Project February: one year on
I started working on Project February one year ago. I want to celebrate this milestone and share my achievements (and artwork).
In February 2025 I published a private proof-of-concept game to itch.io. By July, I was proud enough of the project that I made the build publicly available. This was about seven days’ work spread over months.
February 2025
March 2025
Over the summer, I had concept art commissioned for the character February.
Concept art explorations
In September I published a Steam store page for my game and made a demo that was publicly available on Steam. In hindsight this was a mistake. I also wrote a few blog posts in September explaining my naïve direction and perspective. I’ll talk more about this in a future post.
October 2025
My next milestone was to bring something playable to GodotFest in November. With that in mind, I started working with a 2D Artist. By the beginning of November I had a build that was visually appealing enough and was fun to play for about 10 minutes. I started engaging with playtesters properly.
November 2025
By the end of 2025, the main gameplay loop was implemented: play, upgrade the world, play more.
December 2025
Since the beginning of the 2026, I've worked with a sound designer to produce new background tracks to set the mood for the game. I've refined the player’s abilities to the point that mostly confident in the final set of abilities. I’ve also worked on world building to better convey the context that the player finds themselves in as well as improving the look and feel of the game within the levels.
January 2025
I have a lot to celebrate and be proud of.
What’s my next milestone and what’s in the immediate future for the project?
I almost have a vertical slice of gameplay: all the features of the full game, but with significantly reduced content. I have two things missing: boss levels and additional type of upgrade. After that, the next milestone is a Demo. This is why the Demo that’s already live on Steam was a mistake: the project is nowhere near ready for it.
I have several exciting threads already running and I’m expecting to make a leap forward in progress this month. This is what’s on the horizon:
- a 3D model and rig for the player’s character. This will be projected into 2D for silky smooth animations.
- 2D graphics for several screens to make them look more interesting than a block of colour.
- Sound direction for sound effects.
- Tweaks to movement mechanics to make the character feel really satisfying to control.
- Internal tooling to streamline the workflow of creating, editing and testing islands in the worlds.
3D model and rig
Concept art exploration