Last 2 years I have been in therapy and it has been helping me a lot. I wished I could have gotten back to this earlier, but I really want to make sure that I’m ready for it, healthy enough to not go straight back into burnout. I’m still not “great”, but I’m a lot better than how I was.
My depression symptoms seem to be almost completely gone, they seem to only rear their head like once in a while (a few days in a month rather than every day) and my anxiety has calmed down a lot too.
So much so, that I have been able to go out, make friends, generally meet new people and also able to do things.
Since it wasn’t just the game development that was suffering from my mental health situation but my whole life….when even making laundry felt like a daunting task I couldn’t keep up with, even if it was the only thing I “had to” do in a day.
Since then, I have gotten far…I’m somewhat able to keep my household clean and tidy, I don’t fret going to the store much (despite corona and not having a car having increased the overhead for it).
I’m living on my own now….having my daughter “part-time”….I “divorced” which wasn’t an easy step to do…and I started a finnish language course to hopefully get the stress of “living in a country which language I don’t speak” out a bit ^^” and have been on it for 2 months now wohooo!
Generally things seem to be looking better now….and I’m having (atleast) one more year of therapy ahead and honestly I’m thinking that I might jump back into game development after I finished my finnish course ^^
Or that’s atleast my hope….probably slow at first and with very very very low expectations on how it will go ^^”
But hopefully…it would work out better that time….something to look forward to aswell, because I really would like to make Critters what it’s supposed to be :O and also to move on to be able to do other projects >.<
Hard to believe it has been this long already….now it’s 2020 and the world looks a whole lot different for me….and probably many others considering the corona situation o.o
I don’t like corona…make it go away!
Crushed by myself?
It’s kind of ironic, how after so many things had happened to me, which I more or less managed to get through that it’s something inside myself that crushed me the most.
Maybe because I never quite managed to deal with all those pains cause by my past…maybe because I was getting more and more skilled at avoiding rather than dealing with issues….that it happened at some point, that I feel unable to do most of the things one would expect a healthy adult being able to do….like showering…eating regularly…doing laundry, keeping your house and home clean etc.
There were many times, when I started to panic, if a path I was going, didn’t look like it was going towards my dreams…I thought, as long as I can go THE path that I imagined to be the path to my dreams, nothing can stop me and I would be able to get better and happier in life, the closer I get to my dreams…
but I didn’t quite realize what I was setting myself up to….an expectation…that I will do something, I don’t even know everything about….an expectation that all my problems won’t or barely would matter anymore if I would just get there.
I was wrong…and painfully so….
What ended up happening, is that I started feeling desperate…despair…panic, when I noticed how I couldn’t “just” work….when it felt like my dreams were so close…I could touch them with my hands….when I felt hopeful that everything would be okay now, because no one could stand in my way of getting there anymore….
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t do as I thought I should be able to….I felt like I failed….heck I somewhat still do feel like I failed. I thought that maybe, all this time, when people told me in the past that I’m just lazy and that I won’t get anywhere…all the voices of people doubting me…what if they would have been right all along?
…I felt….what is my life even worth if THE very thing that kept me going forward…the very thing that I thought is my passion…my desire….my ultimate goal…if I couldn’t do it when IĀ have the chance to? because of some mental blockage…..
I have been in therapy for about a year now….on anti depressant medication aswell….I have been going once per week since a few months…and I’m having suicidal thoughts…I feel like I’m wielding these suicidal thoughts like a sword, something I can use if I really can’t cope anymore…just that I don’t really know, what “too much” is…I find it scary…and at the same time soothing…it gives me a little hope, that I have not gone past fantasizing about it…
….but it scares me nontheless….because, before I started my own company and to develop my game “professionally” I was convinced that I would never ever feel suicidal again….I was convinced that I already went through the worst…I was convinced that I’m surrounded by good things in my life, despite the stress motherhood came with…
good enough that I took the plunge on doing something scary…starting my own company…
I honestly don’t know where this is going…or if writing here is gonna help me at all…I just felt like, since I was using this blog to show myself how I can be consistent and persistent and it was giving me confidence in myself that I can do some things…that maybe….writing here would help me feel a little less bad.
