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CyberAnima - 2024 Status Update

 

I don't think I recall ever posting anything in regards to my game CyberAnima here on my blog, aside from mentioning it in some old posts, but today that's about to change. This is because 2024 is coming to a close, and this year for my game has been a little disappointing compared to prior years. I barely worked on my game and posted updates or info about it during the entirety of 2024, and I'd figure I would make this post to explain why I haven't worked on the game for this long, with barely anything to show for it.

For starters, no, CyberAnima is NOT cancelled. The game is still on hold, and has been since mid 2024. The reason it's on hold is for a variety of reasons. Most of them involve issues with myself on a mental scale. I suffer with various neurological disorders, such as high-functioning autism, ADHD, anxiety, and probably a lot more issues. A lot of these issues play a key role in CyberAnima's development, and are the root cause on why I'm either working on it, or just flat out ignoring it. My mind keeps on wanting me to do other things instead of working on my passion project, and it always bugs me in the most annoying way. And due to personal stuff I don't want to discuss, I can't be prescribed on ADHD medication or anything to help myself focus on the game more closely. If I did, then a smorgasbord of updates, work, and more stuff would've been done, but that's the way it is. And these issues result in the most annoying and crestfallen moments as of late, with the summer of this year being the worst. This is due to a sudden financial block (was paid a good chunk monthly by my parents, no I'm not a NEET, I don't have a job/car/etc due to personal conflicts and time rather than choice, I'm hoping this can change), combined with the worst summer weather I've been in, since the current place I'm living in has terrible A/C so the temperature in my room is somewhat on-par with what it is outside.

All of these things happening within the start of summer of this year resulted in me going into a deep ADHD-ridden depression, where I didn't work on CyberAnima at all, and just sat around and did nothing for the entirety of summer. I didn't even play video games or anything else to pass the time, since I was too sweaty and nasty feeling from the bad weather that I didn't want to ruin my keyboard, mouse or joystick just from touching it alone. I just watched A LOT of movies and that's about it, and I rarely watch movies. I even disconnected from social media heavily as well. I started looking at Twitter (or X) and Discord less, which is both a good and bad thing. (Also to those wondering, yes I deleted my Discord account, but I made a new one due to bank account issues. Same username (stixc) for those wondering. My apologies.)  To put it shortly, this 3-4 month window of suffering is what I call the air-conditioned nightmare and I really don't know if I even recovered from it since it's still pretty toasty as of now. Probably due to the fact I live in Memphis, TN, right smack in the middle of the deep south, known for having hotter temperatures than any other place in the USA. Not to mention before the summer depression hit, I intended to make a "pitch dev log" for CyberAnima on YouTube, so I could properly talk about my motives, hopes, and ideas for the game so that anyone, from random peeps to people with experience in the gaming industry could help me out. But this never happened due to the summer hell, and I'm still considering making the video, but there's a lot of other problems I'm having that's preventing me from going forward with that.

Like I said, that's pretty much a big reason why I haven't talked about CyberAnima at all recently, but that's far from the main reason. Another big reason is writer's block and feature creep. I started working on CyberAnima back in early 2021 or so right after retiring from making crummy dubstep music as Digiwire. CyberAnima was being made in Unreal Engine 4 for a year before restarting development in Godot in early 2022. The switch was because Unreal was too bloaty and overkill for what CyberAnima is trying to be (an authentic retro PS2-era FPS game), and I didn't want to use Unity either because I had a bad time with Unity, even prior to the runtime fee kerfuffle. However when CyberAnima started development, my intentions was just to make the game a somewhat simple boomer shooter. Fast paced, no interactivity, just a simple arcadey shooter. But as time progressed, I realized I wasn't a fan of what CyberAnima was becoming, and in terms of my taste in games, I prefer the gameplay design of Half-Life over the fast-paced design of Doom/Quake/Dusk, or even the complex non-linear RPG design of an immersive sim like Deus Ex/System Shock/Thief.

So about a year into working on CyberAnima in Godot (this was in 2023), the gameplay slowly shifted from being a simple fast-paced shooter into something akin to an action-adventure shooter. Half-Life is the main inspiration, but 3D Zelda was also a huge inspiration, since both games are both my favorite games of all time, and my childhood favorites. However, I was still working with newbie code that I made a year or two prior. I was still a budding developer (and I'm theoretically still am) and a lot of what I made was based on me, a newbie, learning from various tutorials on YouTube, forums, etc. And as a result, figuring out how to make my code and project organized felt extremely frustrating. Even with the devil's typewriter (aka ChatGPT), things still kinda felt a bit frustrating. After all, coding is my Achiles' Heel, and I wanted to focus on a lot of other things for CyberAnima. Stuff such as the music & sound, story and design is what I feel like I can easily strive in. Especially the audio, since I previously made EDM music prior to starting work on CyberAnima, and I was having fun nailing down the authentic early 2000s electronica vibe for the game. Atmospheric dance music to represent the cusp of millennium and the cyber-natural comfort, worry and anticipation it brings (as you can see in the demo reel below).


