Hy everyone !

Every month, I share with you the progress on my new game project, a medieval city builder. I'm trying to show you what a solo gamedev can achieve during working days and walk you through all the creative steps before having a finished and shipped game.

I detail every working week with the total amount of time I spent working, a quick overview of my workload, tiredness level, motivation, and schedule adherence. I represent it with this scale:

Good 🟢 🟡 🟠 🔴 Bad
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Calendar color meaning
🟩 Art
🟧 Development Work
🟪 Communication / Socials
🟦 Research / Documentation / Formation
🟨 Work management
🟥 Administrative Tasks
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🗓️ Week 1 (2-6 february)

🕙 Worktime: 49 h 30
Workload: 🟠 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok
• Mensual post

🚧 Development : Demo

• Villager Run Management
• Villager Activity Management
• Steam SDK Integration

💼 Other

• Steamworks/Steampipe documentation reading

Weekly review

Another packed week of development, all focused on building the systems for managing villagers’ “Runs” and their daily activities. Night activities for villagers and buildings have finally been added!

Some buildings, like the inn and tavern, can now stay open at night, which unlocks the night cycle. Classic daytime-only buildings shut down and can’t produce resources or profits. Villagers head out in the evening based on factors like their current happiness or personal preferences. Happier villagers are more likely to go out at night, especially if the available night spots offer stuff they like. Since this is one of the game’s core mechanics, spending nearly a whole week on it was totally worth it.

I also integrated the Steam SDK and actually read the docs. Honestly, Steam did a great job here, a big upgrade from some other SDKs I’ve dealt with before, with confusing or outdated docs 😅 Only downside? Steam’s concepts like “depots” and “packages” are still kinda weird, even after reading twice 😵‍💫

🗓️ Week 2 (9-13 february)

🕙 Worktime: 44 h 30
Workload: 🟠 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟠

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok

🚧 Development : Demo

• Building, recipe, and item menu modifications
• Work on displaying data across various menus
• Mission and objective system
• Demo page settings on Steam

Weekly review

Second-to-last week before sending a build to Steam for the February Next Fest. I made a lot of changes and fixes across many menus. How things look and what info is shown really matters for players, some menus were still too confusing.

I also set up the Steam page for the demo that’ll be available during Next Fest. I wanted to do this early so I wouldn’t get stuck waiting for approval and could relax a bit.

I also connected the actual game data to their visual displays in the UI. Before, everything was just showing fake placeholder values. Finally, I wrapped up building the mission and objective system for Ellsydia.

This week started showing the rough side of dev: feeling like I’m not moving fast enough, even though the deadline’s creeping closer, which just means I have to push even harder!

🗓️ Week 3 (16-20 february)

🕙 Worktime: 98 h 00 ⚠️
Workload: 🔴 | Fatigue level: 🔴 | Motivation: 🟠 | Delay: 🔴

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok

🎨 Art

• Visual creation for construction zones
• Creation of various icons
• UI polishing

🚧 Development : Demo

• Display and highlighting of buildable areas
• Building limitations (only open during daytime)
• Adjustments to villagers’ nighttime exit conditions
• Integration of perfect price search mechanic (recipes and stalls)
• Resource harvesting system (food)
• UI element description tooltips
• Modification of roof coloration system

Weekly review

We’re here! Final week before the deadline, and not an easy one. In fact, it’s the most hours I’ve ever worked in a single week since starting this project… and I’m not proud of it at all. Not only did I break one of my own early goals, but it left me completely drained and totally uncomfortable.

Trying to force this Next Fest release just to stick to my original plan shouldn’t be an excuse to ignore all the good habits I set for myself at the start of this project.

Even though I’m not strictly in game dev, I’ve got enough dev experience to know better. I should’ve seen the warning signs and pushed the deadline to the next Next Fest instead of pretending I could finish, especially since I knew deep down it was impossible and there was still way too much left to do. I waited too long to cancel my February Steam Next Fest participation. I’ll need to completely rethink my plan from here on out, but that’s okay!

One thing’s for sure: I can’t let this happen again!

🗓️ Week 4 (23-27 february)

🕙 Worktime: 36 h 00
Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram, TikTok

🚧 Development : Demo

• UI polishing
• Mini games appearence improvements
• Various code fixing

Weekly review

Since I dropped out of this Steam Next Fest session, I was finally able to get back to a “normal” work pace this week. I started by giving the UI a little polish, making it clearer and easier to understand at a glance.

The past few weeks totally burned me out 🪫, so I took Tuesday off completely, no computer, just rest. I used the time to catch up on some anime I’d been behind on 😁

After that much-needed break, I jumped back into working on Ellsydia’s graphics, this time, I cleaned up the mini-games to make them more intuitive and fun to play.

I wrapped up the week with some code fixes and a few communication tasks, including writing this devlog, which I’d been putting off. I really enjoy writing these weekly updates, they help me reflect on what I’ve actually gotten done.

📈 February review

Workload: 🟠 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟠

February was a big turning point in Ellsydia's development. First, on the content side, a lot was added to get a playable demo ready by the end of the month. As for the goals I set at the start of production, I hit my first real setback with the cancellation of my Steam Next Fest participation. On top of that, a major red flag came up around one of my most important goals: my work-life balance during this production cycle!

Despite the disappointment of not being efficient enough to stick to my original plan, I'm still really happy with the overall work I've done on the game so far.

Now let's take a look at the wishlists collected during February.

The number is still growing compared to last month, with 26 new wishlists added, bringing the total to 70! A huge thank you to everyone who added Ellsydia to their list! It's honestly incredible to see people showing interest in my little game project that came out of nowhere 😅

As for what’s next, I’d like to organize a playtest by mid-March. That means I’ll need to wrap up the remaining features for the demo and do a few final polish touches. Getting early feedback from players will be key for what comes next! 😁

This devlog wraps up for February. I’ll see you next month with a new update, more info, new numbers, and maybe even the results from our first playtest! 🤞

Before I go, a quick reminder to add Ellsydia to your wishlist if you haven’t already. Thank you in advance for supporting my little game 🥰

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4159160/Ellsydia

Wishing you all a great day, afternoon, or evening, whatever time it is for you! 😊

Thank you for reading 🙏