The summer I stopped playing games… and started making them.

[p]Hi everyone,[/p][p]Let’s rewind a bit, before Apopia, before the 8-year journey. Let’s go back to where it all really started.[/p][p]I’ve loved games since I was a kid. There’s no doubt that I’m a gamer to my very bone.[/p][p]The programmer of this game, aka my childhood friend, Ricky and I used to visit each other’s home a lot and play games like Tomb Raider, Star Craft, Final Fantasy, you name it. [/p][p]But at some point, something shifted. I remember one summer holiday, instead of playing RPGs or platformers, I spent weeks hunched over my computer learning Visual Basic and Warcraft III Map Editor. I wasn’t just playing games anymore, I was building them. Small, silly, broken mini games that only I and my closest classmates would ever play. And I realized: I loved making them even more than playing them.[/p][p]That feeling never left.[/p][p]Flash forward to mid-2017. I shared this dream with my friend Ricky. We grew up playing the same games, laughing at the same glitches, getting stuck on the same bosses. We didn’t just want to play great games - we wanted to make one.[/p][p]And luck was on our side. We joined a competition… and we WON! That prize gave us our first real funding and the confidence to believe this wasn’t just a hobby. It was possible.[/p][p]But passion alone doesn’t make a game.[/p][p]The development of Apopia has been a rollercoaster of trial and error. We’ve argued over design. We’ve scrapped systems we spent months on. We’ve rewritten characters, changed art styles, reworked gameplay loops. Not because we were lost, but because we refused to settle for “good enough.”[/p][p]We kept asking: “Is this fun? Is this meaningful? Would we want to play this?”[/p][p]Sometimes, that meant taking three steps back to take one better step forward. This isn’t a “get and go” project. It’s a labor of love, polished through frustration, late nights, and countless iterations until it finally felt… right.[/p][p]Through all of it—the disagreements, the doubts, the sweat and tears, one thing kept us going: [/p][p]We never lost sight of why we started.[/p][p]To make a game we believed in.[/p][p]To make a game you would remember forever.[/p][p]In the next note, I’ll share the moment that dream almost fell apart, and how we fought to keep it alive.[/p][p]Thank you for being part of this journey with us.[/p][p]Yours,[/p][p]Onon[/p][p]Director, Apopia[/p]