It’s been almost 5 years since I released this game for the Community Game Jam 2019.

A lot has changed since then. I’ve dropped out of college and now work full time as a Senior Software Engineer. I started playing guitar and got way better at understanding music. It’s been 4 years since I last worked on a game.

I’m overworked and stressed. Working 12 to 16 hours a day for the past 4 years has taken a toll on me. I’m always tired and cranky. I put on a lot of weight. And sure, I am fortunate enough to have enough money to provide a stable living situation for myself and my family, but I was happier when I didn’t.

For some reason, during the late hours of a night this month, I remembered how I felt when doing I was doing GameDev. It used to be everything to me. I worked on games, although 95% of them have never seen the light of day, for about 10 years of my life.

I remembered about this game in particular. It was the game that got me a place at Dev-U. Some of my best friends in the world I’ve met during my time there.

I was reading through the reviews of the Submission page of this game, and I couldn’t help but cry. I need a creative outlet, someway to express myself to the world. I screenshot and saved a bunch of your lovely comments in a folder in my desktop, called “motivation”.

So I’ve decided to pickup gamedev again. I started making games when I was 9 years old, and released my first game in the old YoYoGames website, made in GameMaker 7. It was a small puzzle game, inspired by “The World’s Hardest Game”. It got 21 downloads.

This is still one of my fondest memories. Getting reviews, comments, sharing something that I created.

As Toulou from the “Museum of Screens” put: Making games for free is a luxury. It is a radical act, and I refuse to let this hobby become a business. I’m fortunate enough to have a stable job and income so that I can work on free games.

Moving forward, I will be developing free games. I will be developing small games. Hopefully all of them will be free open-source software.

Anyway, enough about me, lets get to the changes in this update:

• Added a settings screen. You can finally tweak the volume of music and sfx.
• Remade the room for the 4th key and chest.
• A bunch of bugfixes for Controllers/Gamepads.
• Fixed some minor collision bugs.