Against my better judgment, I’m releasing a “final” (non-testing) version of my work-no-longer-in-progress, “Pale Blue Light.” It’s a small thing, probably still underimplemented, and maybe even buggy, but I’ve been tinkering with it, writing and rewriting it for ages, and after one round of testing I just couldn’t stand it anymore, so I fixed what I could and now I’m releasing it.
It’s fantasy, period drama, and real life stuff all bundled together. I’m also inclined to tell you it’s crap, but it is very late, and, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve had it up to here with working on this thing, so I may be biased against it at the moment.
I know that feeling, but I think if you don’t hate a project by the time you’ve finished it, you can’t trust that you’ve been working hard to fix its flaws. And don’t sell yourself short - trying to pitch your game to players in spite of the problems you see with it is part of the post-development healing process.
Anyway, I liked it. I didn’t always get what was going on, but it always managed to convey emotion. (And there was one part that gave me serious chills.)
If you’re interested, I saved a transcript of my playthrough.
It’s not so much the frustration of debugging that bothered me. Actually, I enjoy that process to some degree. It was just being stuck in the same small story for nigh on three years. When I started the thing it was an Inform 6 project called “One More Painted Lantern,” and the idea was that what later became the first part of the story would be longer, and that would be the whole project. I switched tense and person a few times, migrated to Inform 7, entered university and endured the prolonged sputtering out of my disastrous first romantic relationship in the intervening years. So, you see, I really had to let go.
I totally agree. There’s not one past project I’ve done that I am currently satisfied with that didn’t involve at least one period of abject misery and and what-was-I-thinking/this-is-and-always-will-be-crap. Realizing that, and learning to see that down point as actually a good sign, has been tremendously helpful.
