The Importance of a Deadline

Hi there!

I'm Taaro, a IndieSoloDev that is working on Farewell. It's been 5 months since my first post, and I've been through a lot, but today I'm happy to announce that this month I will finish the demo I've been working on. There were many months of stresses and anxieties, from the first to the last, but I want to stop to talk about the last month today.

The Importance of a Festival

Since I started working exclusively for my game, I see a lot of information and tips from other IndieGameDevs. The importance of the Steam Capsule, the importance of a good trailer, the importance of having a demo as soon as possible. But one of the things I saw the most is the importance of festivals.

I haven't experienced one yet, but I see graphs of how festivals increase the wishlists, so they are part of the most fundamental part of us as indie devs. Originally, I was planning to sign up for Steam Next Fest, which is the most important festival of them all in my opinion, but halfway through the demo development they announced that you were only going to be able to sign up once per game, instead of once per year as it was before.

This was a hard blow because it meant that the best, and easiest, option was no longer an option, not for the time being at least. As I still had a lot of work to do, I didn't give it much importance, but today I see that the fact that don't having a deadline made me lose sight of the first objective a bit.

So I continued working until I published the Steam page two months ago, struggled with the combat system I wanted for my game, and, a month ago, the announcement of the Tiny Teams Festival came out.

The Deadline

The festival would be the first weeks of August, but the registration was until June 11. I was very happy because I could enter a festival with the demo for the date I had originally thought, but it didn't last long because I realized that I still had a lot of work to do and that I wouldn't be able to make it.

It was like that for a few days, until I was able to complete a whole section of my game that I thought was going to take weeks in two days. I realized that, if I put the same effort into it every day (10 to 12 hours per day) I could get the demo done by the date, very fair, but it was possible.

That's when I decided that I was going to do it, because it also served as an emotional boost to move forward. It was a very hard month, of being very tired and very stressed, but I was able to get the demo finished, which was my goal and dream. I was also able to hear feedback from friends playing the game, which helped me to improve it and have it as good as possible for the festival registration.

Summary

I don't know if I'll make it to the festival, that depends on the judges, but I'm very happy with everything I've achieved and to be able to say that before the end of June I'll have the demo uploaded to Steam. I feel that this could be achieved by having a deadline, by having a date and defining which things are going to be important and which are not so important. What I dedicate effort to and what I don't dedicate effort to.

This month is going to be a before and after in my life as an Indie Game Dev. Let's see how I will have done with everything on July 7th.

As always, thank you very much for reading.

---

What about you?

What's your opinion about deadlines?

Do you currently have a deadline? Has it helped you?

If you found it interesting, remember that you can subscribe to be notified when I make a new post. I will be posting on the 7th of each month.

Subscribe