…
maybe I could write a little bit ^^
It has been quite some time since I wrote here last time and no, it’s not because I don’t like my blog anymore š
I still think that this blog is very important to me, but I was getting insecure about telling about things that aren’t so much game related anymore, since I originally had made this blog with the intention of using it to show my progress in it.
Well….but life doesn’t always go smoothly and I have been on sick leave for many months now….and in therapy and on medication and trying to work through the problems I’m having.
It honestly feels a little bit surreal, to be told that I can “practically” do whatever I want, even encouraged to do so, because for so many years I was always bashing myself to not be good enough and not living up to mine or “imagined others” standards.
Also…last time I thought I took a break for a year to “find myself and get better” it was without therapy and I felt guilty about it being a hole in my resume….
but…that doesn’t matter anymore…all I care about now, is that I can find a way to get better and get back to what I love doing…which is making games, creating worlds, being creative and sharing it with others ^^
I’m….a little bit more hopeful again, that things might go better…slowly…carefully…allowing myself to believe that my past, especially the bad stuff that has happened, doesn’t need to continue defining my life and that I can change it.
I want to live.
Coming to terms with the state I’m in
I can’t deny it any longer that I need help. As far as I know I have been suffering from anxiety, depression and possibly OCD my whole life. I don’t have any diagnosis (yet), but I’m wanting to change that to get proper treatment.
I reached a certain…black hole in my life, beginning of this year…getting burn out from doing the best I could and at the same time bashing myself for not doing good enough ever. Like a constant reminder of what a failure I would be on repeat.
I know it’s not true…or I should know it isn’t, but it’s hard to see through that wall, that I have been living with for most of my life.
I finally got the courage to ask for real help, to ask for what I need and to put my health first, so that I have a chance to get better at any point. I’m currently trying anti-depressants (which seems to have helped a little bit, making it possible for me to at least do some laundry or dishes without feeling completely exhausted) and I’m gonna see a therapist end of this week…..
I want to get better….I’m sick of being sick.
So…health first, my game(s) have to wait.
one little bit of hope though, through all that darkness, it seems that games are a passion for me…I’m glad that’s clear for me now.
Whiskers Collision and struggle to come to terms with resting.
I actually managed to get myself out of the general fear and anxiety to keep working on the game. I felt like everything I did was awful and couldn’t even start doing anything without getting burnout simply thinking about all the things I would need to do to get my game to the state I want it to be in….
I’m working on getting help, also talking to friends and trying to approach everything work related very gently. As much as I would like to be that superhuman being that is always working at 100% max capacity at all times and thinking I can sustain that over long period of time, I can not.
It’s hard to accept and even harder that when I’m thinking I’m already hanging far behind of what I wanted to achieve and what I thought I could achieve and then I HAVE TO take a break, find a way to relax and rest and not think about work….it feels like I should be working, trying to catch up with my huge list of things to do, but I know it’s gonna tear me apart if I try and do that again.
I don’t want to linger in the past and in what I perceive as my past failures, but my mind tends to hold it in front of me, like a bad parent would smear bad grades into their kids face, yell at them and scold them for doing so bad and few.
No matter what the truth of that specific child is, it hurts and it is usually not fair.
Despite all that, some week ago or so, I managed to get myself into programming/developing again. I was doing a little sideproject, something I’m very interested in, in terms of procedural generation. I really want to use it in my games in the future. And it gave me a little of that spark back to why I was actually wanting to make games, the fascination with making worlds etc.
It also gave me the courage to go ahead and start trying out something new for Critters, something I was quite afraid of starting, because there are many things that are interconnecting that need to be implemented and changed in my game in order for those things to work.
In this case I started with the one thing which I call “WhiskersCollisionDetection” it is practically a system, that allows every creature in the game to find their way around obstacles. Think: a cat’s whiskers helping to find their way in dark places by telling it through collision of the whisker tips where it can’t or can go.
