The Struggles of Game Development
November 28, 2024
by Schauermann /
Game development is hard. If you decide to go down this path, be prepared for your project to haunt you day and night. It demands a tremendous amount of discipline to stay focused, and it eats up an enormous amount of time. I’m not the type to make detailed plans. I usually just dive in and see where it takes me. But with PROBABLY ART, this approach ended up being my downfall.
I had big dreams of creating an extraordinary game - something with a mystical atmosphere and a story that unfolded without the need for dialogue. The playtime would be around two hours, with my digital paintings taking center stage, seamlessly integrated into the narrative. I had big ambitions.
The Visuals Came Together Quickly
The visual aspect came together relatively fast. My goal was to bring the style I use in my digital art into the game. The characters and scenes were intentionally cute, creating a stark contrast with the darker, more somber storyline. The Story: A Depressed Rabbit

Screenshot of Mom Said I'm Special, 2024
The Rabbit That Wouldn’t Leave My Mind
The concept of the story stuck with me, lingering throughout the day and making it hard to shut off. In the game, I wanted to tell the story of a depressed character wearing a rabbit costume. I intentionally left the rabbit unnamed, allowing players to project themselves onto the character more easily. The rabbit’s past would be revealed in an abstract way, with time jumps between childhood and the present. The story would explore themes of home - both as a place of comfort and as a cage that traps you in fear of the unknown, preventing new experiences. It was a fragment of a larger narrative about self-love, self-hatred, and personal growth. The ambiguity was meant to leave room for player interpretation, allowing them to connect with the story in their own way.
The Ninety-Ninety Rule
Creating the visuals for the game was the fun part. But then came the hard part: everything else. The Ninety-Ninety Rule was constantly in my mind: “The first 90% of the project takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% takes the remaining 90%.” The first 90% - the creative, exciting part - was nearly finished. The first minutes of the game were almost playable, and the music was complete. But the last 10% - all the behind-the-scenes work, like bug fixes and game logic - was where I got stuck. It was a slow, tedious process. Fixing a single bug could take an entire day, and often the work felt frustrating and monotonous. Yet, despite the challenges, I learned a lot, and after four months, I had my first prototype. At that point, the game was still called Mom Said I’m Special. The style was heavily inspired by old Windows desktop designs, evoking a sense of nostalgia and childhood memories. The game shifts between past and present, with the color of the rabbit helping to signal which time period the player is in. As the story unfolds, the time jumps become clearer, and flashbacks start to make sense. I also created the music in Ableton.
Letting Go
You can probably imagine how hard it was for me to abandon the project prematurely. Four months of hard work, for only five minutes of gameplay. Completing the game would have taken another two years. To be honest, I was already at my wit’s end by that point. But I wasn’t ready to give up entirely. I knew I had to think smaller, scale back my vision. And that’s when the idea for PROBABLY ART was born.