3AM crazy talk
Hi all!
Do you guys remember me? It’s me! Yui Jegnan(I go by General Krukov now)! That one guy who used to work with a coder from Slovenia in an attempt to make video games! It’s been way more than a year since the last time I posted, but here we are. Let me fill you in on what happened during that time.
Why haven’t you been posting?
The reason I haven’t been posting here for a while was because of the google analytics statistics I’ve looked at during my Victory Road greenlight campaign. While the campaign got greenlit in a mere few days with a very positive ratio, I was sort of shocked to find out that there was almost no conversion from the tumblr post at all despite having about 200+ reactions on the post itself. I greatly appreciate the support you guys have given me over the years, but I decided it’s better off spending time on the game development itself rather than posting stuff with no real purpose. The change in tumblr policy also made me stop visiting the site altogether, so that pretty much made me forget that this thing even existed.
What happened to Victory Road?
That’s what I’m here to talk about! The game is actually almost ready for release! As I was preparing for marketing strategies just now, I suddenly remembered about tumblr. I noticed a bunch of people asking me about the game in my inbox, so I felt obligated to at least talk about it. I know it’s 3AM, and I know it won’t really have much exposure. So this post is purely for you guys who’s followed me for years(I’m not sure how many people continued using this site after the policy change though).
I’m going to release the game around early March on steam if things go as planned. There is no turning back this time. A lot of things happened in 2019, and I have to let you guys know, that @mattsuperdev was diagnosed with another brain tumor back in January 2019. In the past, he won the fight against his first one, but this time, things seemed a bit different. Matt was a very stoic and adamant guy. He was the type of guy who wouldn’t stop working on the game even if I told him to take a break, but with the diagnosis of the 2nd one, he stopped working on the game altogether. I fully understood and decided to get another guy on board.
The development has been pretty tough since then. As it took time for the new guy to get used to the engine and the mechanics itself. The fact that Matt never coded the game with consideration of having another coder working on it also made it difficult for him. As the new guy and I were suffering, Matt occasionally asked me when the game would come out. Out of curiosity, I asked him why he was asking. Matt said
“Because if I die from the tumor before this game comes out, I’m pretty much the biggest loser on this planet”
I was shocked to hear that, he never mentioned anything about whether things are getting worse for him or not even when I asked him, but this made me think that things may not end well for him. I’ve contacted him every few days since then to see how he is doing. In December 2019, I was told by Matt’s friend that he died at 5AM.
I couldn’t do anything for about a week. It’s not that I needed his help on the development anymore, he has been out of it long enough for me to adjust to it. I was constantly haunted by that one line he told me a few months ago about being the biggest loser on this planet. His fear came true, and it really pained me to imagine what he was thinking about right before his death. His death was totally undeserved. I know this already, but it all just felt like nothing is fair in this world. By this time, the new guy also had to leave the project due to life circumstances, so I was on my own with the basic amount of coding knowledge that he had taught me before leaving.
At first, I felt like pursuing something else instead, because it just felt like everything is over. Even if I finished this game alone, I wouldn’t really know if it would do well or not in the end, so why bother? However, I came to the conclusion that I want to see this game through, not just for me, but also as a tribute to Matt’s involvement in my gamedev life. He is not the biggest loser like he thinks he is, he was the other 50% of Victory Road. I’m sure someone out there will remember him for that after playing the game.
Since then, I’ve been working hard at the game alone, and I’ve got it to a very stable state with almost no crashes or major bugs. It also seems like some people really enjoy the game to the extent that they play the games for hours and hours nonstop. It was by that time I was sure to start my Early access release procedure.
Sorry for the long post and nonsensical rambling. To be honest, the first thing I actually did after I logged on to tumblr just now, was to look at @mattsuperdev‘s page. It was actually my first time ever reading his posts thoroughly, and I found this post.
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Matt, you bastard, and here I was thinking all these years that you never appreciated the things I did for you. I didn’t even know you thought of it that way. Hey, did you know that Seth came out in Street Fighter 5? I remember you used to play that character all the time in Street Fighter 4. It reminds me of you every time I encounter him in the game and I’m sure you would have really liked it. I miss you, man.
Your life was not in vain, my brother. I won’t make that happen.
*picture is Matt from few years ago with a random slovenian girl. This is the only picture I have of him.
That’s it for today. I meant to write about the game, but instead, I ended up writing about Matt. Sorry about that. Please support our game by wishlisting it on steam page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1002430/Victory_Road/
