In Tuesday’s launch post for Fauna, I mentioned that the project took an entire year longer than I had originally planned. Why? Did I vastly underestimate how much work it would take to complete this project, or were there other factors at play? (TL;DR: Yes, and yes.)
The Original Plan
I originally pitched Fauna to be part of Playdate Season 2 in the summer of 2024, with a target completion date of December 2024. That seemed like an aggressive, but workable timeline. I had already shipped two full-length Panels comics, The Botanist and To Dust, so I felt like I had a pretty good sense of the amount of work involved in creating an interactive comic.
But this project was significantly more ambitious. The branching story structure meant I’d need to create a lot more content than the previous linear stories. I still thought that if I focused all my spare time on this (including taking a bit of time off from work), I’d be able to get everything done in time.
Life Happens
As I started working on the project, some life events popped up that demanded enough of my time that made it impossible to maintain the pace I needed to hit the December deadline. Once I realized I wouldn’t be able to make the Season 2 launch window, I had no reason to continue trying to push at such an aggressive pace. During this time I actually took a few months off where I didn’t work on the project much at all.
The Full Scope Emerges
After I resumed work on the game, it became clear that I never would have made the December deadline anyway, even if I had maintained my original pace. There were just way too many drawings required to create a game with the story scope I had envisioned. I would have had to dramatically cut down the story to meet that initial December deadline.
When I came up with the initial pitch, I thought that creating a branching story like this would be a little more work than my previous games, but it would be worth it because it would create a replayable story where users could experience different storylines. It turned out that in order to create a story with as many branches as I had designed (that all connect in a coherent way) required a lot more work than I had anticipated.
Was It Worth It?
So did I underestimate the amount of work needed to complete this game? Absolutely. But not quite by an entire year. While I would have really liked the opportunity to be included in the Season 2 bundle, I’m glad I took the time to finish the game properly rather than rushing to meet a deadline and having to compromise the story. The extra time also gave me room to refine certain parts of the game and add new features (like achievements) I hadn’t initially planned to include.
Let me know what you think: