The Last Mile

The systems were the fun part. This stretch was not.

The last mile of a game is all the work that doesn’t make a good devlog post: the crash that only happens on a cold start, the screen that looks fine until someone with a smaller phone opens it, the dozen small things you swore you’d fix later — and later is now. I cut scope I was attached to. I left some ideas on the floor. That’s the trade for actually finishing.

Somewhere in here the game got its real name. I’d been writing “IceAgeLife” for months — one word, a working title that stuck. It became Ice Age Life. Three words, room to breathe. The kind of thing you only see clearly once you’re about to hand it to people.

Today I hit submit. Now it sits in review while someone at Apple decides whether it gets to exist in the world. Nothing to do but wait. The next post is the one I’ve been waiting to write.