Spring cleaning

← April 25, 2021 - Shadi studio invisigun

It has certainly been a while, so I wanted to post a quick status update about everything that's been going on.

Invisidone

Invisigun is feature-complete! It was an absolute wild journey filled with every emotion I can think of - from joy to anxiety - and has found its home on so many platforms (Steam, itch.io, Humble Store, Switch, PS4, iOS). I am unbelievably proud of the project and see it as a culmination of my life's work so far. I'm so grateful for the community, players, new friends, feedback, and support over the years. I have moved on to new projects, and I hope all of you are as excited as I am about what's on the horizon!

New Sombr stuff

I spent a good chunk of the past year working on various prototypes and game ideas. This is one of the most statisfying stages of game development, so I'm taking my time and just enjoying the process of freely experimenting with game mechanics. There is one prototype in particular that has "graduated" from the various experiments and seems worth pursuing in a more fleshed-out capacity. Due to various third-party dependencies, Invisigun was locked to an older version of Unity, so it's also fun to explore all the new tech introduced to the engine and tools since then. Since there is also no time pressure at the moment, I'm simultaneously creating a Sombr Studio framework full of common functionality that I can use to quickly bootstrap any future project.

New Non-Sombr stuff

For the past year and a half (following the console release of Invisigun), I've also been sub-contracting for Player First Games on a very exciting unannounced game. PFG is a talented mix of former Riot / Sony / Blizzard / Respawn / Disney / Adhesive devs, and it's inspiring working with a larger team again and seeing all the amazing work everyone is producing on a daily basis. I'm eagerly anticipating the public reveal when it's no longer secret and we can share the news.

New(ish) website

I've wanted to move away from the Wordpress foundation of this site for quite a while, but haven't had the time to investigate alternatives. While web CMS's offer a lot of convenience, they require constant maintenance, security updates, and are usually pretty bloated with resource-heavy frameworks. After a bunch of research, it seemed that static site generators have come a long way, and I experimented with a few (mostly convoluted ones) before settling on Zola. As a coder, SSG's really appealed to me for a few reasons:

It's easier for me to create exactly what I want with minimal bloat.
It's easier to add new content, or modify existing content.
It's easier to backup.
It's lightning-fast since the end result is just static HTML and CSS.

I started with my personal site as a test since it has minimal content, and was super pleased with the Zola experience. Little by little, I've converted this site over the past few months and it's finally live.

Quarantimes

I'm fortunate that in general, the game industry has been pretty healthy during the pandemic and I've been able to work from home this entire time. I miss sharing dev work and chats with my friends in our shared office space, but giving that up is a small price to pay compared to having stable work during the quarantine which has impacted so many people. Shot 1 is done, shot 2 is on the way, and I'm looking forward to the world slowly opening up with a renewed enthusiasm for non-locked-down times. I really miss the game expos.