My lonely little robot finally makes its way onto my page!

A couple years ago I started a little puzzle-platformer which was born from a few ideas.  One idea was to make a game with a seed-planting mechanic.  The other was this more nebulous desire to make a game where no one is around and you're exploring abandoned places.  One night I had a burst of inspiration and began drawing, coding, and level-designing, and before I knew it, I had a satisfying prototype on my hands.  I called it "Solumnoid" which is just a word I made up for my soil-and-seed-shoving robot.   I went on a gamedev spree and made a couple dozen levels for my puzzler along with more behind-the-scenes features.  Life has its twists and turns though, and through means outside of my control, I eventually lost both inspiration and time to work on Solumnoid.  It's a story I'm sure most game developers are familiar with... you're in the zone and then you're not.

For a while in my personal life, during this period of less-game-inspiration, I focused on my music project instead.  I made a couple other small game prototypes that didn't get finished (yet!) here and there.  But this voice in the back of my head kept telling me, "finish Solumnoid!  It's good!"  And also, I had people IRL asking me whatever happened to that game with the seeds?  So after some time, with the help of both external and internal motivation pushing me just hard enough, I've swung my creativity pendulum back in the direction of game design and am ready to finish this thing.

So what's next?  Well, I have a little over a dozen levels left to design before I feel satisfied with the amount of gameplay content.  A built-in level editor I created before my hiatus is helping kickstart my level design process.  That editor will be included with the game when released.  I have a few major features to program as well which are mostly related to art asset integration.  I'll post some more about those topics in this devlog in the coming months.

If you have a game that you put down for a long, long time too... don't beat yourself up about it, just work on something else.  The inspiration can still come back later!