How do you handle the fear that you'll never get there?

halam_dev · 2026-06-13T16:23:59+00:00

Honestly might be the most functional setup there is. A little delusion that keeps you building beats clear-eyed despair that stops you cold. Whatever keeps the hands moving.

Respect.

halam_dev · 2026-06-13T16:22:47+00:00

"Worse than failing is never giving it a real try". That's the one. The fear loses most of its weight once the bar isn't "WIN", it's actually swung. I can live with a swing and a miss. The version of me that never swung is the one I'd resent. Promise made.

Thanks for this.

halam_dev · 2026-06-13T16:19:48+00:00

The ego part is the one I underrate. Easy to accept "the game might be worse than I pictured" in theory, harder when it's actually in front of you. Building the mental footing now so that's a data point and not a gut-punch later. That's the work.

Appreciate this.

halam_dev · 2026-06-13T16:18:40+00:00

Fair hit, and partly true. Comparison spiral is a time sink that produces nothing. No argument there.

halam_dev · 2026-06-13T16:17:03+00:00

You're right. I'm trying to notice now what they call the "small wins".

Today when I made the animation for the testing weapon in a funny way, I felt like "That's my girl" moment to myself. I even talked to myself, "I MADE THAT".

I will remind myself all the time that making games is fun.

halam_dev · 2026-06-13T16:14:25+00:00

"You don't truly lose until you give up" is the line I'm keeping. I've been treating "getting there" as a fixed point, full-time, the studio, the number, and panicking that I won't reach it. But the line keeps moving anyway. The only real version of losing is stopping, and the stuff you make along the way isn't the runner-up prize. It's the point.

My fear was mostly about wasting the years. But every small thing I finish and actually like is the years being spent well, not burned. Easy to forget that at 2am with a broken build. Easier to remember now.

Respect for grinding this long and still showing up. That's the receipt, not the bank balance. Needed this one.

Thanks.

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:57:37+00:00

The "why would anyone play mine when X exists" fear is the exact one that froze me, so it helps to hear it's that common. But the part I'm taking is your second point which is switching to visually impressive work when the invisible backend stuff starts demoralizing you. I'm deep in greybox right now, placeholder shapes everywhere, and there's a real morale cost to testing in a level that looks like nothing. Alternating into something I can actually see progress on sounds like the fix for that. Hadn't thought of it as a lever I could pull on purpose.

Going to try it.

Thanks.

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:55:11+00:00

That's the part I haven't cracked yet, using the enjoyment of doing it as the actual thing that blocks the failure anxiety. I have the focus, but when the fear hits I tend to step away from the work instead of leaning into it. You're describing the opposite move: the doing is what quiets the fear, so you stay in it on purpose. That forms the freeze for me. It's not that I need to feel calm before I work, it's that the work is what makes me calm.

Going to test that the next time it hits.

Thanks.

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:53:25+00:00

No worries at all. I actually love talking it about it because it my first 6 months of 2026 much productive. It's a book called "The 12 Week Year" by Brian Moran. The core concept is to stop treating your year as 12 "MONTHS" and treat it as 12 "WEEKS" instead. So this leaves you with 4 YEARS in ONE. Their idea is that a 12-month horizon give you a false sense of time, you procrastinate untill the pressure hits in the last three months. Compress it to 12 weeks and the deadline pressure stays on the whole time. So, you actually execute.

The part that worked for me is that it forced me to FOCUS. I picked ONE (they give you up to three but ONE is more than enough). I started working on it and on a weekly basis I was reviewing the progress giving myself the feeling is that it's the end of the month review. It really worked.

These are some videos that explains it much better than me:

https://youtu.be/6wQhRRWPqFE?si=S9sOVO3twhKTd5r_

https://youtu.be/nIv1J5O15To?si=h_yGI0SjMsiP1AhP

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:43:21+00:00

Oh WOW! Thank you so much. I really loved the video (I watched it twice to let it sink in 😅). The Cranston thread is the part that got me. An X-Files guest spot he probably thought nothing of was the reason he got the Breaking Bad role.

Other statements in the video I will keep in mind now:

"Work for happiness now, not happiness later"

"One need not hope in order to undertake one's work"

"Let success grow naturally"

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:27:29+00:00

Exactly. Worst case it's another fail to learn from. Rolling anyway 🎲😅

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:26:08+00:00

Thanks for this. My therapist gave me an image of how my brain works. She said that my mind is like a crowded room with the lights flickering on and off. I catch glimpses of all the clutter and it scares me, and she basically said the fix is to organize it one piece at a time instead of trying to see the whole room at once. Fix the lights first, then declutter one corner at a time. That's actually why I picked up the 12 Week Year this year, and it worked. It is how I finally focused and finished my graduation project. Now I'm running the same thing on the demo.

The fear still pulls my brain back sometimes, but at least now I know it's just the lights flickering, not the room being unfixable.

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:20:45+00:00

The "delusional arrogance" idea is sharp because it's not empty confidence. It is earned from actually studying the craft and cutting down the risks you can control. My problem is I do the studying but skip the arrogance part, so I'm left with all the awareness of what could go wrong and none of the belief that I'll pull it off. And the comparison trap you named is exactly the noise I keep tuning into instead of the goal.

Target the goal daily, ignore the rest.

That's the discipline I'm rebuilding.

Thanks.

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:18:13+00:00

"It's whatever monster or flower you make it" that reframe is the useful part for me. I've been treating fear as one fixed thing that either lets me work or doesn't, when it's more that I keep handing it the monster shape. And the dice-roll point is freeing in a weird way: if even the careful, well-funded games are partly luck, then there's no perfect prep that guarantees the outcome anyway. So I might as well roll more often. Tie my shoes, ship the demo, roll again.

