How it's started / How it's going...

(disclaimer: French here, forgive my English I did my best :D )

TL;DR: We are almost done developping the plateformer of our dreams, and I feel damn proud about that.

Between theses two screenshots there is only 11 month apart. Here is the story behind those 2 screenshots.
Actually the story start a couples of year before, when I was getting a tattoo for the birth of my first son. This day I meet an amazing tattoo artist but also an amazing human being. I got another tattoo from him, then recommended him to all my friends. at that time I already started to do my own video game, all alone. I wanted to do everything, from the code to the graphics on my own. It was HARD and I was not very good at art. It was exhausting, to be fair. And parenting was draining all my energy away. One day, one of my friend that just got a tattoo from the artist, told me:
"Hey we talked about you today! Encre (the tatoo artist's full name is Encre Mecanique, it means "Mechanical Ink") allways wanted to make video games! But he can't write any line of code! I told him about you and your game! You should contact him about that!"

At that time my current project was going nowhere, and having an graphic artist with me could be very relieving. His style amazed me and I was sure we could come out with something original if we shared some ideas. A couple of emails leaded to a couple of meeting that leaded to a first project called Tamanegi Nashi.

We spent almost 2 years on this one, we built a team of 10 peoples to do the code, music, and arts and animations. We did all of this without meeting much, with only a Slack to share progress and test build of the game. You may have started to guess what happened next... the 10 of us were beginner at making games, and we couldn't achieve a proper organization. I spent too much time training the new people, and everyone had a job of their own, and for them it was a hobby. I can't blame them, that was what we were selling them: "do what you can, we take any help, we can't pay you, thanks for helping!"
Eventually, we grew demotivated because the game we wanted was a big one and the progress were minimal...
Encre already told me about it's concerns about that, and I was aware of it, but we both were trying to go through this.
And one night, after an online meeting, he took me apart and showed me this:

He told me: "I already did all the graphics, I have the core gameplay in mind, I'm searching for someone to code it. I know we have a lot of developers, but I'm asking you first."
I felt very very proud of that. Even if I was not the most reliable due to my schedule (my family, my job, my depression were already a lot to deal with), even if the others developers were good and had enough time to do it because of their situation, he asked me.
Getting my mind out of Tamanegi Nashi was something I was eager for, and Encre assured me it was a quick project, 3 months at the most. I said yes and even if I was starting a new job, since I was working from home I felt like I could find some time to code anyway.

We did a quick prototype in less than a week, as the pitch was very simple: It is a platform game, you can run and jump, you have obstacles to pass, and the little twist: you are chased by a monster, you can't kill it, you can't overspeed it, if you stop running more than 2 seconds, you are dead. One last thing: each time you start a run, the level is procedurally generated with pieces of level and winning make you unlock harder pieces to play on.

the first prototype was ok at the most. We wanted more, we wanted to challenge the best platformer we knew: Celeste, Super Meat Boy, The end is Nigh, Mario, Sonic. We wanted the character to be fast, precise, having a great air control, be we wanted the game to be easy to handle, simple in it's core gameplay. We ended up adding a dash, because it's cool and it opened new gameplay possibilities.

Then we started to work on the menu, then on a lot of graphical rework because Encre wasn't satisfied of the first assets he gave me. We added particles, upgraded the menu, and our team grew from 2 to 3 people as Thomas Barrandon joined us to make the music of the game.

Probably a normal game development, in the end, but we could not stop and keep only a "simple game to pass time", it was going to be "a very cool game that speedrunners would enjoy playing". And it became that game, in a way, because Encre had a small community around his Twitch Channel, and people started to play some demos we released on Itch.io, they spent a LOT of time on it, trying to finish it in the best time possible.

It gave us faith in the game, and that is another reason we wanted it to be greater than a "small game". Every member of the team had their own troubles and issues along the way, not to mention the whole global Covid19 situation, but we didn't lose the motivation, thanks to people giving good feedback about the demo.

We worked on the back story, even more on the graphics, we made a lot of pieces of level, like almost 350. We though about other game modes, others features, we started localizing the game in 5+ languages with helps of friends...

Almost one year later, it look like this:

Then end of the journey is almost here, as we now have a proper Steam page for the game (meaning the game exist for real, in my mind, even if I totally respect Itch.io and all the game creators publishing games on it) and to me it's a great milestone. It means the game exist to the world, it means we HAVE to finish it, it's a dream I chase since I started developing games one day I was unemployed right after I graduate from High School. I always had trouble to finish things I start so it's always a great win when I manage to finish something. I wanted to share the joy I feel about this simple Steam page with someone today.

If you are still there, thanks for reading, and I hope you guys reaches their own dreams some day. Stay safe :)