Stuck in a Rut

So here I am, stuck in a rut :(

I have a whole bunch of ideas I would like to pursue, but can't settle on one or find the motivation to even start. Should I do an iPhone game? Should I start doing some XNA stuff again? Should I make a sequel to our moderately successful mahjong game, Mythic Mahjong? Should I make one of my many other game ideas, using my own game engine, The Atomic Engine?

Well, all these options have plusses and minuses, of course.

iPhone dev is painful for me. I don't get on well with the Mac environment and dev tools. I have a nice little 2D sprite engine, all ready to go, and a couple of reasonable game ideas. Do I want to commit the next few months developing on a Mac and for a platform that is absurdly difficult to make $$ on? I'm not so sure. The upside is that it's easy and like I said, I have my own engine ready to go.

Now, XNA. I like the XNA environment. I like working in Microsoft's dev tools, and I'm very familiar with DirectX/PC dev in general. I did some XNA stuff a year or so ago, and I actually quite like C#, and you can't fault the XNA framework for making things REALLY easy :) So, XNA sounds interesting, but what sort of exposure can you get for your hard work? There's the community games stuff, but that's full of crap, and noise, and good games seem to just get lost. You can publish on Windows, but XNA uses a thoroughly modern version of DirectX to run, and excludes a large casual audience. So, not ideal.

Making a sequel to Mythic Mahjong sounds appealing to me. I would be guaranteed to make some return on my investment of time and energy. The game would be fairly entertaining to write, and using my own engine would be a plus. The main problem here is the availability of my partner in crime, Damon. He's just started a new job and has no time for art or design.

So, what the hell am I going to do? I'm spinning my wheels here! Maybe a quick iPhone game while I wait for Damon. Maybe I brush off my XNA skills and knock a quick game out on that, and maybe collaborate with Rob over a Sorcery Games?

I could just make one of my other bright ideas using my home grown PC game engine. I like the environment and my engine is quite mature now, having written 2 complete games in it. I'll need art of course, but I could probably find someone wiling to do that for me. This sound like the most promising option to me right now.

This is too hard ..

A Bit Slow Around Here ..

Well, no update for a little while. No excuse other than I'm lazy I suppose. To be honest, not much has been going on. I've been sick and I haven't had any motivation to do any work after hours, so nothing really to report.

I'm trying hard to get some lingering web work out of the way, so I'm free and clear to start on a new PC game. That's just an excuse of course, if I had the energy and motivation, I'd be working on the PC game anyway, regardless. Oh well.

I need some excitement in my life!