Torchlight, and the year 2020

Firstly I'd like to thank each of my followers for taking the time to appreciate my modest library of content. Please accept my most sincere gratitude for recognizing me as a creator, and appreciating my work.

Torchlight came towards the end of a very difficult year for all of us. Not long after my wife's grandmother left us after a battle with pancreatic cancer, my grandfather passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. He had been struggling with kidney failure and receiving treatment for it. He used to say that he wasn't afraid of dying; that it was the suffering he was afraid of. His sudden passing is seen by many of us as a fulfillment of his desire to depart quickly.

Torchlight was meant to pay homage to our dearly departed, and remind us that their light endures through us. We live our lives in honor of theirs. As we say goodbye to 2020, we have the opportunity to reflect on our actions, and determine our path for the coming year.

I've learned a lot from my time on itch. Most recently I've discovered that it takes the right inspiration to make a game that you can be proud of. It took 5 of us to deliver this game within a week from the ground up. We struggled to find an artist. All of the assets you see in this game were altered from google search images. Altogether we spent 100 man-hours developing this game. I'm very grateful for our talented musicians, and for the DartBoardGamer. Without his help I never would have been able to finish this game in time. Planning also saved the day here. We all knew exactly what we needed to do. Unfortunately we had to cut a lot of the content that we had planned to have in the game in order to deliver it on time.

So here are some new year's resolutions for the year 2021:

1) Quality Content

• I have 3 games under my belt from 2020. Each of them taught me something new, but none of them meets the quality of development that I want to strive for. You deserve better, and frankly, so do I.

2) Presence

• I'm not a well known developer, and I don't care for popularity. However, I do want my content to garner more attention than it has. Quality will go a long way towards helping with that. So will transparency and frequent updates.

3) Expanding my Skillset

• I have a Bachelor's Degree in Software Engineering, but haven't done much work in the industry. That means that although I've been exposed to a lot of industry standards (perhaps outdated?) I haven't actually put a lot of them into practice. This year I'm starting off my first project by following the design patterns I learned in school.
• There are also a lot of things pertaining to game development that I don't know; such as setting up online multiplayer, or creating custom pixel art, 3d models or music/SFX. As a solo developer, these are things I ABSOLUTELY need to understand. I don't expect to master everything, but I do expect to understand it well enough to implement it into a quality game.

I plan on posting a weekly devlog, so stay tuned!