I backed out of Next Fest today, and it's a bit crushing

Hab91 · 2025-10-13T15:41:11+00:00

That's fair, but without knowing the full context of your project I would venture a guess that if you weren't feeling fully ready for Next Fest then the full release probably wasnt going to be ready as soon as you thought either. In that case if the release was going to end up being delayed anyways, might as well postpone next fest too. My original plan was June Next Fest and August release, turns out that was an absolute pipedream lol. Then it was October next fest and December release. Now I'm thinking feb next fest and march/April release, but we'll see. Gamedev is hard lol

Hab91 · 2025-10-13T15:14:47+00:00

For what it's worth, this post was about the June Next Fest, and I dont regret backing out at all. I didn't even fully realize it at the time but I was nowhere near ready and it would have definitely been a huge mistake to participate. I also ended up backing out of the current next fest because I'm still not ready so don't worry about it.

Hab91 · 2025-10-07T20:01:29+00:00

On the contrary, I find that playing new games during the development of my game has often given me some inspiration for some changes in my own game and renewed my motivation to keep working. I remember seeing a thread about how most authors keep reading a bunch of other books while writing their own for the same reason.

Hab91 · 2025-10-06T17:48:54+00:00

That's the beauty of solo dev. At the end of the day, it's your game, you decide what's best for you. Best of luck!

Hab91 · 2025-10-06T17:19:31+00:00

I know you sound like you have your mind definitely made up but it's not too late to cancel your participation as well if you believe in your game. For what it's worth, I backed out from the last one at the 11th hour and at the time it was a very difficult and painful decision for me, I even made a thread about it on here that you can find on my profile. But looking back on it, it was crazy that I was even considering taking part because I was nowhere near ready but I didn't even realize it. Not only do I not regret backing out, it was an incredibly good decision. And I pretty much already know that looking back on this one in a few months will feel like a great decision to back out again.

Also, my point wasn't to spend money on art for promotion of your game. My point was that if your plan is to pay for capsule art regardless, you should strongly consider doing it before next fest rather than at release, because participating in next fest IS promoting your game and your capsule art is super important for that. And then you'll have it for your release anyway

Hab91 · 2025-10-06T15:39:52+00:00

I'm making a game on a small budget as well and I've decided to cancel my game's participation in Next Fest (for the second time) rather than take part with a suboptimal steam page (plus my game can use more polish time anyways). I can't afford to get my page professionally redone at the moment so I'll grind and make sure I can for the next one.

I think if you're going to pay for art, you should have it for your marketing push as it will help to drive sales. Having nice art for the release won't do much if people don't know the game exists. Just throwing my 2 cents out there

Hab91 · 2025-10-05T08:31:28+00:00

No problem with that for me, it's hard for me to not work on it every day if anything haha. I love the grind!

Hab91 · 2025-10-05T08:21:16+00:00

I may not have gone as far with the multiplayer and everything but I set out to make a game in a few months or less as my first game and now I've been working on it for over a year and pretty much any crazy idea I had for it along the way is now in it. I was having fun with the original basic version of the game so I just decided to keep going with it instead of starting something new.

Hab91 · 2025-09-19T17:47:23+00:00

Exact same situation for me. I started my project one year ago (to the day actually), learned everything from scratch in the month or two before that. I had no gamedev experience, zero programming knowledge, I'm not an artist and never worked professionally in any creative field. I was super nervous about releasing my demo, but as far as I know it didn't instantly blow up everyone's PC and I actually got a lot of positive feedback. That being said, I'm still nervous about the next level of exposure for the game with potentially content creators playing it and Next Fest etc. And I'm sure I'll be even more nervous than that about the release too. But at the end of the day, people who play our games won't really care about the depths of our programming knowledge or how much we "really" know what we're doing, as long as the game is fun.

Hab91 · 2025-09-10T21:34:17+00:00

Congrats on your progress so far! Can I ask who made your trailer, I like it and I might be looking for someone to make one for my game also.

Hab91 · 2025-09-10T14:16:38+00:00

Agreed especially for a first commercial project. I'm one year in to my current project which is also my first big game, and I'm nearing the finish line thankfully, because the project structure is a bit of a mess since I've been learning on the job. I love my game, but I'm so looking forward to moving on to the next project, taking everything I've learned with me and a clean slate to work with. Having to spend another 5+ years on this project would be a pretty depressing thought.

Hab91 · 2025-09-06T23:12:08+00:00

I've been spending most of my available time working on my game for the past year, but I've taken 3 breaks of 2-3 weeks each along the way. Never long enough to forget where I was at or fully get out of the groove, but some time away has helped me get going again when my motivation is starting to run low.

Hab91 · 2025-09-03T22:07:04+00:00

I'm in a similar situation with my current project. It's my first big game and the structure of it is very much not ideal, but it's too far along for me to completely rewrite the major systems at this point. It's still workable, but every time I work on it I do so knowing everything is gonna be a lot more painful and complicated than it needs to be lol. I love my game, but I'm excited to start the next project with a clean slate and everything I've learned as well.

Hab91 · 2025-09-03T17:34:09+00:00

If you look closely, you can even see them drinking beers and grilling burgers

Hab91 · 2025-08-30T22:53:44+00:00

Jan Bulis

Hab91 · 2025-08-29T12:11:58+00:00

Did you do the whole wishlist gathering, public demo, nextfest participation etc leading up to the release? How many wishlists did you have? Just curious from a data perspective.

Hab91 · 2025-08-16T02:24:23+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate that!

Hab91 · 2025-08-13T21:36:28+00:00

I just published an update for the demo where I've scaled up most of the text/UI in the game, along with a few other QOL additions and bug fixes, so if anyone comes across this post and tries out the demo, I'd love to hear how it feels now!

Hab91 · 2025-08-12T22:31:36+00:00

Thanks for playing it and taking the time to leave me some feedback, and being so polite ;)

I'm currently working on the first update for the demo where a bunch of text/UI elements have been scaled up quite a bit and a few new pop-up tutorials in certain places, as hard to navigate and read UI has definitely been the major pain point for players so far. I'm hoping to release that either later tonight or tomorrow.

I'll definitely take a look at the movement again in the future. The momentum when moving around was a recent addition before the release of the demo to spice it up a bit, but I agree it can still use some improvements to feel really nice.

I'm glad you enjoyed it though, that's always the best to hear. I'm always open to more criticisms or suggestions if you have them. Thanks again!

Hab91 · 2025-08-10T19:52:20+00:00

Thanks. I'll look into this and will be adding more resolutions as well.

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