With the start of the new year, it’s certainly been time to think heavily about quite a few things in terms of direction & focus. The most important thing for me, is really trying to be a lot more positive about things

After quick a hard look & think - I think it’s best to admit that to be honest, I’m just not cut out for the indie developer life. There’s a number of factors which have made me realise this.

Firstly, it’s the working solo aspect - I tend to prefer that simply as it was the opposite of what I experienced with day to day programming roles (being on teams, combined with things like Pair Programming which I happen to find exhausting) - but these days, whilst a individual can ship a game, there aren’t many who have been able to do it & get sufficient publicity & succes (Lance with Black Annex is easily the first which comes to mind).

It’s also down to my design methods - I’ve never been great with a formal design for designs, preferring to experiement and organically grow out a game - which, whilst having it’s own problems, feels like I can control the process, but at a cost in time.

As a result, I’ve decided it’s best to draw a line in the sand with the new year, and as such, have now gone and made Pocket Dogfights free (in the case of the mobile releases), or a minimum price of $0 (for the release on itch.io). In addition, I’m working on adding MFI controller support to the iOS release, as a little parting gift. I hope to have news on that in the next few days.

For the future? I’m not giving up on writing games, but for now - I’m giving up on them as a commercial endeavour, to focus on finding full-time development work instead.

For those who have bought PD over the last ~9 months, thank you all from the bottom of my heart - I hope you’ve enjoyed the game, and I hope you’ll enjoy whatever I do next (which, will likely still be Pivotus, but just at a reduced development rate).