Crawling back to my day job 

I think my jaw actually dropped when you said you're working on a particle accelerator to cure cancer. You're a very very talented person and are amazing at everything you do, keep up the great work!

I'm glad that you mentioned the part about the "being able to come back to work anytime" aspect of your journey. Not having such a safety net is 99% the reason why most won't even take the leap that you've taken. Though I've carved the same path as you have, I never had a chance to leave my job, for fear of not finding one if the passion project didn't pan out. What I'd do to be able to taste the love and pain of such a journey...

Stylistic suggestion: opening camp town should look more ravaged. like in a way that is obviously damage that can be covered up with progression. Busted wall tiles where the old tiles were, random little fires here and there, blood and stains, dirt piles, etc. then they either get cleaned up as you rebuild or gather whatever remaining resources are left within town (always fun), or they generate back to normal over time once your main home is rebuilt or something. Just to really hammer home that these humans did us dirty. Also, just charge teeth for the tool required to clean up pollution

The work experience you talked about is very relatable for me. I am currently employed as a software engineer by a huge automotive firm. The field does not interest me at all but the tasks can be fun and the pay is good. Every few months I start thinking about quitting and devoting more time to art and/or video games but I am nowhere near self sustaining with that and I fear that what you described might happen to me as well. Thank you for sharing. It makes it easier to be content hearing that other made the same decisions and are doing fine

Dude I'm blown away by how much you do. You are an electrical engineer. You do art. You make video games. You make very well edited and planned out RU-vid videos. It's seriously so impressive. You have motivated me to start taking my youtube dreams more seriously. And to just do more productive stuff in general. Thank you. Thank you so much.

The first half of this video is so validating to me as someone who loves art but constantly has to explain to my family why i never want to "make a career out of it" I was not expecting the second half if this to be a devlog but it was very interesting and sounds like something I'll pay attention to 💕

My steam wishlist is now twice as big as it was before I started watching indie devlogs, and I have 0 regrets!

Stylistic suggestion: when you enter a dungeon the outside world should be dimmed/ black. The dungeon you showed in the forest looked visually cluttered to me at first and little disorienting because I could see everything outside the walls. Generally you want dungeon experiences to feel mysterious / separated / othered and darkened exteriors would help increase that feeling.

I have been thinking about the classic,”I left my job and mortgaged my house to develop my game” story. It’s always rubbed me the wrong way and I love that you’re going back to stability and not demonizing it, there is nothing wrong with a 9 to 5 but so many people say its failure to have one at all and we need more talk around it like this

No complaints here, I love seeing the progression that you're making at YOUR pace! This video is great for the rest of us who are tied to our "normal lives." It's nice to see that you are balancing your "professional" life and your "hobby" life. I am SO excited to see how far you take your projects.

i clicked on this video having no idea it was a devlog, but the entire video and story was SO entertaining, and the game looks incredible !! can’t wait for the release !!

Couple things: 1. The game still looks very fun and I am loving the bosses looks and how they aren’t always the stereotypical dnd characters we’ve seen over and over again but still having a theme (like the bard using a bow and harp as sword and shield making them look more like a paladin, very interesting idea and fun) 2. You said you wanted more animals for the Druid to turn into, so I figured I may be able to generate ideas. Things such as a rhino to do a slash attack if the players get too close, an eagle attack where the Druid charges from one side of the screen to the other (like queen bee from terraria), and maybe an elephant where the Druid sprays out pollution that can linger for a couple seconds and act damage any player walking through it. 3. Gonna ask this on every video, but please add different classes like what terraria has, or at least different weapon types so my friends and I aren’t always after the exact same gear. I feel it could be fun if there were specific creatures that were better at fighting and battling than farming or in dnd there’s psionic goblins who use magic to attack. Up to you, but this is what would seal the game as very replayable in my mind.

I think the way you post devlogs(as a “I added this interesting thing” instead of “Devlog #112”) both makes them more engaging to watch and pushes the videos out more. Keep it up! Definitely the game I’m most excited for behind Silksong

I’m so glad you followed your gut and went back to focusing on why you love, and your passion.

I JUST left my job to work on my game full time, this is certainly a cautionary tale! Funny enough I also started as a sprite artist, a lot of my older videos use pixel art, but I leaned into game dev the last 4 years for the money and the fun. Glad you're still planning on finishing the game, I think it'll be so fun!

I love everything about this game!! the looks, the mecanics, the npc, the bosses. its all very well put together and has a very clear style! well done :)

Your video production skills are insane.! The game looks so soo fun and all the 22,170 wishlists are very well deserved mate! Also, I am very jealous of your art skills. 🤥

Particle accelorator cancer treatment is such an awesome phrase and it makes me super happy that you are able to work for a project like that instead of working on military equipment. It gave me some hope that my own degree could pan out to do good for the world. I appreciate you sharing

Been following for a while. The game looks way more promising than it did back in the turn-based days. I loved that you decided to embrace the change and it really does seem like it has paid off, especially with the addition of multiplayer. Keep it up man

I was recently diagnosed with a brain tumour and had the option of using one of those machines or x-rays for the treatment. X-rays were best for me because they're not as accurate and to talk in game terms do splash damage which is what you want when treating a tumour like mine. Wild when you mentioned working on the proton machine to destroy tumours, it was so close to me hahah This whole experience has taught me that you need to dive into your creative endeavours and callings. Even if it didn't work out for you as you wanted it to, at least you tried and you can live happily with no regrets and hold your head high knowing you gave it a go. Best of luck with developing the game man :) Don't give up! ❤

Love love love. Making art and having a day job too is the move in this economy. I’m in a similar place to you. A lot of people are!

some idea I had when seeing the temple is when you are inside of the temple make the outside all black or something so it feels like you are really in the building. keep up the great work though I love your content!

Hi Matt, I can relate wholeheartedly to this experience. Only that my passion kick is kid's comics, not games, but most everything else... spot on. I didn't quit my last office job, was let go unexpectedly, but then I had huge savings, no debts and said why not go head on into my lifelong passion for once (I did major in Arts but that's another story). Long story short yes I learned a lot of things of the trade, but also the fact that the book publishing market is fickle and small, money-wise, compared to the IT roles I previously held. And that unless you become a bestseller and win a coveted industry award, making books will most likely remain a weekend hobby. And that the life of a freelancer is not all sunshine and rainbows, hard to enjoy your free time when the fear of not making ends meet always lurks around the corner. So I'm slowly coming to terms with selling myself as an UX consultant to cash in on my corporate skills again, while keeping faithful to art on my personal time. At least there's some comfort on not being the only one going through this.

10:15 👀

Dude this is freakin awesome!! I love the art and the game that you're making. I also can relate on the whole work scenario and wanting to find something more fulfilling. Hearing your experience with leaving your job and going back but still finding what works for you, is nice to hear. Because it shows that even when you're not making a living from your "dream job" that you can still find ways to make life good for you, all while doing the things you love and letting life evolve naturally into something more in alignment with you. Thank you and I'll be subscribing to see the progress on your game!!!

You could maybe do an npc satisfaction system where when you have a better town area built (using more expensive materials that either take research or other forms of money) then the npcs are happier and will have cheaper prices/ better rng for any rng rolls they do/ gain hearts more easily kinda thing

Thanks for sharing your journey with us! Hoping that you find a good balance between your day job and your dreams in future.

Dropped everything to watch this! It's really encouraging to hear your journey navigating the balance between corporate work and passion projects - I think the way you're really transparently and honestly sharing your experience will help a lot of people in similar positions :)

I'm in a similar place. I'm working in my next steam release trying to find hours and motivation after work (with marginal success). I just happen to work in a AAA game studio so I enjoy my work and the XP carries over to my personal stuff. The video was really relatable and you seem like a down to earth guy.

This is my first time seeing your content, I like this videos and your Way of thinking.

One thing that you should do is make underground walls ( Stone, dirt ext) non-mineable. the player won't feel like they need to walk through caves if they can just smash walls with a pickaxe, searching in caves is wayyyy more engaging then strip mining for loot, and you could put lost ruins in the caves as well, with "Relics" to find

I really enjoy watching your videos. Its not so much looking forward to playing your game, I enjoy your process to problem solving, art style, and how you visually show your journey. Cant wait to see more!

