Hi Everyone,
Well, I knew this day would come eventually. Deep down I wish it never did, but reallity seldomly goes according to plan. It is a bit hard to write this, I find it a little bit sad to admit it to myself, but here it goes:
I'm retiring from game-dev.
I don't know if it's temporary or permanent, but right now the drive I used to feel that pushed me to work on Vecter every free moment of my time is no longer there. I didn't expect it to last this long, to be honest...
It's been 2 years almost to the day since I've started on this journey, and it all started with this Reddit post , and this gif:
It's been an amazing journey where I've made a lot of amazing friends, had a metric fucktone of fun and learned more about the gaming industry than I really ever wanted or intended to know...
As someone that made a free game just for the giggles, I never thought I'd get this far. Vecter has been downloaded over 335,000 times by 245,000 people worldwide. A quarter of a million people have looked at Vecter and thought "Yeah, this looks good enough to give it a spin". Then, even though they had no obligation to do so, 2321 people liked it SO MUCH that they decided it's worth leaving it a positive review. Another 741 thought it good enough to even throw in a steam donation, another 30-ish thought it so good that it deserves a Patreon donation and then another 40-or-so thought it worth a Ko-fi donation.
Vecter has been in the Escapist Magazine and on the Opera GX Game Corner and featured in so many YouTube videos that I've lost count with new videos being made about it still almost daily.
How I feel right now is a combination of pride, satisfaction and joy. It's a feeling of knowledge and understanding, a new level of insight into an industry fueled by passion, obsession, sleepless nights and sometimes even thankless efforts. So with that said I'd like to do a little thanking of my own:
Trisy - My wife - Thank you for supporting me in this. You were the one pushing me every day and challenging me to go forward and follow my drive. You've sacrificed a lot to this game just to see me smile, and it without your love and support I doubt this would have ever even left the prototype stage.
Roczo - My friend - Thank you for all your help with the community. It's hard managing people's feelings and expectations. It's hard deciding when someone is trying to be a troll or just doesn't know any better, and it's even harder doing all of that while also living with your own responsibilities. I doubt the Discord server would have been such a quality place without your guidance and support.
Sergiu - My partner in crime - Thank you for being my inspiration. Truth be told if it wasn't for you and Unbound, for your passion to succeed against the odds and make something truly beautiful and unique I probably would never have considered following my own again. You might think you've done nothing, but you've done more than you could ever imagine by just being yourself.
Pawelori - Thank you for keeping my perspective in check with your wildly disturbing artistic creations. You shared them with me and helped me keep my vision fresh by just being yourself. You probably didn't even know you were doing it, but you were, and for that I am grateful.
InsidiouSin, Dargonsight91, Hypersycos, Xi, Robo - Thank you for moderating discord and keeping the pace. Roczo and I deeply appreciate your assistance and through your fair and watchful eye, we have a server filled with fun and challenging discussions that all of us had something to learn from and helped us grow.
And finally you, the player, the reader of this text right here - thank you for trying out Vecter. I made this game selfishly for me because I wanted to, because I thought I had something to prove, but ultimately it was you I actually made it for because it was you that gave it life and purpose. The game itself is just endless lines of code running on your computer making pretty pictures but it is you, dear player, that transformed it into a living breathing experience and it is ultimately you that made all my late nights and early mornings of coding mean something.
And for that, I am endlessly grateful...
What happens now? Well, nothing really. Vecter will still be here, on steam, for you to enjoy. The leaderboard will remain open since it costs me something like $20/month to run which the donations are more than enough to cover the cost probably for the next 5 years. The discord server will stay open for as long as it's active and people find it a fun place to hang out. The only difference is I won't be pouring much time into development anymore.
I'll still be around to fix the occasional bug, help with the occasional support question, but honestly from this moment going forward, what you see is pretty much what you get.
Thanks for coming, thanks for reading, thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed it.
As for me... I'm finally enjoying playing other games again instead of obsessing over my own, and it feels really good. It feels liberating... I'll catch y'all on the flip side. Pace!
