While developing Sally Face, each episode has been its own journey. Episode One, I worked on mostly in my free time and towards the end struggled with a lot of personal hardships. With Episode Two, I started working on the game full time, yet more hardships came and I was dealing with severe, long-term depression. Episode Three, I was coming out of my depressive slump and leaned into development pretty hard. Maybe too hard.
While developing the ep 3, I didn’t have a good balance of living my life and working. At first, it felt good and even helped get me out of the hole I was in. However, the amount of hours I was working (10 to 12+ hour days, almost every day) wasn’t sustainable. I wasn’t taking the best care of myself. I eventually started to feel the impact of that lifestyle, both physically and mentally, as it began to wear me out towards the end of production.
Since then, I’ve been putting in more effort not to overwork myself so much. To have a better balance of actually living my life and also getting work done. Eating healthier, being more active, being more social, taking more breaks, etc. I even went on a vacation with some friends, back in March! I think the last time I had a vacation, before that, was around 2014. There’s still a part of me that feels guilty, like, “oh, it’s gonna take you longer to finish your work now!” But I know that this way is better for my health, my sanity and my work in the long-term.
So if this cycle has taken a little longer than Episode 3 did, that’s partly why. Additionally, I also did a bunch of conventions in the first half of this year. So traveling and preparing for those took up a good bit of time as well. I was promoting my other game, IMMURE, with Wither Studios, as we just launched the demo! Check it out here!
Another reason that Episode Four is taking longer than Three did, is because this episode is much more involved and ambitious than the other episodes. This is gonna be the biggest episode yet and I really can’t wait to share it with everyone! To give an idea of the scope of this episode, in my original outline for Sally Face, ep 4 was split into 2 parts. I revised it early on to condense it into one episode.
My goal is to have it out by the end of this year. I’ll keep everyone updated on social media, as it gets closer. While I don’t want to give too many details about this episode just yet, I would like to officially announce the title.
Episode Four is the second to last episode of Sally Face and things are going to heat up fast. You can expect some big questions to be answered in this episode, some new questions to be raised, a return of many of the characters you love and even some new faces.
Thank you all for the continued love and support!
Steve
The Steve Behind The Moose 