I LITERALLY cannot wait for your game to drop! I've never related on a more personal level with a youtube video, and I'm hoping for the best with not only your gamedev career, but any other hobbies you choose to take on in life. Very glad to have stumbled across this channel, and will definitely be playing this game the minute it releases!

I can relate a lot to that. Drawing or Art in general for that matter is making me happy, but having to create art that is directed by others or rather is for someone else just takes the joy out of it for me.

I just found your channel and added the game to my wishlist! I hope this sparks joy for you during your important business meeting!

I have been following you for quite a long while and im glad you're working on what you want to and sorting out lifes struggles.

Genuinely, thank you for sharing your story and the update to your game. I look forward to seeing more. Please keep up the good work

I arrived due to the algorithm for the initial thoughtful discussion and left pumped for a game from a guy I've never heard of before. I appreciate the realness of balancing your dream with the realities of being an adult, looking forward to the game!

It was really inspiring to listen to how your past year was for you! Congrats for being so brave!

I really hope this game does well because it seems really cool, and with how hard you've been working on it you definitely deserve it!

I think you really learned a valuable lesson and I appreciate that you shared this!

I appreciate your commitment. Composing has always been my passion and fear of other life obligations has always made me worried that it’ll only ever be a hobby. But maybe that’s fine too. Keep working on Isle Goblin. I look forward to seeing it released.

Bard boss fight idea if it’s still open to ideas, what if one of the attack patterns plays music in an AOE which slows players down and slowly pulls them to the bard. Afterwards the bard hits them with a bullet-hell attack. This way, it could put more emphasis on the importance and drawbacks of using speed. If the player had fast movement speed, they could escape the call of music. If they had a tankier but slower build, they are more likely to be drawn to the music and may get hit from bullets. Anyway amazing progress and hope to play it!

3:49 glad you included the puns

Oh man just watched like 3 of your videos. Genuinely loving the content and can't wait to play it!

I really respect you for making this video. Thanks so much for sharing your insight and journey

I was checking my wishlist and seen that this game has yet to have a due date and it has been on my list forever it feels like. Which lead me to here. I didnt know you had a youtube! Subbed for sure. Am super stoked for this game. Love the art, love the direction. Love it all! Keep u0 the great work!

When I think about games with a good “grind with buddies” setup, I think of Diablo 2 and its “imbue” weapons or armor function, or the sockets in items where you can power them up in endless combinations. Make there a person in town you go to so they can “imbue” one of your items and it gives the item a random power-up. You can do this three times to any item but it gets progressively more expensive to do every time. The item is locked on the third time. The powers stacks each imbue. And people endlessly grind looking for the perfect power combo on every item, thus the endless grinding for “teeth” or money

I've been following you since your 500 prompts series on instagram and I'm proud how far you've come mate

Art suggestion: Because everything in the game has outlines it is very overwhelming to look at and hard to read very busy scenes. You could maybe consider removing outlines on things like foliage and candles etc. And just have outlines on directly interactable/collidable objects such as characters and walls

Such a good video man! I really loved seeing the new changes you've been making, with your thoughtful explanations and reflections of the reasoning behind them. And enjoyed hearing more about how you've dealt with your personal ambitions and career situation. Happy for you that you feel more fulfilled at the new workplace and it fits your personal morals more. Sounds like a great place to land for you while you continue to work on the game as a passion project balancing your financial needs. If you're gonna work a 37 hr week on average for pixel art anyway, and you're feeling the passion slipping, then it sounds like you made a good decision to go back to engineer work whilst jumping companies to something more suitable for you. I like to think that positivity is being reflected with all the great game updates you shared. Keep up the good work. For the "should health = pollution or currency?" dilemma; Maybe cleaning up pollution could still upgrade health / same outcome, but in order to receive the upgrade you need to spend money on items that will be required to convert the pollution. So a health upgrade is both a result of pollution collection and also currency expenditure objectives.

