Shiny Object Syndrome and Update 4/29 (Patreon)

Hey guys!

Being honest, I still feel sick. I won't harp on it, but I like to be transparent about how I'm doing from week to week cause I'm the one responsible for the game's progress. So my inactivity on Discord/other platforms is likely due to me not feeling great. I'm working through it though :).

That being said, I'm about 2344 lines of code into the next update, or 25,623 words of dialogue in. Not really where I'd like to be at this point, but considering everything, I'd say it ain't bad. Plot wise, I'm nearly at the end of the morning events, which may not sound like much, but the division of morning, afternoon and night for this update isn't even. 

The morning is structured to have 2 main branches, and then within that a whole mess of sprawling alternate routes. Afternoon won't be nearly as robust, but will be sizable, and then the night will be decently sized as well, but shouldn't have nearly as much variation. There will be a lot of clue finding/info dropping in this update that I believe will start to answer a few burning questions, and likely open up a few more for the future.

There will also be quite a few impactful scenes, as I'm seeing this release as the final one to complete the first act of the game. Things may disappear, some decisions you made earlier on will come to haunt you (or reward you, who knows?) Some of you may recall this all was originally slated to come out with v0.2 as I wanted that to span the first week, but I admittedly got a little carried away and decided to parse out Saturday and Sunday into their own updates considering the amount of content I wanted to get in there.

Beyond that, I've completed 2 character designs, and a few backgrounds and plan on getting a few CGs done here and there between my writing in the coming week. 

Separate from this game, I've already started to brainstorm for the next two games I'd like to work on after College Craze. When I was younger and would write, I had an issue with "Shiny-object-syndrome". I'd start writing a book, and then the second a new idea came to me, I'd drop everything and run off to the next one. 

Eventually this left me with a mountain of unfinished novels and a terrible creative work ethic. I broke this habit a few years ago during the NaNoWriMo challenge (Write a 50k word novel in one month), forcing myself to stick with one project for a set amount of time. I was so excited about finally finishing something that I got hooked, and did that challenge 3 more times, each time exceeding my 50k word goal more than than last time. 

New ideas for books became a reward for finishing whatever I was currently working on at that time. And so it started a pattern that I'm currently on today! (Can you believe I started working on this game the day after I finished writing a 110K word novel?) 

I'm not sure if my anecdote will help any others out there that struggle with shiny-object-syndrome. But I've found that giving myself a challenge forces me to push through the tough parts, and using my excitement for a new project can act as a huge motivator and reward.

Granted, writing novels and game-making is very different, so I can't just jump straight into the next two games once College Craze is done, but I can at least start jotting down notes and abstract ideas in my free time to have ready once CC is over. 

I'm curious to hear about your experience with creative projects and how you guys handle timelines/rewards/punishment etc. Drop a comment below :) 

Until next time!

xoxo,

PrettyInk