It's honestly no surprise to me that I find myself being pulled in a million directions of things I want to do. My brain is the epitome of the pancake madness meme with too many plates of pancakes being shoved in front of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
This blog was intended to keep me on track. My thousands of readers would want to know how my journey is going after all. Lo and behold the last few weeks have been platters of pancakes smothered in work, family, a Switch 2 release, and being drawn into a different development path all together. I'll get to that later. As a self professed hoarder of hobbies, I really want to stick to game development. It combines two things I enjoy, video games and using the creative side of my brain. So here I am just a man, in front of a keyboard, asking to stay on task.
I'm not quitting my day job and family is priority number 1, so those will always be there. I did however get the shiny new Nintendo Switch 2 on release day along with Mario Kart World which me and the kids have been loving it. My usual dev time was more often taken over by the kids challenging me to a knockout race. For obvious reasons I can't say no to that! I have a reputation in this family to uphold! I'm a big Nintendo fan so its easy to say the last couple weeks have not been my most focused time.
I blame Epic Games for the other major distraction. I watched some of the State of Unreal 2025 presentation and was kind of wowed by the prospect of UEFN. A platform that would give me access to big name IPs, using assets and tools that would allow me to more easily get my work into the hands of players. Making my own Last Airbender game would be a dream come true honestly, and they will allow that to actually happen. They were putting their hooks into me so I downloaded UEFN and started to play.
Even though UEFN was presented as a way for new devs to get into making games, there is certainly a big learning curve still. I made a map and messed around for awhile but ultimately I ended up shelving the idea for now. I already started in Godot and I wanted to at least finish my first project.
Which I'm happy to reveal is going to be a homage to one of my favorite genres as a kid. The shmup. I'm not aiming for amazing graphics and art, but the bones of the game and a UI that makes it a complete game. I'm talking dots vs dots, pew pew lasers, and a beginning and an end. I was given great advice, finish a game. Without that tip I'm probably be adding to a collection of half baked ideas as we speak. Instead I'm opting for the bare minimum to call this project a complete game, all within my skill set, which isn't much yet. For the people!
Oh, I almost got sucked into Dune Awakening, luckily I got distracted.