Hy everyone !

Like the last month, i'm sharing with you the advancement on Ellsydia, a casual medieval City builder game. I'm trying to show you what a solo gamedev can make during working days and describe you all creative steps before to have a finished and shipped game.

I detail every working week with the total amount of time i spent in work, a quick view of my charge of work, tired level, motivation and respect of schedule delay. I represent it with this scale :

Good 🟢 🟡 🟠 🔴 Bad
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Calendar color meaning
🟧 Development Work
🟪 Communication / Socials
🟦 Research / Documentation / Formation
🟨 Work management
🟩 Art
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🗓️ Week 1 (3-7 november)

🕙 Worktime: 34 h 00
Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟢 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟠

📣 Communication / Socials

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

🎨 Art

• Buildings design

💼 Administative tasks

• Steam Page creation

Weekly review

A short work week, but certainly not an insignificant one, because I reach a key step for the project. I want to talk about the Steam Page creation for the game. The first step of validating tax information to prove that I am a non-US developer and avoid double taxation when marketing the game, was completed in just one day. Once this validation has been obtained, I was finally able to access the Steam backend to edit game informations. Steam's backend is efficient, although very (too?) cluttered. It's clear it was made by developers for developers 😁

Once various descriptions and capsules (name of pictures and graphics for the game on Steam platform) added, I was be able to click on famous button that allows to send your store page to steam for verification. In the meantime, I continued working on the graphic design of the buildings I plan to implement for the game demo. The demo should be available for the February Steam Next Fest. 😰✨

🗓️ Week 2 (10-14 november)

🕙 Worktime: 31 h 45
Workload: 🟢 | Fatigue level: 🟢 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟠

📣 Communication / Socials

• Read, awnsers, discuss
• Bluesky, X, Threads Posts, Discord, Instagram
• Steam Page public launch

🎨 Art

• Buildings design

💼 Other

• Administative tasks 🥱

Weekly review

Just one more short week of work focused largely on game communication. Indeed, the previous week, I had submitted the information on the Ellsydia store page for verification, pending validation by the Steam team. This step was slower than expected, but Steam had just updated its online store pages, and I thought the process would be slowed down by this update. It finally took 6 days (including the weekend, so not so long after all! 😅) to get the green light from Steam!

The page release, highlight of this week, by pressing the famous green "Publish Now" button. I took this occasion to make a little video to share the info on socials. Fun fact, my phone battery died and it shut down the moment I clicked the button 😂 Fortunately, I had started a desktop recording via OBS to have usable footage for potential documentation.

Concerning socials, I begin to take my mark and habits with various platforms. This week has been busier than usual in terms of communication work, but that's to be expected with the official announcement and the launch of the Steam page. A warning to me! I need to be careful not to exceed the time affected for social media. I've also started looking more closely at some of the features offered by socials to improve my visibility and that of the project. By the way, if you have any tips, I'll take them all!

Between the various communication sessions, I've continued working on the game's graphic assets, which are progressing quite well, even if I wish it would go faster! 😁

🗓️ Week 3 (17-21 november)

🕙 Worktime: 44 h 15
Workload: 🟡 | Fatigue level: 🟡 | Motivation: 🟢 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

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

⚙️ Gamedesign

• Finalizing the list of tasks and items to be produced for the February Next Fest demo.
• Modification of Gameplay mechanics

🎨 Art

• Buildings design

Weekly review

This work week was more busy with communications task sin I begin the project. By the way, I have created a TikTok account. I'll try to post regularlly in this channel as soon as I've made good progress on the scenary designs, and I hope this channel won't be too time-consuming. I also started my firsts Instagram Stories to learn how to use tools dedicated for this task and to test the impact they could have on my visibility. I find this concept very interesting and I have some ideas that could fuel this network. But, will I have enough time to produce them? Indeed, creation communication materials tooks lot of time!

As you can see on my calendar, I worked this Sunday (I know It's not good and I'm not respect initials goals I have setup at the start of production 😩). But I needed to take stock on what I still had to make for the february Next Fest Demo. The duration of buildings designs tooks me too much times than I expected and I begin to lose patience and have some difficulties to stay focused. I took advantage of this Sunday to set up all the final content will be offered in the demo. After some cuts and adjustments, I think I have found a good balance that will allow me to release the demo on time without exploding my work time amount and also preserving my health as much as possible! 😅

🗓️ Week 4 (24-28 november)

🕙 Worktime: 40 h 51
Workload: 🟡 | Fatigue level: 🔴 | Motivation: 🟡 | Delay: 🟡

📣 Communication / Socials

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

🎨 Art

• Buildings design
• Creation of the final assets for Parallax

💼 Autre

• Client call

Weekly review

This last work week, was the last step on the buildings creation that will be implemented on the Next Fest demo. On the end of week, I' have started to work on scenary graphic elements that will be usefull for parallax effect in the game. Currently, the elements imported from the concept art that I had previously drawn are being used in Godot, and it's time to have the final graphics (or almost 😅). We'll need to produce a first trailer soon as possible, and I think the concept art visuals have their limitations for this use.

I don't know why ? But I encountered a big roadblock in making progress on these scenary visuals. I was unable to do what I wanted! I think I starting to realize that the Next Fest deadline is really fast approaching and It still remains lot of stuffs to produce! 😨 It's the reason why I'am struggling to stay focused on the assets creation and I need to continue to work on it next week even though I have to finish this step now!

📈 November review

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

This month hes been full of important events for the game development. The creation of my first steam page was a stressfull moment because I doesn't wanted to make a fatal mistakes. But finally, It was not so complex as it seemed! But like everything, it's always easy when you know how to do it! 😁

Communication on socials is starting to be enjoyable and it's so interesting to discover other game projects, and especially to be able to discuss with other gamedev and artists. I'm always looking for some ideas to fuel my accounts, but I need to set myself more time limits on different platforms. By the way, I have reach 100 subscriber on X and on Bluesky, which is a significant first step considering that I am really starting from scratch in this domain!

Last but not least, I can share you my first wishlists numbers for Ellsydia. Don't expect crazy numbers, but in 19 days I have accumulated a total number of 22 wishlists, which is about a little more than one wishlist per day. I think this number will increase when I will make the next communication actions I have planned, as soon as I have finished lasts graphic assets for the demo.

That's it! We've reached the end of this report/devlog for November.

I'll see you again next month for new report, new informations about Ellsydia and new wishlists numbers!

Also, if you haven't already done so, if you could add the game to your wishlist it would be a great help for me and I would be eternally grateful! 🥰

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

See you next month for a new report!

Thank you for reading 🙏