Stylized image of a yellow airport-style sign reading ‘Agent’ with an icon of a person holding a phone beside a kiosk. The background shows a faded terminal with a lone figure walking beneath arched ceilings. Text at the bottom reads ‘Devlog #2’.

Agent Devlog 2 - Burnout, Backlogs, and Small Wins

• David Wesst

Let’s get right into it, shall we? 😊

Goal: Administration and Gameplay

For the second iteration, the administrative and marketing foundational tasks continue to reveal themselves and need to be addressed. Still, I want to go and mess around with the codebase I started a while back and try to add one of the key game mechanics for the game to see if it works as well in the game as it does in my mind.

Where did we start?

Before we discuss what got done. Let’s talk about where it started:

Screenshot of a GitHub Projects Kanban board titled ‘Agent – Playable Slice’ in the Current iteration view. It shows a Backlog column with a red ‘6 / 3’ capacity indicator (four cards: ‘Introduce Agent in a blog post,’ ‘Setup Bing Webmaster Tools,’ ‘Setup Google Search Console,’ and ‘Send incorporation information’) and an In Progress column with a yellow ‘1 / 3’ indicator (one card: ‘Write a script for a passenger using the story circle’). A yellow arrow highlights the ‘6 / 3’ backlog count..

You’ll notice the red indicator for the backlog column highlighting that I have too many issues in the backlog. Even though this week is a shorter-ish day-job week for me (i.e. hypothetically more free time), I’m hoping I can push through a bunch of these extra small tasks related to developing in the open and formally registering the company.

What got done?

Nowhere near as much as I originally planned, but a few things on the marketing side of the house. Specifically, I managed to:

  • The first devlog post for the project
  • Setup Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console on the website

I did these things while getting this blog post started with a plan. Once that passed, progress stopped.

What didn’t get done?

Quite a lot. 😅

Screenshot of the GitHub Projects board at the end of iteration 2. It shows eight issues from the previous iteration, with mixed progress. Three tasks are marked “Done” (publishing the first Agent devlog, setting up Google Search Console, and setting up Bing Webmaster Tools). One task is “In review” (sending incorporation information). One task is “In progress” (writing a passenger script using the story circle). The remaining three are still in the backlog: introducing Agent in a blog post, creating YouTube shorts about gameplay mechanics, and stubbing out the player grab-and-move control feature. This highlights that while some administrative and marketing tasks were completed, game development tasks mostly carried over into the next iteration.

Some Administration

I managed to get some of the administrative work done and sent off to the lawyers to incorporate. Although it is in review, it isn’t finished yet.

Video Game Development Tasks

Nothing on the video game itself was worked on. I had originally thought I would push through the week, since I had a conference coming up mid-week.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work out—the day job needed extra attention and, to be honest, I was feeling some burnout from the past several weeks.

Marketing on other Channels

Although not the end highest of priorities, I did want to get things moving on other marketing channels and start stretching those muscles.

That also didn’t happen.

What was discovered?

Two things: Real Life Changes Plans, and Task Carryover Isn’t Always a Solution.

Real Life Changes Plans

Sometimes things don’t work out as you originally intended.

When you have a day-job, a family, and are trying to start a new business, it might not be possible just to “push through it”. Sometimes the well‑made plan from a couple of weeks ago, when you were full of energy and excitement, doesn’t go as you wanted.

And that’s okay—as long as it doesn’t keep happening. If it does, you need to adjust your expectations and possibly your timelines.

Task Carryover Isn’t Always a Solution

While writing this post, I reviewed the kanban image at the top of the post. The backlog had 6 tasks in it, which I noted in the post when I started it. That was clearly too many, especially considering what ended up happening.

The lesson here is that tasks can’t always simply “spill over” into the next iteration. You need to adjust the plan, re-assess expectations, and understand the priority of the tasks.

What is the plan for the next iteration?

I actually planned to take a break for the next iteration, knowing that I would be gone for most of it because of the conference I’m attending as part of the day job.

With the last few days of the break still open to me, I am going to take pause and regroup.

That being said, I am realizing that opening the business itself to get ready to put a product out on Steam, is time consuming. Even though it is not part of making the game itself, it is on the critical path to getting the game out there, so it needs to take my attention.

End scene. 🎬

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