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One week left until The Blessed Fool is released. I'm so glad I finally finished this project — it took me 2 years. Two feelings are boiling inside me: joy and shame. Below is a short story of how these two years went, and why shame outweighs joy in me🧵 #pixelart #gamedev #gaming #indiegame

Development started in June 2024. I quickly found an artist, and we drew 70% of the sprites in six months, but in February 2025 the main artist I worked with on Plowing came back. We had to redraw everything. Look at the attached screenshots — the question "why" should disappear right away.

While the artist drew, I tried to learn Godot. It went terribly. At best I'd reach the inventory system, and that wore me out completely. I started looking for a programmer to save time, while working on it myself. I restarted the project 25-30 times — the chaos I made was impossible to escape.

Finding programmers was the most interesting part — there were four. #1 vanished right away, #2 did ~20% and vanished, #3 built 3 systems and vanished. #4 was the most brutal — he did almost everything, then honestly said he couldn't continue, too busy. That's when I lost faith in programmers.

From then on I decided to do everything myself and started the Godot project again. You're probably wondering why not just finish the almost-done project. Because back then I still couldn't tell a method from a class. To make sure I'd finish, I found a mentor who helped a lot early on.

We started working in September 2025. I'll describe this in detail — it might help someone. First we wrote technical documentation listing all the game's systems and entities. Then, for each system, the mentor wrote fairly detailed tasks. Those task constraints helped the most.

And here we smoothly arrive at why shame outweighs joy. This game could've been made in six months, a year at most. But because of my own laziness, stupidity, constant frustration, lack of money, and other life circumstances, this project stretched to two years and four months.

I can't blame the "bad" programmers who kept leaving. Can't blame the first artist for drawing poorly. Can't excuse myself for ditching the project for weeks. I picked those programmers. I wrote the brief. I approved the work. I, and only I, am to blame for these 2 years.

That's why shame wins. A couple hours of gameplay cost 2 years. But you know what kept me going all this time? I knew for certain I was doing something important — not just for myself, but for millions of others. If even one person says the game helped them somehow, those 2 years were worth it.