Ok, let’s address the elephant in the room. As it turns out I won’t be able to finish the new Submachine game this year. It’s just humanly impossible to do it in about 10 days. I know that 100% of you think that it’s ok and you want a quality game rather than a half-baked rushed mess, even by expense of waiting a bit longer. I’m just coming clean to those waiting impatiently and hoping it’ll come this holiday season. I feel like I owe you this piece of information so you can breathe out, at least for now.

A bit longer, probably TL;DR explanation below.

So here’s the thing. There are three main reason why the game isn’t happening just yet. By themselves, all of those reasons would be easy to overcome, but they clashed together and created a perfect storm of chaos that just prevents me from working on the game.

First – I won’t lie to you. I’m kind of running on fumes right now. The end of the year is near, my tank is empty and that’s not a good state of mind. Fortunately each New Years I reset, so working in january should be fast and furious. Long story short, end-of-of-the-year writer’s block? Perhaps.

But that’s manageable.

Second thing – the holiday season. You know, when your life basically gets hijacked by all the things you have to do during that season. I wonder how it turned out to be that every new Submachine comes around end of the year. This is basically the worst time of the year for a major intellectual work, at least for me. Everything is distracting you. And on top of that – there’s that deadline looming around the corner. I hate deadlines, that’s why I never talk about game release dates. When it’s ready, it’s ready. I need to rethink which month would be the best for Submachine release. Any suggestions? Long story short – this end of the year season sucks when it comes to creative work.

However that’s manageable too.

And then came the third and most impactful reason – the goddamn flu. My whole family got sick, first the kids, then my better half and now it’s my time. And this time it wasn’t like one of those three-day little flu-like symptoms that you shrug off and head on with your life. Right now I’m writing only because I stayed whole day in bed and gathered enough strength to write.

And clearly – this is the moment when Submachine 9 just drifted away into 2014. But have no fear. Thanks to this step back this game will probably be better and bigger than what was planned initially.

If you’re still reading – wow, congrats. Yes – the picture above is a screen from the game. Funny, I know.

What do you know – turns out I’m only human after all.