2025 Activities and Future Plans(ENG)

This year, I was able to develop the game I'm working on to a stage where it at least runs, and despite some bugs, I confirmed it works without major issues on other people's systems, so in that sense it was good. However, I'm still quite uncertain about the direction of game development and my activities.

It's inevitable and can't be helped, but first of all, my income has dropped to about half during the period I've been making the game, so honestly the situation is tough for dedicating time to game development.

Also, regarding the dungeon game I'm currently making, there are multiple complex reasons why I'm developing it and how I got here. Those who watched when I was first tinkering with Unity probably understand, but what I initially planned to make was more action game-oriented content.

However, while working with Unity, I felt that action games were difficult as a first project in terms of programming aspects like character state management. Right after I started, there was that Unity controversy, so I reconsidered and switched development engines to Godot. But Godot had the problem of not being able to place Spine models in 3D mode (though thinking back, maybe this wasn't such a critical issue). After considering various factors, I started development with the current dungeon game concept, which had advantages like "requiring minimal assets (mainly backgrounds)" and "not needing to think about monsters needed for stages or situations needed for monsters."

With that format, once the system was complete, there'd be no need to make it more complex, and then I could just add content as I created monsters. I also had the plan that this would allow me to continue the content flow I'd established so far: "monsters and their related animations."

However, once I actually started making it, it turned out to be more difficult than expected... well, that was something I should have anticipated, so that's fine. But the programming aspects also became more complex than I'd planned, and considering the effort required for animation production and controlling state changes programmatically, it felt like it might actually be harder than making an action game. This completely deviated from the original intent of developing simply organized game content.

Also, as an important point, "that dungeon game wasn't being made with the intention of completing and releasing it as a packaged product." As I mentioned earlier, I intended to incorporate it into the workflow of creating and implementing monster models, and once I'd continued for a while and gotten used to game development, I was thinking about transitioning to developing a game as a releasable title based on my original concept. But as various plans fell through, the aspect of it "not being a title for release" has become a major bottleneck.

Since keeping development costs down as expected proved difficult, and if it's going to take years anyway, the idea emerged: shouldn't I switch development to a releasable game like I'd originally envisioned? I don't think it would necessarily sell just because I release it, but I believe properly releasing a game is extremely important for raising recognition, and there's a huge difference compared to just operating within the narrow scope of a support site. And if I'm going to do it, I think sooner is better.

There's also the natural question of "Why not just develop the current game to be releasable?" But I think it would actually cost more to make that dungeon game into releasable content, so I'm not sure about going in that direction.

However, I think there are people who are looking forward to the dungeon game's development and who have been supporting the creation of that game. Even if I pivot toward the action game, it won't change the fact that it will take time before I can show visible results, and there's still the unresolved issue of assets like backgrounds, so it's difficult to make a clean break. I'm also thinking that I should at least develop it to the minimum content I had envisioned.

The dungeon game I'm currently making is one of the things I wanted to create, so even if I change direction, it would probably take the form of temporarily freezing development rather than abandoning it.

I think negative factors are also at play, such as the fundamental problem of my slow production speed and the lack of focused direction despite working on content aimed at a niche audience.

I'm trying to create a sense of unity as a genre through monster violation content, but what's really being sought after is monster transformation and possession themes, so I might shift to emphasizing those more (though I'm not eliminating monster violation content).

I'm setting up a survey this time as well, but... since I'm not "steering based on whichever direction gets more requests in the survey," I haven't included items about game production in the survey. However, if you have something you want to say, please write it and I'll take it to heart.

The main focus this time is more on "monsters and situations you'd like to see created." I haven't been able to make new monsters for a while, so as an apology for that... well, not exactly an apology, but I'm thinking of actually creating one combination of monster and situation from those submitted in the survey.

I won't handle ideas that I personally think are impossible, and I plan to choose "what I find most interesting," so there's zero fairness involved.

↓2025 Survey

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScNf5DFSWbshDEIUrG56Xby_xgfA1Ev_q1mZcKcrXLsdGHXhg/viewform

Also, I've set up an Odaibako request box. Only requests combining existing animations I've already made with specific characters have a possibility of being implemented (I might also answer questions if there are any).

However, please note that any future posts implementing requests will be published as limited content.

↓Odaibako Request Box

https://odaibako.net/u/ginagi

Things have gotten rather messy, but I look forward to your continued support next year as well.