REVEREND DEV DIARY #2: How The Holy Wafer Crumbled

First off - thank you all for your feedback and support. I'm awestruck of how many of you there are.

As a personal project, and a way for me to experiment, REVEREND wasn't made to compete with the likes of more polished retro and/or more recent shooters by the likes of PROJECT WARLOCK or ION FURY, made by people who know what they're doing. It was more of a personal exercise in persistence and passion, while pushing myself and learning something new. More on that later. Perhaps it could be considered an amateur’s homage to the classics; in the filthy style of a compromised console port of a forgotten DOOM clone from the mid 90's… Or, that was the mindset I set out with at least. Finding beauty in compromises, limitations, and nativity.

When it comes to planning stuff for a project like this, I'm not the one you should come to for advice. A lot of it happened on the fly, and most of the time I focused on what I felt like at that moment, but that's not the best way to approach something multilayered, with multiple moving parts that all demand a wide kind of attention. There’s a lot of bits and pieces that need to come together to make a project like this work at all, and the less “fun things” can’t be avoided forever, if it’s ever gonna be anything more than a dream or a drunk talking point. Stuff needs to get done. No matter if I feel like doing them or not; it just doesn’t work that way when doing a project worth anything.

As my first ‘real’ game project (except for a RPG Maker project a little more than over a decade ago) I had to look at what my strengths and weaknesses were. I kinda had to have an idea what I could bring to the table from the start, and what had to be a crash course in humility. A very true saying echoed through my head during the entire development process - “perfection is the enemy of good”. A statement I wholeheartedly agree with, especially if you are a solo dev, doing your first ‘real’ thing. Just making and finishing it while learning on the way is way more important than hyperfocusing on getting each and every thing perfect. In the end you’ll face the hard fact that when you have thrown your own ‘perfect’ baby into the hungry crowds - what is perfect anyway? Subjective, I’d say. Still - don’t let that excuse poor design decisions, general laziness, and the all-damning feature creep. Don’t be too proud to admit when it comes to killing your darlings. Remember that you might be able to recycle their corpses in the future.

In conclusion, why did I really make REVEREND? Well, why do I make anything? I don't have a wide audience, I'm not making huge bank on any of my stuff, and I'm not that big of an egomaniac, thinking that whatever I make is pure, underrated gold, hoping to be appreciated some day. Why would anyone waste their time making something? Why do anything at all, in that case? I believe we create our own reason for existing, finding meaning and purpose, doing the things we enjoy in life as much as we can before we depart. For some that might mean leaving a beautiful family behind as their living legacy. To me it means to leave traces of me, and pieces of my creations in the world for someone to perhaps stumble upon and indulge in or enjoy. Because that might be the best way to get to know a tiny part of who I was at the time of making, it's fun to look back at even for me, to be honest. Not at everything, or at all times, that's for certain.

Sometimes it can remind me of something uncomfortable, or even excruciatingly depressing, pushing me into my own little part of Anxiety Valley. In a way that's good though. It may remind me of how far I've come, or how much I've grown as an artist, or even a person. Perhaps you could consider REVEREND (especially with its "supplementary" material - more on that in the future) a form of creative and even personal diary of the time, and not just a loose development diary of the game itself.

Perhaps this all might be a bit too much to unpack and frankly pretentious, especially if you just came here for the game or the process of making it. I just thought that I should offer some kind of personal perspective on the entire project, in one way or another; the how and the why - you know? Is there a piece of me in the character of the ex-reverend? Perhaps. You could certainly say that there's a bit of self-reflection there, I guess. I'd say there's a piece of me in every character, weapon, secret, and location here, as with anything put together by one singular person. Denying that would be a big fat lie, from anyone creative - no matter the art form.

Anyway - thank you for checking out REVEREND, and especially a MASSIVE thank you if you're reading this; because, even if I didn't do this for anyone but myself, it makes me happy if it can bring some entertainment to someone else, or light a creative spark inside of you.

TL;DR:

Yo, sacramental wafers should come with some chocolate chips in 'em! That'd be lit as all Hell, bruh.

Remember, kids - skip church, take the "Lords’" name in vain, and most importantly, just be a decent person, right? Right.

Up next: a bit about graphics and ACTUAL development