I have already a working prototype of it and I want it to work together with a priority system (what a creature is interested in/looking for/needing at a specific moment) and a search system (creature walks around to find what it needs, like food)
and also to be able to avoid things that might be dangerous, like keeping distance of thornbushes or cliffs, though I want to implement an awareness system aswell, that should allow for accidents to happen š
I also want to replace the current cubs behaviour with those systems, so that they don’t blindly follow mom around in a rather straight line, but instead if they see food and mom is nearby, they will go to it and eat it, no need for micro managing their movements, but they should still prioritize following mom when as example a storm approaches.
Though I am starting to think that it might be useful to implement a sort of “call” for the mom, to be able to control that cubs follow you and that maybe those further away that might have gotten lost, find their way to you, if not too far away to hear the call aswell.
….I’m not giving up on this….I love doing this….I just hope that with some work on my health side, that I will be able to work on it more freely.
rough version of my past few months
Writing this post is not going to be easy for me….I have been avoiding to write here, thinking that I really don’t want to appear as always bad mooded, depressed and anxious, but that it seems to be my main concern in life, the thing that keeps coming back, my past haunting me, the present not really doing my much favors either.
I know it would be easy to just summarize the things that happened, that are easy to sympathize with. If I would simply tell about the struggles that everyone is seemingly able to relate to easily, like, the christmas time being somewhat stressful, new years eve, my 3 year olds birthday, though the truth is, most of the struggle regards those holidays is only the anxiety of having to interact with people I …struggle to interact with, if my family in germany is reading that: I’m sorry, it’s how it is….and I can’t even explain it to you in a way that you would fully understand, I think.
Then there were events, like my daughter getting pneumonia and being in hospital for a week, with lots of sleepless nights, not to mention worry and suffering. My plan was to actually somehow use the holidays weeks to not have to get my daughter to daycare (her daycare was closed over holidays) and SOMEHOW relaxing and trying to not think about work for 2 weeks…..but turned out, with that 1 week of hospital and practically 1 week of aftercare, that it was only what….1 or 2 days that I actually had somewhat of a bit of restful time? which was before the hospital…so it feels like nothing went how I wanted it to be and I’m practically still burned out, just, instead of being burned out by mostly game dev and my constant anxieties, now it’s also life stuff in general…..
and it DOES NOT help that I keep bashing myself for not doing enough, that despite friends telling me that I probably need some time off and I agree with that….it doesn’t take my fears and anxieties away…….that I have to build up a business, HAVE TO be a reasonable and responsible adult, that I have to take care of my child, somehow SHOULD take care of myself, that, if I ever want to fulfill my dream about making games for a living, like actually living from it, that I would need to do more, that I would be lazy and that I should have all the time I need to actually work on my game….BUT I barely get to open Blender or unity, while I really want to see the game to become what my vision for it is, I’m overwhelmed with all the anxieties, that I don’t know if I can make it, that I feel as if it will take forever, that my skills aren’t good enough to satisfy the people who would actually want to buy my game, that I can’t make my company selfsustaining with my income from selling games……there are so MANY freaking worries, all the time, which are making it even harder to actually work, giving me more food for my brain to dismantle myself, to question everything I do, because it feels as if I’m proving to myself that it’s right, that I’m not doing enough….that my company likely fails…that I’m likely not gonna be able to lead a whole team of people to make the game I’m dreaming of, that everything is likely gonna fail etc.
and whom am I to believe that it could be any other way? considering how my whole life is practically full of all those things I never had really control over, things just happening to me, pushing me down.
*takes a deep breath*
I hate it so much! that I feel helpless, that I feel anxious all the time, that I feel like everyone must judge me for not doing good enough, that I hate myself, that I have inherited so many bad things people told me throughout my life!
I hate that I can’t just shake it off and act as if everything is fine, because it comes through eventually, it always does and then I wonder, where I’m even taking the strength from….what keeps me going.
well…actually I do know….I kept some things close to my heart, always and I didn’t allow anyone to destroy those…..my imagination, my drive to create, my love for animals, dreaming, my passion for new things I’m discovering and can learn about.
It sounds a bit cheesy if I’m honest, but I think those are the things, that I want to live for….the “what could be” in a positive way…..
Games are a big part of my life, because they allowed me to experience and “live” so much of those traits that kept me going and alive.
