My Gamedev Journey: From Scope Creep to Gamble Cats
The Lifelong Dream (and the Graveyard of Prototypes)
- include a snippet or screenshot
What an amazing past couple of months it’s been, I have finally gotten my hands back on game dev.
I’ve actually tried to make games for the past couple of years, but I always got hit by some kind of wall or more commonly… excuses. One time I made an entire tower defense game, all it needed was artwork, but I guess I just decided not to finish it. Another time I almost completed a small horror game that had quite a unique story, but I chose to rip it apart and leave it for dead.
I did actually publish a game once, a long time ago on the Google Play Store. It was quite fun for my friends and family to have a go at it, but other than that not many people touched it. And that’s okay! Because the scope was for me to actually do something and publish it and it was my first simple published game! Even though it wasn’t a big deal to anyone else, for me it was a genuine achievement.
The game was Neon Bounce and I think I still have the .apk which doesn’t work on modern devices anymore. As I was writing this I looked for Neon Bounce and if I coudl find it and surprisingly I did find it! I actually have a short video fo me playing it
I actually wrote Neon Bounce in godot 3 I think, I know it was quite the achievement for me and a lot of fun!
Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to do game dev. It has truly been my dream. At the end of the day, I just want to see people have fun playing my game and be genuinely interested in the world I built.
But ever since that first mobile release, I fell into the trap: chasing bigger and bigger projects, dropping and cancelling whatever I was currently working on.
2023–2025: The Trap of Endless Polish
Back in 2023, I said I’d had enough. After scrapping my first horror game, I decided it was better to lock myself into one thing and never let go until I finished it.
And, well… I polished the hell out of my character controller. I reiterated my inventory system over and over. I obsessed through all the tiny details and got such a good feeling prototype that everyone I showed it to told me, “This feels really, really good!”
So, what did I do with it?
Nothing… Nothing for a long time. Maybe hop in and polish some more, or add a few aimless things, but I never actually built a game out of it.
Fast forward to 2025: I had a complete 3D world with a responsive character controller, dialogue system, cutscene support, style-fitted post-processing FX, 3D models, custom shaders all of that! What did I do with it again? Not much.
I think I had been polishing for so long and not looking at what I am actually doing because I didn’t have a direction, it was really hard for me to see what direction I was going and why. It’s actually surprisingly hard to come up with a concept and follow it!
Here came 2026, and I finally said: You know what? That’s enough waiting around without completing my dreams.
Early 2026: The Ambition and Burnout of Casket
I decided to build on top of that framework and started working on my upcoming 3D story-driven horror game called Casket.
It was a lot of fun, and I worked with systems I never even imagined adding! I polished the story, created concept art, and hired people to help me out with 3D assets and designs. I actually got to a point where I had a clear path forward.
📷 Asset Placeholder: [Optional: Add a piece of Casket concept art or a render here to show the mood]
And then it hit me. It was happening all over again: that familiar feeling of giving up, feeling too tired, and burning out. Looking honestly at what was ahead, I knew finishing it was realistically a hardcore 6-month lock-in deal.
That was when I realized the better idea was to pivot. Break out of the endless loop of heavy 3D games, and build a much simpler, smaller, and easier-to-publish game!
💡 Author Note / Idea to expand: - Describe the exact moment of realization: Was it a specific task or milestone that made you say “I can’t do 6 months of this right now”? - Reassure readers (and yourself!) whether Casket is shelved temporarily or permanently archived.
The Pivot: Cats, Memes, and Momentum
That’s when the idea struck: “Hey, you know what? I really like cats, and the gambling memes.”
So, here comes my new game: Gamble Cats!
I threw myself into it, spending all of Q2 and Q3 of 2026 working on this game in all of my free time. I couldn’t believe how fast I was making progress, how much I liked what I was doing, and how nice it felt!
For the first time in years, I got to a point where I really caught hope again. And that’s why I’m writing this blog post: to share that spark with you.
📷 Asset Placeholder: [Add an animated GIF or screenshot of Gamble Cats in action show off the cats and the UI!]
[Proposed Section] What Exactly is Gamble Cats?
💡 Author Section to Write: Give readers a short taste of the game itself so they get excited about what you’re making! Here are some ideas to cover: - The Core Loop: What does the player actually do? (Is it a slot-machine roguelike, a card battler, a clicker, or an arcade management game?) - The Vibe: How does the humor/meme factor work with the cats? - The Tech: Did you build this in Godot, custom tech, or 2D Unity? Why was this stack so much faster to iterate on compared to the 3D pipeline?
[Proposed Section] Lessons Learned: Escaping the Solo Dev Scope Trap
💡 Author Section to Write: Reflect on what this journey taught you about game development. Some thoughts you could touch on: - Finishing is a skill: Why publishing anything small is 100x more valuable than an unfinished dream project. - The 3D vs. 2D solo tax: The hidden time sink of 3D (rigging, lighting, collisions, shaders) vs. the agility of 2D. - Protecting your passion: Learning to walk away or pivot when a project turns from fun into pure dread.
What’s Next: The Road to Release
I can’t wait for Gamble Cats to be done and published!
Here is the current release plan: - Itch.io: Releasing playable builds and posting regular devlogs/weekly updates. - My Website: Writing technical deep dives and dev logs right here. - Steam: Setting up the Steam store page so people can start wishlisting!
Standing out right now is quite a monumental task, especially with the market feeling flooded and saturated. But hopefully, with a clear marketing strategy, authentic community updates, and a genuinely fun game, I can get it working!
💡 Author Note / Idea to expand: - Add links or calls to action: Where can readers follow development right now (RSS, Discord, Twitter/X, Itch profile)? - Mention when you expect the first playable demo to drop on Itch.io.