New demo coming soon, participating in Game Devs of Color Expo and SHMUP Fest

Phew, quite a mouthful title, eh?

So for the demo, which is largely the same as the last one but with QoL updates and bugfixes, will be permanently available soon. I will be participating in two Steam event: Game Devs of Color Expo (Sep. 20th - 30th) and SHMUP Fest (Sep. 25th - Oct. 2nd) to test another weird idea I had for a while, let's hope it works.

Also Autopanic and Autopanic Zero's development will be postponed indefinitely, let's talk about that, long story ahead but the TL;DR is:

I'm still fixated to release Autopanic some day, but I will stop targeting random meaningless date before the game is fully finished.

Now if you're interested in what happened, here's the full story.

The making of Autopanic

This is going to sound super weird, but I'm actually perfectly fine for not releasing Autopanic.

I set out to make Autopanic in May 2020 as sort of a way to cope with the most difficult period in my life. To me, it is more of a research project to see whether or not I can:

• learn to make a game from scratch with zero knowledge

• actually build my weird idea into a enjoyable product

It has since been proven by playtesters months ago that albeit flawed, what I set out to do with this project is achieved.

With that, comes a difficult problem to actually releasing it.

To release Autopanic

To release Autopanic, multitude of extra works are still required:

• Some design flaws had to be fixed

• All potential bugs had to be fixed to prevent immersion breaking

• More artworks had to be added, and the existing one has to be retouched to be commercially viable (as in I won't cringe when I make a trailer with it)

• The music had to be improved, somehow

• The writing had to go through extra passes to be actually enjoyable

Which is a ton of work for a fully solo project, though I'm really fixated to release it within 2023, so I can finally move on.

This is when the cracks started to show.

Stress beyond control

I showed symptom of physical urticaria since March 2023, which is a physical condition normally associated with stress. I considered myself to be fairly well trained in this department, which has proven to be the case for how I survived the ordeal. But at long last, the symptom proved that I'm already overloaded, and I know I had to race to the end before I'm consumed.

My condition got worse as my attempt at securing government funding was deemed unworthy. To be fair, Autopanic can be finished regardless of funding, but the whole process costs me time and a small sum of money which is really frustrating.

Then Tiny Teams happened. Which is normally a good thing, and I'm really felt privileged to be invited. But I never thought I'd be accepted and haven't had enough time to prepare for better promotion materials. And since Tiny Teams is such a big opportunity, I feel obligated to release a demo at the very least. Which in the end gathered me so many more followings, wishlists, and more importantly more feedbacks, and I'm really glad that I did release this demo.

Though as glad as I am, my stress related symptom only increases as time goes on. Which forced me to reevaluate what I really want with this project, which I don't really have.

To delay indefinitely

I don't