I started developing Substream in 2010, nine years for many people is a long time to maintain interest in a hobby project, developing a game is no exception.
At first Substream was a big focus and I poured a lot of time into it. In 2014 I tried a Kickstarter for Substream, which got some nice coverage but sadly failed. Kickstarter is really hard by the way. Anyone who gets funded totally deserves it. You have to get everything right. I had this idea I could finish up a playable demo and manage Kicktarter promotion at the same time. Don’t try that. Have your demo ready. Have everything ready.
Anyways. I really enjoyed developing this game. A “labour of love”. So I continued developing it in my free time, now and then, over many years. There’s been intense periods, and many months where I did nothing. Most days now I don’t think about it. But I also couldn’t leave it unfinished. So about a year ago, May 2017, I got to a point where I could say the game was “feature complete”.
But at the finishing line I lost motivation. I started to look at Steam integration into my custom C++/DirectX engine (because buying good game engines cost major monies in 2010, and also writing my own game engine has been a fantastic experience). I started to look at all the businessy things and forms I need to complete to get there. Boring.
Substream has some new stuff I haven’t shown online. There are now five unique levels. New music and enemies and weapons. Two playable aircraft which form two different game modes. It takes an hour or two to complete, so not a long game. But fun and still unique.
How to conclude this blog post? Well, I have sat on a finished game for a year. I still don’t want to not release it so something will happen. I don’t want to say it will happen this year because, well, I’ve done that a few times already. I have every intention of releasing it when I have the time, motivation and headspace to pick it up again.