10:14 That next frame popped up and I actually flew backwards out of my chair like when Yoda force pushed Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith and he flew across the room. I don't think anything has ever caught me so off guard before.

Woahh what a lovely informative video thank xou so much. As someone who wants to pursue animation this really helped out ❤

Damn, this is timely. I'm an alright artist, and for years it's something I've wanted to try doing full-time, but I never felt my stuff was good enough to warrant it. A week ago, though, I started on my first commission, and I'm just coming to terms with the idea that if I keep on this path, I might never have to work at my current job again. It doesn't feel real to me yet, but if it happens, I wonder what I'm going to end up doing.

Thank you for your openness and honesty with sharing your story.

Just subscribed and wishlisted! Can't wait to play this when it comes out

I don't follow your videos, but the game looks genuinely good so I wishlisted like 6 month ago and I check from time to time your last video to know how much longer it will take to realease an early access, keep the great work, my best wishes for you!

Thank you for sharing your experience of going back to work. It must have been hard but it's awesome how you can shift your focus. I hope it makes your game progress easier.

Can't wait to see all the amazing things you accomplish!! ❤

Thank you for sharing your experience in leaving and crawling back to your 9-5. I am 100% sure your game will sell and be noticed, it looks absolutely fantastic. Good luck and never stop creating, you did my day today!

I'm in a similar situation. Working as an engineer at a space company while doing gamedev/yt on the side. While I could live off of freelancing and my projects, I wouldn't be able to save much, so I'm waiting until I have enough to "retire" (a lower amount since I can make money from my projects) or until I make a engineering level income from gamedev. Good luck to you!

Cant wait! totally gonna grind through the game when it comes out.

Congratulations on having the guts to go for it, very cool to hear the hours reauired to make a living at your passion , thanks for making this , good luck with your game !

Thanks for sharing your experience 🦕

We need more videos like this. Survivorship biased causes us to only see success stories where people never have to go back to a 9-5.

I’m in the same boat as you! Work a regular 9-5 and do gamedev on the side. I appreciate your transparency with trying out the full time pixel art gig and the results. Keep on trucking! New job sounds much more fulfilling

loved this entire video😊! subbed and added to wishlist!!🎉

As always, this new vid blows my mind on how good your game already is. Good job man, hope you the best :)

I studied game design, for a pretty long time too. Could never decide for the life of me what I wanted to commit to. Game design? Art? Programming? All of these categories are equally fascinating to me, but I found game design - the psychological aspect of games - to be the most intruiging. Unfortunately being a game designer isn't really a viable start when applying for positions at a game studio. Most studios just want capable artists and programmers and even then you're gonna need an impressive portfolio to even have a chance. So I went with art and at this point I was getting too overwhelmed with trying to write a bachelor thesis, producing art for a portfolio - throw in some general mental struggles I had at the time and the rather bleak game industry situation in Germany (likely having to move far away from familiy just for internships..) I just couldn't get it done. The vast majority of companies I contacted didn't even reply. Fast forward some time I'm now almost 2 years into an apprenticeship for becoming a web developer and I quite like it. I like that I get to learn more about coding every day and that makes diving into my little game projects way more managable. It's still pretty rough and I only actively do something every other weekend, but I guess learning more about game dev simply feels very fulfilling. And who knows maybe I'll stick with one idea and try to actually finish it, even if it is something small. Your game is looking really promising and it's astounding to see where you've initially come from. Will definitely have a close eye on this game!

Working for the military industrial complex WILL "make a direct impact on peoples lives". Just not in the way you where hoping.

Really good nice work fellah

Concerning the work/personal projects balance I have had another issue : I'm making videos, and as I started making bigger fictional projects I thought "Let's build a company !" and so we did with my wife. It was a bad idea at the time but we managed to find the best client that kept us alive for 3 years. We managed to make (only) one movie (35' long), and when we finally closed the company the movie was shot but not fully post produced. It took 1.5 more years to finish it, to gather something likz 2000 views on RU-vid. After closing the company I had to find a job, managed to work in. a small company, it's been 5 years now but I still can't work on my personal projects as well, as I'm now too much into the same business as my daily job. I'm getting tired of it, even if my personal projects are fictional and my daily job is only corporate ! Might consider finding a job in development as I quitted dev to create my company 8 years ago :) Thanks a lot for your honesty and yourvideos ! I've been following your work for quite a while now and I like your comittment !

