SEAR DevBlog, week of 1/19/26: Yay, tax season

I wish I was posting game pictures.

I spent pretty much this entire week on administrative stuff for the year - budgeting, setting up the project plan, and tax bureaucracy. I haven’t had to send out 1099s in about 10 years, so it was “fun” reacclimating to that process and learning how it had changed. I don’t think I really got into the project once. Those are my least favorite weeks - I love working on the game - but it had to be done. I’m not quite finished with all the admin I need to do, but a lot of the groundwork has been laid which should make the rest of it easier.

This type of work does mark a shift in the way I approach the business and the project. Last year when I started out I didn’t really know what I didn’t know. I just kind of dove in. Through the course of the year I got a sense of what things cost, how much time they take, and what expectations are reasonable. Last year I took a stab at a budget and project plan, but just couldn’t have done what I did this past week. It’s heartening to be at this point now and to be able to start laying out year-long plans. I'm actually looking forward to getting some specific plans together for the prototype updates that will transform it from a prototype to the demo, how many releases there will be, and what the anticipated functionality improvements are for each - a real release schedule, in other words, instead of the wild west it's been up to this point.

Another part of this is to make a final decision on the goal date for the KS and Early Access, and what exactly we can commit to with the budget we have, so I can decide exactly which items will be KS stretch goals and determine what those realistic costs will be. KS is not just going to be a marketing initiative for us. Every milestone we hit will translate to new stuff in the game, in a very literal sense. 

I’ve been working with a launch marketer who has a lot of experience and has given me some very valuable advice, and with Launchboom who has managed a lot of Kickstarters, and combining their advice means that there are essentially two good windows over this next year for KS and two for EA. Naturally the early window feels too early, and the later one feels too late, like we don’t quite need THAT much time. 

Nonetheless I’m leaning toward the later windows. One thing I learned last year was that you can’t magically hit a deadline that’s too early just by buckling down and crunching. Long work hours have diminishing returns and can actively sabotage quality. Yeah, time is money, but it’s still a finite resource either way. Aiming for the later windows would also let me do more work on the project itself instead of hiring it out, which, I’ll be honest, I would really enjoy. I love working on this game. 

So hopefully I’ll have some final news on our dates next week. For the first time these will be firm commitments, not educated guesses. Looking forward to it. 

The team kept working while I was stuck outside of the project, with more great progress on sfx, new level design, level concepting for the new trailer level, UI and aesthetic design, the speed zones I mentioned last week, and we finally moved the first draft of the new Groove vehicle out of concepting and into active dev. All of this is going to come together to make one heck of an update to our prototype when it’s ready. Can’t wait to share it all!