started writting march 16, 2026
ok so, i make video games as a hobby and have been doing so for a few years. in that time i've done alot of stuff. used different engines, done game jams, met some very cool people, overall it's been a blast. but if i had to list the different number of unique projects i've worked on, it's in the single digits. for all the years i've been gamedeving, i've really just been working on one project, ferrun.
now, if you looked at ferrun right now, this would be hard to belive (it's quite small as of writing). however, it's because i've been remaking it over and over. now granted, this sounds terrible. having a game essentially be stuck in some terrible dev hell where it never gets out of the cycle of being worked on for a few months, discarded, and then remade again. however i would like to argue that this really isn't a bad thing.
now i agree, normally remaking the same game over and over is considered a bad thing, and for good reason! if a game studio can't get a game out because they're stuck remaking it, that's bad. it's bad for the studio because they want money, and it's bad for the people who want to play the game because they'll never get to play it. however, i am not a game studio. i am just some lady who makes videogames for fun, and so my goals are different.
the goal of making a game for me is simply the making. i really enjoy creating things and solving interesting problems, and i choose to do this by making videogames. i've found that making videogames gives alot of different interesting problems to solve (optimization, art, audio, ect.) but at the same time can still give me enough feedback that i am making something to keep me interested. so when i decide to remake ferrun for the quinteen-billionth time, it's more that i got bored with the current state of the project than a failure of working on it.
now this can happen for many, many reasons. to give a short history of the development of ferrun, it goes something like this:
2020 to 2021 - covid hits me while in school, and so i stumble into a gamedev class. the class taught how to use the game engine unity, and after quickly going through all the homework in the class (asynchronous, so i could do all the homework early) i decide to make my own game. i eventually land on the idea of a top-down 2d sandbox defense game. i had fun making it, but eventually stopped because i had no idea what i was doing. the whole project quickly becamme too convoluted to keep working on, and it would be easier to just start over.
2022 - decide to try and remake the project using non-unity tools. not too much stuff from this time, but i did try C, C++, python, and monogame. none of these really get far, but were fun! trying alot of different languages and engines was definately a good learning experience.
2023 - decide to get back into using unity, as i want to try and make more than just a tech demo. end up getting somewhat far, and halfway through development the game goes from top-down to a side-view. less base defense and more survival. i try out alot of different mechanics like temperature and making the main menu a physical place. however progress is cut short due to unity introducing a new policy that causes alot indie gamedevs - myself included - to turn away from it (this was a whole thing, if you are interested in learning more look up "unity runtime fee")
2023 to 2025 - i decide to use the the game engine bevy, which is written in rust (bevy.org, pretty cool community, at least check it out for the memes). same idea as before, but now with a shiny new engine. very fun, but also a big learning curve. i find rust to be a very enjoyable language to write in, but boy howdy can it be hard to pick up. i get really far with this one, and make alot of things for it. stuff like my own physics engine, a custom markup language, and an inspector ui framework. pretty fun, although eventually i get bored of working on libraries instead of the actual game.
2025 to present - having settled on using bevy, i decide to try again, but with a diferent mindset. instead of spending alot of time making libraries and tools for the game (which to be fair, are very useful and i still use them here and there), i decide to just work on the game. even if something could be done better, i just do only what i need for the mechanic i want to make. this meant alot more spagehtti, but alot more game. i see alot more results from my work, and it's very encouraging. this is where i am currently with ferrun, and it's what the builds you can download are! of course the game looks different, i decided to go back to a top-down game, but with 2d sprite in a 3d space. still a focus on survival elements and the game's still got as much content as it did five years ago, but it's much more fun to work on. i don't know how long i'll spend on this version of ferrun, but im really enjoying working on it right now. but of course, no promises that i won't decide to stop and switch to something else.