I decided to start a 2nd project - Here's why

It's been 4 weeks of devlogs already, almost a month, and I hope you enjoy getting updates on how the game is shaping up. On the side, since two weeks or so, I've also been working on an other project and I've been waiting to have something interesting to show before writing about it here.

The side project

I may call this game as CubeTrip but it's only a working title. This new project is a simple point A to point B kind of game. You start from the beginning of the level, and have to use a crazy mechanic to go to the end. One game that follows that pattern, is Super Monkey Ball where you had to move a sphere by tilting the level. In my game, you play a cube. It will be a little character in some sort of space capsule, but it's only a cube for the time being. You can choose any of the 6 directions you want, each face of the cube being one possible direction and your cube will be propelled in that direction. Once propelled, you can slow down time and choose a direction to be propelled again. That's how you move in this game. You don't have infinite propelling power, there is an arrow that shows you how many time you can be propelled. You'll have to wait for your cube to land and stand still for it to refill but you can go through energy sphere to refill without waiting. Then, the gameplay loop is pretty simple. Go from point A to point B in different levels in the shortest time possible.

Then to improve your result, you will have to, go from sphere to sphere to never have to wait for a refill. You will have to learn to get the hang of this control scheme to go further with less shots and to use the stopping of time less. And you'll also have to optimize your routes in the levels.

But why am I starting a game while I am already working on another game?

CraftyCounty is a wonderful project and I got attached to it a lot. I know what I want to do for CraftyCounty and the scope is pretty big. Rushing it would make me pretty sad and honestly I could not release it rushed at all. Which means that I still have to work on CraftyCounty for a sizeable amount of time. That's where a little side project comes along nicely. This CubeTrip thing is planned to be a little fun game, not a massive year long project. And this means that I will not have to rush the development of CraftyCounty just to release something. Plus, I never released a commercial game before, and having my first experience in this field with a project I've invested tons of work in, doesn't feel like a good idea. That's being said, I'll also work hard to release this CubeTrip project, but if the release is a failure, it won't be as big of a deal and I will be able to learn from it for releases of future games.

And won't it hurt the development of CraftyCounty?

Surprisingly, no, not that much. As much as I like CraftyCounty, there's a limit of how much I can work on a project in a day before being fed up with it. Previously I would force myself to work on it anyways, but it would be a bit unproductive. The two games being quite different, when I'm bored working on one of them, I can work on the other, and keep working with enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, I've been working hard on CraftyCounty this week too, introducing new, education related, buildings and even creating a new blueprint theme for the early game.

Thank you for your interest in what I'm doing, have a nice day!