It’s probably also why I want to make fantasy games, fantastic worlds to immerse into, that are not avoiding touch of reality, but at the same time allow you to see the world with different eyes.
hm.
I honestly don’t know where to get time from ^^”
I’m trying my hardest to keep up with everything, from social media, private life, game updates business stuff etc. but I have to say it’s very stressful…. to the point that I’m sometimes a little bit worried about my health, since I barely get any quiet and peaceful time and even if I do, I might feel guilty about not doing enough or wasting time.
Such was the case when I started my day today…I have been working over-hours through the weekend and days before, as much as I was able to, to squish some bugs in my game, prepare some social media material, making plans, responding to e-mails…add more features in general, set up forum topics on the steam forums, upload the game on steam (again) to see if everything works and is ready for release…
So today I felt like it was almost impossible for me to work on anything, so I mostly tried talking about my stress to friends and taking everything slow by mostly watching the sales/wishlist/views numbers from my steam store page, checking on various platforms, if there are messages I need to respond to and then just browsed the Internet, practically watching random youtube videos in hope it would help me relax a bit.
I think it did, but it feels sometimes hard, when I think I need to justify what I do somehow and could be criticised for it 
but that’s MY fear.
So I have been releasing my game yesterday on steam and I felt so sick, that my stomach felt like turning upside down, because I was so afraid of the feedback I could be getting, since I have set the price quite high and I’m still not sure about, if I keep it that way, but I want to see how it goes first. It is my income after all, which I mainly use for developing the game (and future games). A lot is hanging on it and I do think that the game will be worth the price, when I get the game to the stage I’m planning to (and think I’m capable of) I’m only slightly unsure about how long that will take, since I’m working alone and I have already noticed how much a simple cold can knock me out and “steal” my time…
btw. end of this month 22-23rd of November I will have a booth for EmberSparkz, showing off Critters š in Vaasa, Finland on vaasagamedays.com
so if anyone is nearby, you can come visit me there š
oh and not sure if I have mentioned, that I’m branching out a little bit into merchandise, since I don’t know how my game will go exactly and I was looking for t-shirt print for my logo anyway for that game days event š and since I’m not having to do any shipping and printing for it, but just upload and arrange designs, I thought I can as well make it accessable to everyone who is interested š
You can find me on redbubble:Ā https://www.redbubble.com/people/farelle/works/28698998-embersparkz-logo?asc=u
and on Displate :Ā https://displate.com/displate/357438/gaming?q=Farelle
will likely update those sites with more things, not only Critters or EmberSparkz related, when I have time ^^
uhm….I probably forgot to talk about something, but my daughter is demanding my attention again….so….
My game is releasing!
Time for panic!!!! ahhhh XD
http://store.steampowered.com/app/717280/Critters__cute_cubs_in_a_cruel_world/
(it’s gonna be up in about an hour)
Gonna write a proper blogpost tomorrow to tell about how it went XD and also to show that I’m still alive afterwards (I hope)
I think I managed well, past 2 weeks ;)
Of course, I would have liked to progress much more with the actual game (and I feel like I keep repeating that *rollseyes*), but I’m finally through all the managing stuff for steam and got my steam store page up š
http://store.steampowered.com/app/717280/Critters__cute_cubs_in_a_cruel_world/
this also includes the very first trailer I made for the game š
If anyone is interested in my process for that:
I got Hitfilm for it (since it’s free and has a composing part as well, for text and effects) and watched some very good, tutorials for it. I also applied simple moving on principle to it, which is simply: rough it out and continue moving on, one clip/step at a time.
