Yeah, I know we should be spending more time developing and less time reading people’s dev logs but I always find them interesting and figured maybe a few of you do too.
The guy who made Environmental Station Alpha (over 40,000 copies sold so far … retails for $8 which I suppose means some people got it for like $4 but still I’d consider it to be a success)…
… recently started work on the sequel and has a dev log for it.
If you’re mainly interested in “big” games (as in big Indie / AA type) you probably won’t find much here. For me as a lone dev I consider the original ESA to be a pretty big game. Certainly the scope of work is quite large. In fact, it took this dev 3 years to complete it and he already had a lot of experience before he started on it.
The dev log for Environmental Station Alpha 2 is here.
I’ve noticed a trend that most of the people making great games have a good amount of game dev experience. They’ve generally made at least a few (and more often many) games before they focused on their first big game for sale.
Definitely the case with this dev. On his site there is a list of 34 smaller games he created and many of these were before he started on Environmental Station Alpha. I think all of these can be downloaded or otherwise played for free.
Every time I see this kind of thing it makes me think I really should complete a dozen or so tiny games. If for no other reason than just the fun of it. 
Alright I am done rambling now… there ya go. Might be something interesting to some of you.
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I follow his blog. I think he is an interesting cat.
He also live streams development on twitch - though - I’m not understanding the attraction to this marketing/pr deal. I just don’t really get it. Maybe it’s like live schooling for coders or something. 
I binge read his dev blog earlier this year and was perplexed how he works. It seems he works on 3-4 games concurrently - and is doing the same thing now while developing ESA2, in addition to attending several game jams every year.
Also interesting tid-bit he uses multi-media fusion 2 to create all his games. Seems he has to extend the functionality quite a bit to add what seems like simple functionality that other engines (Unity) do out of the box by a click of a button.
Not taking anything away from his choices though - ESA is a fun game, and the engine is only the pencil.
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I can see how it would seem strange but I can definitely relate to working like that. I have a very hard time working on any one game for more than 3 to 5 weeks straight. I get bored or burnt-out. Need to work on something else. So I need to only focus on games that can be completed within about a month, switch back-and-forth between several different projects or work on one game that is a hybrid of like many different games rolled into one. This last approach is what I am doing now.
Many years ago I had a game project I worked on for 6 weeks in C# and XNA. Then stopped. Needed a change. Did nothing on it until 4 years later. Then I was ready to work on it for a few more weeks. lol
I think I would get totally mixed up with the complexities of multiple games. Start implementing PBR shaders into 3D assets in a hybrid 2D/3D game, and wondering why my jump mechanic has all the sudden lost all Z value in the side scroller game, why has all the character custom attribute stats restored to default settings in the flappy bird clone. 
Though - knowing how your work - I could really see you working this way - multiple projects at once - to keep things fresh.
I believe he switches back and forth from one game to the others daily.
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