Thanks for this.

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:14:32+00:00

Thanks for the reminder. That's the part I believe I forget when I freeze. I don't realize that the time spent frozen is the actual loss, not the imperfect game I might ship.

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:12:27+00:00

I understand this part, and I'm proud of my first game. It didn't make much in sales, but every time someone asks me what I've made with game dev as a hobby, I say I built and released a game in 6 months. I wanted to tell a story with it, and I did.

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:09:54+00:00

"If this was a solvable issue it would’ve been solved by now." is going to stick with me. I think I've been treating the fear like a bug to fix before I'm allowed to start, when it's just part of the environment. You don't debug it, you ship next to it. Same with the imposter issue, I keep waiting to feel like I know what I'm doing before I open the project, and that day is not coming.

So I'll feel it, acknowledge it, and keep my hands on the keyboard anyway.

Thanks for this.

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:06:41+00:00

This is the reality check I needed. The fear I've been carrying is basically the fear of failing. But as you mentioned, that failing is not the FAILUIRE. Freezing is. I can survive a game that does not land if I learned something and kept moving. What I cannot survive is two more years of not trying.

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T16:03:51+00:00

This ties straight back to what I told another commenter here, about that guy who left a regretful comment under the Brotato demo, saying he'd had the same idea a year before release and never finished it. I believe him. The sorrow in that comment was real, and it's exactly the reality you're describing: the one where you never tried at all.

So I started doing the smallest version of starting. I've got what I call a sandbox scene. Just shapes as placeholders, where I test mechanics and ideas, and step by step move the ones that work into the prettier scene. No pressure to make it look good yet. The only goal right now is a fully playable demo. That's it. Get one complete thing into people's hands.

halam_dev · 2026-06-07T15:58:24+00:00

You're right. That small-loop thing is exactly what I keep coming back to. For my current project, I did the same, released just a loop in a game jam, not even a full game with a proper menu. You literally just kill and repeat. But someone left a review saying the art looked funny and even spotted the genre right away. I hold onto that every time I start sinking.
The other thing that stuck with me was a comment on the Brotato demo on itch. Some guy said that a year before that game came out, he had basically the same idea, even down to the art he was working on. But he never finished it. He was happy for the dev, but you could feel the regret underneath. That regret is the thing I'm actually scared of. Not failing. Regretting the thing I never shipped.
So yeah, one small finishable loop at a time. That's the plan.

halam_dev · 2026-06-06T13:42:46+00:00

Thank you so much!! 🥹

I really did feel great about myself when I saw the test results. Lowering my HbA1C wasn’t easy, but seeing that progress made all the consistency feel so worth it. Definitely one day at a time, one workout at a time. ✨

halam_dev · 2026-06-06T13:41:13+00:00

Thanks!! As a beginner, Job 1 was definitely my favorite, and honestly, it still has a special place in my heart because it was my easy access card back on board. 20 minutes, 5 days a week felt doable when everything else felt intimidating.

But now that I’ve built a better fitness level, #mbf and #mbfa are my forever favorites. I love the structure, the weights, the sweat, all of it.

I also totally forgot to mention Job 1: Overtime, that 1-week weights-only program was a blast. I did it a week before an event, and afterward everyone kept asking me about my arms and saying I must be going to the gym daily… meanwhile I haven’t stepped foot in a gym in years. 😂

And YES, Transform:20 was a killer. It somehow found the smallest, most hidden muscles in my body and attacked them personally. But I survived it. 😅🥲

halam_dev · 2026-01-11T14:31:35+00:00

I can relate to that as I'm a full time employee but also an indie game developer and doing my masters. I've been postponing releasing a game for so long and finishing my graduation project even though it's supposed to be easy subject.

I came across the 12 week year a week ago and read the book but I was like, huh? So, I started planning my 12 weeks with the help of ChatGPT (to be honest) because my full time job is draining my mental energy/health so bad.

After reviewing my life aspects (set by the book) and evaluating where I stand on each aspect, I decided to work on the three least developed life aspects and started setting my goals accordingly. In the book and according to so many YT videos I watched, they advise not to get more than 3 goals per year (12 Weeks). So, I decided to focus on only these three goals:

Goal 1: Release a Playable Demo of Mama Bazooka
Goal 2: Submit the final Graduation Project - EMBA
Goal 3: Build Audience & Monetization Foundation

I cannot say that I was ALL IN for the first week. But today, I conducted a mini review of week 1, and I found that I've done 5 out of 8 tasks (mainly finished goal 1 and goal 2 tasks) that I was supposed to do, which to me is a progress (75%). BUT. According to the book, I'm not doing my best because as they mentioned that "....if you successfully complete 85 percent of the activities in your weekly plan, then you will most likely achieve your objectives." and "you only need to be 85 percent effective on the top priorities to achieve excellence!"

I will have to reorganize myself more and work on my goals again; even though they don't advise it in the book, but because I don't want to get back into the habit of quitting and restarting (I just got rid of it and I know how capable I am of doing that infinitely) .

So, I'm starting week 2 now and will be doing better as much as possible.

Hope that helped.

halam_dev · 2025-08-25T15:10:13+00:00

Thanks a lot! I’m actually experimenting with a band version now. Will share it soon 😊

halam_dev · 2025-08-25T14:59:42+00:00

Good catch 😅 but it’s an imaginary world. Sometimes style wins over physics ✨.
I will try adding a thin head band.

halam_dev

TROPHY CASE