TL;DR: Title. My main Itch page has all my games, but MathLab is the only one in alpha at the moment (post link). Just curious of the general consensus of the idea and direction it's headed in as an educational game, maybe used in the classroom. Thinking about submitting all my stuff to publishers and game funds, like Moonrise.
caveat: If you watch the vids for Ted Moonchild, you'll notice there are AI background placeholders. I made those several years ago in a stable diffusion Discord chat, I'm sorry. I only wanted to have a less boring aesthetic for the video and It wasn't obvious to me at the time just how shit and unethical AI was going to become. Everything else comes from my hands, but precisely why I'm trying to figure out money so I can pay a real artist.
I'm a burnt out systems engineer, and I just got laid off from a non-profit gig after they got state funding. CEO said something about "we have to stick with known entities", which just means Microsoft over any form of IT staff. I only say that to lead into the fact that I am already burnt out on job applications, on top of doing all the work for executives while they do nothing. At my age in the world of vibe coding bullshit, I'm not even getting rejection letters. Any way, I digress...
I've started several games, and one I've been working on for a long-ass time and made in several different languages and engines before landing on Godot. I get a little sad when it comes to finishing the games, because I just want to code the mechanics and come up with the ideas, make the music. I'm only kind of an artist, in terms of drawing. I can muddle through but it's grueling for me, especially animation. In order to complete a couple of these the way I want, I need to hire someone. In order to hire someone, I need money... and that all starts to lead back to, "I gotta figure out how to make money with the games so I can justify paying an artist to help."
On top of that, the one game I really, really want to finish writing and actually make is Ted Moonchild and the Roadies in Space. It's kinda massive in scope, at least for me, though. Working full time in Linux systems also means I have never really been able to give it the thought and time it needs to fully come to life. Seems like I need to turn the hobby into an income source so I can justify spending time on that game... man I'm starting to really despise this world we live in.
Back on topic again, it hurts a little bit. I really don't want my hobby to become about making money, but I'm struggling with the corporate world. I had planned on initially making MathLab open source, meant more so for education and to gain a little clout, then put the others up for sale.
I guess I'm here asking for feedback just to see what's good, what sucks ass, and if there's any interest in any of it from a gamer's perspective. Trying to get a better idea of whether or not I should try to get upfront funding from a publisher or fund, or just eat shitty ramen noodles and potatoes for the next 6 months and try to do everything myself for the first game and put it up for $5 or $10 (or free for teachers to use in class).
After all that, what say you? I'm especially interested in whether or not you laughed at my work and why.