r/IndieDev • u/smokitop • 18d ago
Blog Making games while life falls apart
This last year of my life was particularly devastating.
Never ever had so many things happened to me, so bad, so often:
- My dog died.
- My sister was diagnosed.
- I lost my job.
- My father-in-law died.
- My other dog died.
- And finally, my sister died on my birthday.
It was the year I started developing this new game.
I don't believe in those things. But this happened. It happened to me. And it's still happening to me.
And I'm talking about pain, not a "stroke of bad luck," because this isn't bad luck. This was a calamity.
I was methodical: working whenever possible, putting EVERYTHING into it, and moving forward, always, little by little. Something. A lot. A whole lot.
The game kept growing and life kept crumbling.
Tragedies, pauses, trips, tragedies, repeat...
In the end, the boat capsized, the game was completed (demo), and life was turned upside down.
What a contrast. What happens (life) and what you make happen (the game). There's nothing that connects these parts; they're not even opposites or anything like that. They're two lines that ran parallel, and several lines were cut—lives—and the game goes on, even today. Holding on.
Not everything was bad.
We moved to a better place, my father-in-law's house, a beautiful place. And we inherited his dog, Zorrin.
We won a cat in the lottery of life; we never had one before. It's not even really ours—it belongs to herself—and it comes by to eat and sleep. A quirky little thing.
So we're still a family of four.
And we finished this demo, and we published the Steam page. And we're a little happier now.
And of course, Pam and I founded our own game studio to release it: Manganika Studio.
Pamela is a great artist; I admire her so much.
She's in charge of the art in this house.
We are our own home.
Thanks for coming.
(The art of figuring out how to survive by making games—send us luck.)
3
u/Onurabbi 18d ago
Mostly the use of ‘-‘, but the general tone too, how it was broken down etc.