for how difficult this was

Working on this game was by far one of the most emotionally difficult paths I’ve embarked on voluntarily. And I say that having gone through a few personal hells. But it was also insanely rewarding at times. Thinking about that gives me a lot of conflicts inside. What made it this way for me?

The commercial world

The world is pretty insane about money. It has been for quite a while and recent events combined with parasitical social media have supercharged it into a different beast on its own. It’s hard to try to recognize it for what it is, what it does to you as a person and what it does to you as an artist. Let alone leave all those pressures behind and “do your own thing”, whatever that may mean from inside a system that has evolved this way.

I’ve been to gamedev events and so far the most enjoyable have been the Godot ones. Not just because it’s a bunch of geeks converging on gamedev, but also because the FOSS nature that it’s been one of the most neutral commercially wise. I loathe the fact that most of the discourse about gamedev is optimizing for cash, retention and other markers that correlate strongly with money, as it does in many other creative disciplines. (note: i don’t blame gamedevs who are trying to make a living, i just hate the system making this so much worse than it has to be)

Conversely, I absolutely love the craft. That’s not only because programming is fun and seeing your mechanics come to life, but it’s all the other disciplines (music, audio, visual art, 3d modeling, etc. etc. etc.) and the insane amount of width and depth that come with the territory. I don’t know if I’ll ever really stop learning things that spark joy, while I’ve hit that wall in other aspects in life.

Combining the two though gives a lot of discomfort. It’s hard to find resources that focus purely on the craft. Content that makes you feel like you can be a big shot does much better. You get deluded into actually feeling that you’re being helped, while all it’s doing is just prepping you for the algorithmic/systemic machine and that you can fit in better. It gets especially complicated that getting genuinely better at the craft is correlated and shares similar structures to performing better within the system. I’m only interested in the first. I’m aware that from my current career opportunities I can invest much more time than most others would likely ever be able to do though and I’m grateful I can make use of that though.

Too busy mourning what it could be, thus unable to celebrate what it would be

Perfectionism is a tricky thing. I think it’s often a misunderstood behavior in gifted people, as I think it works on a different level there. Not only are you able to perceive much more flaws that can be fixed, but you also can perceive much more that (pragmatically) can’t. I don’t want to get too ship-of-theseusy philosophical here, but it’s hard to draw the borders of when somebody is reaching too far in the realms of possibility to the point of obsession or somebody is just able to go quite far and leave out so much more they could have done consciously. It gets trickier when you aren’t able to complete what you set out to do in the second realm.

I don’t know if it’s the right word honestly. I do know that the above made it really hard to find a point on when to stop and when to accept that it wasn’t really going anywhere realistically. I’ve had a lot of “big features” in my head. I cut out some deliberately, likely forgot about a few and also had to accept that with the input I was getting on a game with no momentum of people playing it and me being able to interact with the input (besides the people i coaxed into testing my game lol) I wouldn’t have the means to proceed. Nor do I have the seasoned experience of someone who’s worked on multiple games with multiple teams (hopefully the keyword is yet).

It’s making it hard to look at the work I’ve put out and put a lot of effort in. I’m glad I’ve got the whole thing done. I’m happy with the quality for what it set out to do. Doing every aspect is awesome. I would love doing that more and more and just scoot all over the place and do a little here, do a little there. Would be great.

Imagination vs Craft Output

The intention of Juggle Star DX was to create a game from start to finish. See what it feels like to get your game on the stores, get it done, player input, all that stuff. And in that regard it was wildly successful. I’ve felt on how difficult it can be to design a game, handle feedback that you actually solve the problems the players are having instead of just following what they say and all the legal, fiscal and marketing hassle that comes with publishing it yourself. That was wildly educational. I was planning to let the marketing come last (spoiler: it never came lmao).

While I’m happy with how a lot of aspects turned out (I’m genuinely happy with how it feels and plays, It’s not a juicy looker but I’ve seen people really get into it), it’s kind of a sterile thing as contrasted by absolutely unhinged things I used to make. I kind of missed that. I’ve really focused on getting the “best” out there with the skills I had during the project. Performance, musical part writing, shader code that works right, tiny design decisions and UX feel during the game that made things better and that was amazing and fun to learn. A good friend told me the game “felt nothing like me” though. And he was right.

Along the way I’ve kind of lost what it is to just dream away and make a lot of random fun bullshit that I can share and revel in with the right people. After all, given who I am there’s literally no point not to. Who am I making these games for? My mother?

I’d be more motivated if I just did that. It would have been to the detriment of this specific game though, that’s what I devoted my time to. To bring the concept as far as I could realistically. I’m looking to do more of that in the future.

I was alonen’t

You’re the same as the ocean of people who are releasing hundreds of games per day but also aren’t.

Finding people who deeply match on artistic vision feels nigh impossible. There’s so many cool people doing cool stuff out there, but I’m not sure whether working together would be beneficial. Much of my close network doesn’t seem to care much about it other than it being good as an outlet and a curiosity. It’s been the same for years on whatever intellectual/creative endeavor really. There are others that put more effort into it because it aligns more with their interests.

It causes a very strange mixture of feeling alone, feeling together and not knowing what the hell you’re even doing. There are many supportive people around though. I’ve spoken to some very helpful people in the industry, some of which especially went out of their way to help. I’ll always be grateful for that and hope to let myself enjoy interactions like those more in the future.

Artistic legacy

Warning: This part is full of emotional conflicts and “philosophizing”.

I’ve posted a meme about this before on Mastodon but I can’t help to keep thinking about caring/not caring about artistic legacy. I’d want to put my mark on the world and contribute back to the video games that helped shape the person who I am and that kept me grounded during the hardest formative years of my life. Then again, it’s a pointless endeavour to think about the consequences of what you created over and over with this goal in mind. Who knows where we’ll be in a few years, let alone a hundred. Some things that mean the world now will be forgotten in days. A copper salesman that was of low esteem suddenly came into the minds of billions thousands of years later. Even so, barring butterfly effect shenanigans, what would be the point of wanting this as inevitably even the most powerful people we know now and interact with daily will be forgotten.

I joined in on the Steam Next Fest occasion in February. I was really hoping to get just one person to join the Discord and ask some questions about the game, which they actually played. I was quite excited about the prospect actually as that goal didn’t seem entirely unrealistic. Then I opened the store page once the fest started. I was crushed. 3000 games 💀. I’d be happy if people saw it at all, let alone play it.

Besides a dozen promoter and spam bots, the response was literally 0 even though there was a free demo. Admittedly I hadn’t done anything to promote the game, that was on me. But it amplified this feeling by a thousand. I want to be on the absurdistic wheel where I just gigachadedly create whatever I feel like because who cares. But who cares?

A conundrum for the coming time. Hopefully wiser, older me will have figured it out. Which brings me to the following.

Conclusion

There’s a lot said here, but it’s also a lot of things I wanted to get off of my chest. I don’t see these topics discussed much online and I think they’re worth sharing, I set up this whole blog stuff just for it.

In the end, I’m content. I put out the game, it’s done. It’s scary, but also a relief that I can just wrap it up now. And to start moving towards not running from myself more. I’m glad I could experience this all and am happy with all the things I’ve learned.

I’m aching to do more random stuff in the future. Do a bunch of absolutely dumb things. Throw out some nuance and carefully wording stuff. Start world building and practice some aesthetics and design. I’m currently lining up some music for another studio which is cool and they’ve been really pleasant to work with too.

Who knows what the future will bring, but at least I can say I’m a “professional” indie gamedev now :)

Thank you for reading. -Marcel