In this case, I looked for some music that could fit to my game and made some footage of my game with Bandicam and then I imported those files into the project and started shortening and cutting them down š
With a bit of a system, I was trying to make cuts on noticeable music changes and also some faster moments in the footage match up with some of the music. The same goes for the text I was overlaying later ^^
I also always tried to remind myself, that a trailer shouldn’t exceed 1:30 minutes and that the first 30 seconds are usually deciding, if the trailer hooks (based on lots of stuff I have read over the years)
I probably haven’t done best job with that, but I tried to think of which information is most important for me to convey : the games name, that it’s early access and that it will be on steam and what the game is about, hence why I chose to build in those little text overlays, which are practically naming what I can’t really show from game footage alone, since I’m still working on implementing the variety needed to show it properly (besides colors changing)
I think it’s probably also helpful, if I post the most compressed and best tutorial I was finding for Hitfilm š thanks to him, it felt so easy to understand how to use the program šĀ https://youtu.be/7rXWTJzmbZ8
uhhhh so yeah š I’m happy that everything went well, the only thing that bothers me, is that I couldn’t make the release work for 31st of October š® , but therefore I have now time to develop on the game until release into Early Access and then I will likely update it immediately, so it just means more stuff for everyone who gets the game :3
also tried out today on how it would work out for me, to use a physical to-do list, I think it’s going well, helps me to keep my brain a little less scattered :3
*squeeeeks* I’m so excited to get this game out to everyone and to be able to keep working on it š
Eventful week, in a sense ;)
I feel this week was indeed quite full of things. I started off by meeting someone to get evaluated, if I could maybe get an extension for the grant I have been working with the past 5 months and I hope it goes through, but it for sure makes and made me very nervous, because I have no idea how to evaluate my work and how others might see it and what exactly would be even “good” criteria to getting that extension of the grant through and on monday I’m gonna have a meeting about that again š® .
I know that I’m trying my best to make things work somehow, which is why I try my hardest currently to get the Steam Store page done and then evaluated and hopefully approved, so I can put it up on steam as “coming soon” and then hopefully! at 31st of October I would release my game into Early Access on Steam.
Honestly, I would have liked to wait with that for a bit longer, but my grant is running out at the end of October, I had struggles to deal with, that I really didn’t expect, some that could have been avoidable, but were due to my inexperience on how to work and stand up for myself. It all has drawn everything out and not only did I not feel good about it, I sort of bashed myself for it.
I try not do, but sometimes it’s hard when I think “I could have done better” even if that’s not true, since I really try my best to research and figure out things the best I can…..honestly…who knows what more could have gone wrong, if I wouldn’t be like that š
hah….I sidetracked a little bit.
Soooo….I made a bit of a deal with myself, to crunch through work until end of the month (trying to not overdo it though). That includes, setting up steam store page, making materials ready for promotion(videos, art etc.), adjusting my plans, getting my game into a relatively stable and feature complete state. I don’t know honestly, if I will get all the features in, especially the more complex ones, like save functionality….not even sure if I should do it, since I don’t know how to do that yet and I expect it to be quite a lot of work š
Also…what the hell! I need to make a trailer for my game, from game footage 2 weeks away from the launch o.o and I have never done Video editing like that XD sure I edited some Videos while I studied, but I think I don’t really have a clue š So that will be a first timer and I hope it’s at least gonna turn out moderate lol……
I really feel like graphically my game isn’t ready for such exposure of it’s graphics…>.< buuuuut that’s the version that is gonna come on steam…and if there are any extras, in case I manage to develop some more when the store page is up, I guess I can just update everything as needed š Maybe I can make the Video relatively “neutral” as in, it shows current game, shows what’s in it…..hmmm I will see what the results will be o.o
Also I wonder how my german accent would sound like if I would do a voiceover/talk ….could I pull off some sort of scientist explaining the life of critters like a documentation? XD
oh….and there are images to share š I finished my promo picture, which btw. took much longer than I wanted it to…with occasional: sitting on my pc without anything happening to it for weeks….>.>
I’m honestly very proud of it š only thing I don’t like, is that for some reason I chose this really weird format and never checked on what I actually needed rofl….which kinda bit me, when I tried to use this image on the steam store-page stuff o.o
hihihi first preview of my steam store page :3 I would be lying, if I would say that this wouldn’t make me somewhat excited š
oh and then I also updated all my EmberSparkz pages with my new image and even started work on a Critters own Sub Webpage on my main domain š
http://www.embersparkz.com/critters.html
what’s not so visible, is that I made all the “capsules” or images necessary for steam ready and I also created a unique Logo for Critters š
And just yesterday I have implemented food and “dead bodies” decay to the game, as well as fruits regrowing on bushes š
so yeah….quite lot’s of stuff that happened this week š
fartoindie 