Dev Diary 40: The End, For Now
Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows:
Lab 77 is released.
1014 days.
When I started this project I was at a loss. I was uncertain, after three years of university, whether any of my efforts there had been worth it or were able to use what I had been taught to actually make games. I needed to test myself. To determine if I should just give up and flee the sinking ship of games development, which was also not helped by my university effectively axing the line I was on while I was finishing my degree.
But I had an idea.
While participating in a game jam in January of 2022 I had an idea for a game. A simple platformer, where you had to bridge the gap between platforms to complete levels. This idea had been gnawing at the back of my mind for months and by the 20th of August in 2022 I decided to sit down and try. So I did. And seven hours later I had, to my utter astonishment, been able to create the core gameplay loop. This gameplay loop still stands in Lab 77, 1014 days later, unchanged.
It had worked.
For the first time in years I genuinely felt accomplished in a task. It was a major relief because I was able to decide to do something not university related and on my own and it had worked. So, me being me, I kept whittling away at it. Bit by bit I designed and implemented levels, menu systems and more. I eventually got to meet great people to work with, and through their help Lab 77 has become what it now is, 1014 days later.
It has been a long journey. There were several points at which I thought I would not be able to finish this game. From Unity's incompetent handling of their fee situation to making major mistakes in the implementation and more, seeing this through to the finish has been a marathon. I initially thought that I would have been able to release this by January 2025, but as I am still learning how to manage this type of project I now realise I should have managed workloads and timings better than I had originally done. I am however glad that I took the extra time, even in the last week I found quite a few small issues that had to be resolved which goes to show how detailed your work has to be as a solo dev.
Throughout this project I have continuously heard about how many projects go unfinished. How many potential games go unpublished for any reason, and I never really took that to heart. Not until now. Because I now realise the stubbornness that is needed to see a project through from start to finish, and I am, thankfully I suppose, a very stubborn man. Looking back there were many points at which I could have given up, but I didn't. I kept going because I wanted this game to be released, becasue I wanted to play it myself. Now, 1014 days later, it is. It is a nice feeling.
Now, for a few housekeeping notes:
The Dev Diaries will go on hiatus from now until I have the next project properly set up.
I want to do a short itch.io game to reacquaint myself with Godot.
My intention is to start working on the next project this summer, and I have been looking for funding for a while now.
Lastly I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who helped along the journey. Family, friends, acquaintances and more. I know that were I to start listing off individuals some would fall through the cracks and that would not be my intention but thank you all for following this journey. That is all for this Dev Diary, more to come.
-Olav
P.S. If you want to follow what's next check out Bluesky, Reddit or Patreon, I have already been sharing things through the Patreon connected Discord.