Where do we stand today? The stakes are growing, at least mentally. The more I invest in this game, the more the Demons begin to creep up on me. As the old saying goes, secrets tend to grow in the dark. So I think it’s time to introduce our Demons.

Demon #1: You are going to fail.

• Nobody will like your game.
• Nobody will buy your game.
• Your game is going to be buried under the onslaught of AI slop.
• It will not get enough traction and you will feel miserable.

Demon #2: You will not finish the game.

• You will get bored.
• You begin to hate the game.
• The pressure and stakes are too much to handle.
• You end up not finishing it.

Demon #3: People will laugh at you.

• You will have to open up yourself to successfully deliver a game.
• That will also open up the gates of negative feedback.
• Feedback is nice, but there will be some who just want you to fail.

Demon #4: You succeed, but will still feel miserable.

• You finish the game, it gets some or more traction, but you will still feel bad.
• The success did not bring you the happiness you sought.
• Yes, I know success != happiness, it’s the journey, that matters.
• But the Demon is still there, waiting.

Demon #5: Somebody will make a game just like yours and you happen to be too late.

• Reason has it, that nobody will make exactly the same game as you.
• And it’s only good to have more traction to the genre.
• But the Demon is still there, waiting.

Demon #6: You will be bullied for it.

• If the game is obnoxious, then you will suffer for getting the bad publicity.

Demon #7: You set too big expections and you will hate yourself for failing.

• This is a cousin of the first, but still something that appears constantly in my mind.
• It’s the Lunacy as I call it. The endless craving for Unicorns. For Big Money.

The Fluffy Bunnies of Good Fortune (tm)

And there’s our list of Demons, that I came up, just like that. There might be more lurking around the corner, but these are the main ones. The list wouldn’t be complete, unless we introduce the Bunnies. They represent all that is good and sacred. The voices of reason, grace and empathy.

Bunny #1: It is the journey that matters.

• You will not be happy, no matter how much success you will get.
• So enjoy the journey.

Bunny #2: You are already learning.

• This is something that ChatGPT would say. And that’s powerful. Lol.
• Jokes aside, I am learning so much. There’s so many things I never realized I will have to learn, in order to get this done.

Bunny #3: Everyone makes mistakes. All the time.

• So embrace it. The whole game is about not feeling shame or remorse of being human.
• Make all the mistakes. Learn from them. Tell everybody.
• Perhaps someone out there don’t need do the same mistakes.

Bunyyyyyrrrrrrr… here comes the Arch Devil himself #1: You are not as good as you think are.

• Rrrrroarrr… from the depths and deepest pits of Hell, comes the scariest thought.
• The humbleness needed, to make it through, is excruciating.
• Even Linus Torvalds, after creating Linux, had an imposter syndrome: “What if I was just a snowflake? One trick pony?”. And then he made Git. Lol, no pressure.

So there’s our mixture of Bunnies and Arch-Devils. I’m gonna leave it all here for future reference.

I am okay. I am enough. It will be okay, because it is already okay.

Do it.