Goodluck with work man. Just started uni in computer science. My goal is similar to yours. I’m a few years behind, but maybe by the time I’m finished, your game will be out. Then I can watch a devlog history and begin my own journey where you started yours.

Yes, after collage I worked in animation then onto games for 20 + years, AAA and indie stuff in that time. I loved games from an early age back in the spectrum to Atari ST and then consoles. A couple of years ago I quit to get a regular job in warehouse/factory. I'm much happier now than I've been in years. As I said, I used to love games, but now I can't stamd to even look at them and probably never play them again. Doing it for a living sucked all the fun from them. Now I love just doing my own artwork for myself in my own time for no one but me. Game making is long hours and wears you down, sometimes making them in your own time after a day job is way more rewarding and will keep it fun and not become omething you hate : ) Good luck, I think you made a great choice.

This looks so fun! Im very excited to play it, its amazing, and the art is awesome!

I am really waiting for the game to come out, you are doing a great job and it looks very fun

if monkeys are just real life goblins and parrots are just monkeys of the sky does that mean that parrots are winged goblins?

I can’t wait to see more of your work, I wish you luck.

Holy crap, you did the I Fight Dragons album cover?? That's awesome!

Very cool stuff man keep it up ❤

I'm in a similar boat where I just went full time, not because I can afford it but because of necessity. Good on you to getting to the point where people come to you too much!

Man You're Kinda killing it, i say just keep it up and ur videos are great! God Bless and good luck man!

You have great content and ive been wanting to make pixel art for my first game idea but suck. Your videos are really entertaining and full of knowledge. Good luck with eveything.

Man you did the one thing everyone dreams of but is too scared to do, alot of us are on the same journey! your work is amazing ill follow along for the journey!

Your game sounds amazing man! keep going 🔥

Shift the goop into an a base ingredient for alchemy options and player will naturally wish to clean it up then you can shift the gold to paying for purification scrolls or water or services to make the goop useful or just make it a way to pay for training to make your self stronger just paying two gobbos with sticks to hit you over and over until your close to death then let you heal in the age old what doesn't kill you makes you stronger this can get progressively worse such as eventually rolling logs over you or throwing you down a well just to make the progression humorous what ever you do good luck

I am in the same boat! Left my corporate job for a storyboarding gif right before the Hollywood negotiations fell apart. Needless to say, i had to crawl back to my corporate gig, with similar existential dread 😂

Wish your dreams become true soon! You have worked hard for this game ❤

The game is looking great, I'm glad I found this channel. Idk if this helped but maybe for the money motivation, when buying cosmetic structures maybe they can have passive abilities like increasing resources gathering,or speeding buildings, etc. Or more character based perks like hp regen or faster stamina fill up. Idk though it could be cold, good luck with the development!

I think regardless of the outcome this was good for you! You probably built a bigger audience through your commissions and gained some perspective!!! :D

I've got it on my wishlist and I'm exited for whenever the release may be

Thanks for the advice! And your game looks super cool 😎😎💯💯

Loving your game, can't wait to play it

I am one of those wishlisted sir, can’t wait!

Knowing that the demo could come out in the next month or two is really exciting! Can't wait to try out the game with some friends once it does come out

I remember reading a quote, sometimes the best job is just the boring easy job. It might not be fulfilling but allows you the time for hobbies.

You did the artwork for I Fight Dragons!!!?!!??? THATS SO COOL!!! 0:59

I just want to say that I love hearing you talk about not just the game, but your experiences along the way. I guess I can sort of put myself in your shoes and imagine if I had done the same thing. I'm really hoping the game gets even bigger!

Really inspiring to see how your game is coming whilst juggling all of that life stuff :)

HmmmmmI just wandered out of the woods to this I appreciate who you are and what your doing here. I will bee looking to have some art made to hang on my tree.