But like I said, the project is currently a mess. A lot of code and stuff is from the peach fuzz era of me figuring out game development, a lot of stuff dating back to 2022 or 2021, and the fact it is super unorganized and would require restarting development to feel a bit more comprehensible, especially if I intend on getting people on board for the project. However that's not the only issue I'm suffering with. I don't know if it's normal, or something that's infecting me since the summer depression, but another issue I've been suffering with is writer's block.

I already mentioned feature creep above with CyberAnima going down a much more narrative focused, cinematic kind of feel, but then there's stuff such as the story, design documents, and more. I have jotted down ideas for characters, locations, level ideas, inspirations, and more, but not at the point where it can be stitched together into something cohesive. It's just this awful feeling where I make concepts, then have a hard time figuring out a good way to present it. Especially for something inspired by Half-Life on a gameplay level, where there's story in all areas. In-game cutscenes, scripted sequences in gameplay, environmental storytelling, pretty much at the point of falling into ludonarrative dissonance, and yet I somehow fail to figure out how to pull it off. Advice that I learned from gamers, video essayists, or anyone else who analyzes video games is that a video game story can be good if it involves a writer. This includes someone who has already worked on video games, or someone who has made novels, books, etc. I mean I mentioned Half-Life multiple times, it's lore was made by a novelist who didn't even make video games beforehand, and the results are enriching and highly praised.

But this leads to an issue with CyberAnima that's been persisting since I started working on it years ago, budget. Since 2021, I've really only bought some audio packs for sound design and a commissioned logo that's getting a bit outdated for what CyberAnima is trying to be. I've theoretically spent less than $100 on the game, and most of these financial hardships is because I lack funding. Like I said, I don't have a job, and due to personal conflicts it's not gonna properly happen for a long time. I don't want to do a work-from-home job due to privacy concerns, and the only money I get is around $400 to $500 per month, and that stopped a while back. So because of all of this, I can't possibly have the funds to work on my game proper, which includes getting people on board and paying them, getting commissions/voluntary work for certain elements of the game, hiring voice actors for the characters, buying a page on Steam/GOG for people to wishlist the game and eventually release, among other things. And whilst the game isn't trying to be a AAA game (it's still indie), a lot of stuff still requires a good amount of money to progress. And with the situation I am in right now, it's probably not possible right now. Combined with the fact that I've never worked on a video game before prior to starting CyberAnima's development, and it seems to be impossible for me at the moment... unless someone where to pull a rabbit out of a hat. This could be funding groups, a publishing deal, the balls to start a Kickstarter campaign, or by some chance I win the lottery and I use that money to fund development. I don't know anymore.

So what does that mean for CyberAnima? Is it on the brink of cancellation? Will I give up creating video games? No. Absolutely not. Even in the darkest and sluggish moments in my life, I will never give up working on my game. Me and my game is like a parent and a child. You can't give up on it, and it would lead to bitter things happening if that were the case. I want to this game to exist and to be as best as it can be, but I'm having to go through loopholes right now for a variety of reasons. Mental health, being a newbie developer, lacking funds, and yet I still refuse to end it all. I don't know if I would go so far to say that my life depends on CyberAnima, but since being in the gaming industry is a life goal of mine, I'd say it all depends on this. It's just on hold since this year had been pretty much brutal for this game on a mental level. And I'm unsure if next year will be much better, since globally we've been through a lot of tough shit as of late, but I'm hoping things can get better. I just need to let the rotting gears in my brain start working again, get the creative juices flowing again. I'm just trying to be patient about what depends on my life and my game. But I promise if things start to look more promising in the future at the point where the game is palatable to show, and later released with good reviews, then that will be truly amazing. It will be the best moment of my life so far if it ever happens. I just fear of getting into a Duke Nukem Forever or Hollow Knight: Silksong situation where it's been in the oven for too long. Only time and fate can tell.

In the mean time, I'd recommend you look forward to other indie games and other stuff out there in the wild to hold yourself over until CyberAnima is ready again, even if most of the games on here aren't exactly like CyberAnima. This includes:

 And if you want to throw some money at me for CyberAnima or just for the hell of it, I have a Ko-Fi page you can donate to.

I really hope this unnecessarily long blog post explains the current situation currently with my game. I want this game to exist, but my decisions are pretty much weak compared to time and fate. Patience, love and collaboration what I'm hoping it needs needs until it is ready.

Thank you for understanding,

- stixc (Charles)

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