Weekly Dev Diary #15 | Episode 2 (Part 2)

9 hours = 1 minute.

I recently calculated that, in my particular development process, it takes me roughly 9 hours to develop 1 minute of gameplay.

And that includes everything: writing the story, adapting the dialogue into natural character's way of speaking, coding, setting up scenes and interior details, rendering the images, and everything else that goes into turning an idea into an actual playable scene.

At first, that number might sound absolutely insane.

NerveFade is my first game, and before I started developing it, I had basically no idea how any of this worked. My only relevant experience was with Python, which isn't particularly useful for the kind of linear visual novel I'm making with Ren'Py anyway.

So yes, the amount of time I spend on each minute is pretty large.

But it's necessary, and honestly, I'm comfortable with it.

When I was developing Episode 1, with my understanding of game development being somewhere around zero and a little bit, I thought that every future update would become faster to make.

I assumed that once I gained experience with all the software and tools I use, I'd naturally be able to produce updates much more efficiently.

And... well, that was my very naive understanding of indie development.

Because as your experience grows, your desire to make things better grows with it.

You learn how to do something better, and instead of saying "Great, now I can do this faster", you start thinking "Wait... I can make this even better".

Quality = Time.


You may have also noticed that I renamed this series from Weekly Dev Progress to Weekly Dev Diary.

These posts stopped being a simple report of what I accomplished during the week a long time ago.

I use this space to share my thoughts as just a regular person behind the project — with everyone who's interested in seeing what game development actually looks like from the inside.


Yesterday, I finished the very last render for Episode 2 (Part 2)!

That means the entire visual part is now 100% complete.

Now it's time for the polishing phase.

I'll be processing the original images, adding music and sound effects, working on transitions and visual effects, cleaning up the code, re-rendering any images I'm not happy with, and taking care of all those little things that you don't really notice individually, but that make the finished game feel much more polished. The way I want it to be.

We're getting very close now.

Just 2 weeks until Early Access!


Have a great weekend, everyone!❤️