I'm happy to announce that The Legend of Astera Stone is finally finished! It has been in development limbo since 2021 after I posted it unpolished for the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam. I was over-optimistic and thought it just needed some polishing and the sounds added, and... then I got distracted by life and other projects (I made five other games in between!).

The fruits of many game jams! I learned a lot while making all these.

I worked on Astera Stone on-off for the past three years, and my interest in it waxed and waned. Instead of just finishing the jam game, I "motivated" myself by adding the missing second route, which just added to the work pile. 

The original game story had <5k words which grew to almost 5800. While I didn't add any new background art, the CG count rose to 11, and there were a lot of scenes with sprite animation. This is a prime example of how even a small project can have serious scope creep.

After all these years, the project folder is a mess. I switched art programs from Gimp to CSP, so that made things even messier.

As years went by, having the game unfinished in my game collection started to bother me. Every time I published something new, Astera Stone got a spike in its views. I felt embarrassed every time someone downloaded the unfinished, soundless game. How would it affect the impression of my work? My reputation as a developer? These might be needless worries for a small dev like me, but they disturbed my peace of mind.

I had used the buzz around game jams as motivational boosts to finish a chunk of the game year after year. In the spring of 2024, I decided it was time to finish it. After a few weeks of dedicated audio hunting and UI tweaking the game was done. 

I'm so glad I kept a Google sheet of the needed SFX and music with links to potential pieces. With so many pauses in development, I wouldn't have known what I had already found and used.

Google Sheets, my savior 💜

I tried to keep myself from updating the graphics over the years to keep the scope creep to a minimum. The only thing that bothers me now is how the background art looks a lot like AI-generated art, even though it's just filtered photos. When I made the backgrounds in 2021 the style was kinda cool. Now it just reminds me of AI art. I don't think I'll replace the art because I want to move on to new projects, but I won't use the same technique anymore.

The background looks like it was AI-generated with all the wonky shapes.

Even with all its flaws, I'm glad The Legend of Astera Stone is finished. I have learned a lot during these years and was happy to use my new skills to make the old game better. I still have trouble reining the scope of my projects, but at least now it's not as bad as it was with this game. Sunk cost or not, I feel more relaxed now. Onwards to the next project!