This marks the first official devlog for my first [big] game (currently nicknamed Project Ascendancy).
The idea for this project was first outlined several years ago with a heart-hearted attempt to make it in Gamermaker, but I don’t have the patience for pixel art, and there was some other stuff going on.
Cut forward to October 2025, some friends and I threw around the idea to make a game, and I pitched Project Ascendancy to them.
We did some initial planning and outlining, but our appetite for the project fizzled.
At the end of March however, my friend LeadbellyLuffy decided to host a small gamejam using Wareware, a simple, 3D browser based game engine by RipRip.
For Luffjam, I released a small (barely 10 minutes long) game called Night Story about an exhausted worker bee in a capitalist hellscape who escapes to find night and a place to rest. It kind of mirrors how I feel in my current work life, so it was a nice way to explore some of the anxieties I have about being stuck but also trying to find something new.
But seeing it come together, working out how to do something with the limitations of the system, uploading it to Itch.Io and actually seeing the number of people who opened it in their browser reinvigorated me and here I am, committing to making something that means a lot to me.
I’ll be keeping dev logs offline and aiming to post them each month, but that’ll depend on how long they are. April is already looking big because I might include a few progress pictures.
If you‘re reading this, thanks! I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day or night, and as my friend ShotgunMcpayne says, treat yourself with kindness and grace.
- Zoë