The Project is Dormant (Not Dead)

Hello again, most esteemed audience

A part of me feels like it's silly to even write this post, considering that I'll be lucky if three whole people care enough about the project to read this. But we're coming up on a year since I first introduced this project and I have yet to release Chapter 2 (though it is close to done). I feel I at least owe an explanation to anyone who wants it.

Quite frankly, I regret putting this out there as early as I did. The basic idea for Blood of Creation has been developed in my brain since I was in high-school (to give you an idea of how long that is, I graduated almost exactly 6 years ago, as of this writing). The current iteration as a Twine project started in 2022. My work on it was even more sporadic than it is now, and I was constantly feeling like I wasn't living up to my potential. It wasn't until I expanded on this project for a class assignment during my final semester in college, learning how to add images and program in HTML in the process, that this started to pick up steam.

Pick up steam is a relative term, however. I took me two years to get the 5 minutes you can play in Chapter 1 (though I did completely scrap the pretty aimless main story in favor of something more focused).  That's not how long it took me to make it working on it every day, of course. Creativity is a surprisingly draining thing, at least for me. It always feels like I put a piece of my soul on the screen when I write and design this, and that piece takes a while to come back, if that makes any sense. And because of various factors in my personal life that I'd rather not talk about publicly, there is not much of my soul that can be spared for this work. Again, not sure if that makes sense, but it's the best metaphor I can think of.

I know that you can't only write when you feel like it. Sometimes, you have to just force yourself to get something on the page. Still, the motivation to force yourself to write also has to come from somewhere. You need to be passionate about your creative project in general, even if you're not passionate about working on it in the moment. And if I'm being honest with myself, I'm just not passionate about finishing Blood of Creation right now. I'm not sure I ever was.

I know that sounds like I don't like the project and want to quit, but that's not entirely true. I want to want to finish this, if that makes any sense. Deep down, I believe in Blood of Creation, even if I'm beset by anxieties about Twine not being viable for making a popular game, or the story not being as good as my inspirations, or thinking about whether I need to completely restart the story to make anyone like it. Despite all of that, I want to bring this story to fruition. Hell, I want to make sequels someday.

Wanting to want to finish this is ultimately what drove me to publish Chapter 1 when I did. I thought that making the game publicly available would make me work faster by introducing external motivating factors. But all that did was increase my anxiety and self-berating about not releasing my follow-up. As you may have noticed, that did not actually lead to me working on the game more. In fact, it probably made me work on it less.

God, this is getting rambly. The tl;dr is that I'm going to take a step back and allow myself to be on an official break from Blood of Creation. I am going to spend that time rekindling my love for old CRPGs, Gothic literature, film noir, and all the many influences that led me to start this project in the first place. And hopefully that will make not only Chapter 2 come out faster than it would have if I just kept badgering myself, but also help me finish subsequent chapters in short amount of time you deserve, most esteemed audience.

I thank you for your understanding,

Hyrum "Jekyllstein Gray" Crawford